Making a meaningful note taking system.
I was awful at managing notes of my own. Even when I wanted to look back on a specific topic in my notes, it was a hassle. My notes were unorganized and was hard to maintain.
Taking notes in books is easy, but still its difficult to index when you have notes in no of books. Since most of my work I do is online nowadays, I needed a efficient note taking application which can handle all of my troubles in a single application.
Obsidian
Obsidian is a local-first note taking application. It is fully customizable and comes with a lot of features. Graph view, canvas mode, daily notes and many more. The most popular feature obsidian offers is the graph view which helps you visualize all the notes you have created under the root folder or vault. Obsidian by default creates notes in markdown, which is nowadays de facto standard of taking and previewing notes.
Markdown is a file type similar to JSON, XML, text files. "Markdown became popular amongst developers when Github started using it. Developers started using markdown for updating their Readme files." Developers now use it for blogging too. Now almost all the note taking applications out there now supports markdown.
PARA
I recently came across a video by Tiago forte explaining the para method and how he uses it to take notes in Evernote application. He has written a book too on "The Para Method".
The para stands for:
- Projects contains the tasks which you are currently working on
- Areas groups the projects/work which focuses on same achievements or goals.
- Resources needed to complete a task.
- Archives it is a like a cold storage which has completed / archived work which you want to remove from the system, but still want them to index which you can look back whenever required.
There is one more process I want to add it the PARA method, which I see can complete the PARA which is the Inbox. The Inbox can be of great use when you don't know where to add a task / idea. You just created a new note and started writing random things which you think can be of help to you later. This process can store your random thoughts into system and add value when working on a similar project. Once a week you can reorganize your inbox and move the notes which you think belong to one of the PARA method.
What you can do ?
The PARA method is helping me to take notes regularly and it is improving my learning by taking notes. While using Obsidian you can only store your files locally. However there is a subscription plan where you can sync your notes across devices and even publish your notes. I have a hacked process for syncing notes across devices using obsidian, let me know if you want to hear more about this.
You can take a look at my graph view which builds as I add my notes and link using PARA method. This graph view helps you visualize how your notes have been linked and find common topics notes to start building up on top of the those ideas.
I highly recommend giving a try to Obsidian