I’ve had an odd relationship with note-taking apps and productivity in general. I’ve always had this desire to be productive, but the very fiber of my being, my inclination, my true nature seems to be entirely unproductive. What this means is that whatever habit of note-taking I could foster always peters out.
I’m sure I wrongly blame the app for my lack of note-taking consistency. But it’s not that much of a stretch, right? If the app isn’t good to use, you’re less and less likely to use it. Maybe if I had stuck with a few apps for years at a time, that would apply. The excuse is no good when you review my history of note-taking apps.
My History of Apps
Apps I’ve Tried
Evernote is the first one I ever used way back in the early 2010’s for college, but a dinosaur in the note-taking landscape that never evolved and instead had to watch all the other creatures evolve into birds and take off.
Simple Note is truly a bare-bones and fully-free Markdown-based note-taking app with cross-platform sync that’s still going strong.
Notable is like an opinionated Simple Note that most people have probably never heard of, though none of it matters now as it seems abandoned.
I only ever used OneNote for work since it comes with Office 365, but it’s always felt weird and clunky, so I never bothered using this milquetoast option at home.
Bear is Apple ecosystem only, but a strong Markdown-based option with rich-text-like editing and reliable cloud sync for a cheap price, though its development has been infamously slow and its Pro plan unfortunately doubled making me not want to bother with it anymore.
Obsidian is probably the nerdiest of the popular note-taking apps, not only because of its rich customization options and plugin ecosystem, but because D&D enthusiasts and creative writing world builders love pushing it to it’s limits.
Non-Apps I’ve Tried
Bullet journaling is one man’s note-taking and journaling system that went viral and spawned countless YouTube videos of “BuJo” spreads and setups that seemed to take up 90% of the journaling effort (but maybe the drawing, stamps, and stickers is part of the “therapy” of bullet journals?).
Regular journaling™ is the option my “old soul” always dreamed of, but the only way it actually manifested was buying nice feeling A5 journals on a whim and then never actually writing anything inside.
Apps I Never Tried
I always heard Notion brought up, but note-taking seemed like only a small feature of a larger productivity tool, most of which I had no need for.
iA Writer has all the features of a good note-taking app, but it’s main draw seems to be it’s focus mode, so for that reason I’ve always seen this as more for novel writing (whether that’s true or not).
Maybe I’m a bit confused that I never tried Joplin, as it shares features and aspects of other note-taking apps that I’ve enjoyed in the past…no excuses here.
Apps I Might Try?
I discovered Logseq while looking for Obsidian alternatives, though I’m hesitant to try as it seems to more outline-based (being a clone of Roam and all) and I’d need to wrap my head around accepting that first.
Apps I Regularly Use
Apple Notes is, funnily enough, perhaps the one I’ve used most consistently over the past several years for jotting down random thoughts while out-and-about and grocery lists.
Note-Taking Apps in Hindsight
Seeing my journey mapped out above makes me think of this meme. Not entirely applicable, but the sentiment is there.
There’s something to be said about the note-taking app that has the least friction and the lowest barrier to entry. I have a desire to be productive by means of note-taking, but none of the motivation to maintain the habit. So wouldn’t it make sense to just go with whatever note-taking app I’m mostly likely to reach for in the moment?
At the end of the day, it doesn’t seem to have anything to do with the app in my case. If journaling is productive (to your mental well-being), if dumping all your loose thoughts down into a digital “second brain” is productive, and if collecting and organizing your Zettelkasten of thoughts is productive, then maybe none of those things easily facilitated by using a note-taking app is for me.
So Now What?
Somehow I still want to try. I still like the idea of jotting down my thoughts. It doesn’t have to be as comprehensive as what the productivity-obsessed corners of the internet would suggest is needed. I’d like to think that even a few entries, simple lists or blurbs with the occasional entry, still have value, even if they’re not backlinked to 20 other pages and summarized in a Dataview.js table.
I’ve been studying programming and computer science in hopes of becoming a software developer someday soon, so the idea of plain text solutions remains attractive. Markdown-based, locally stored, private, and so on. Heck, maybe I’ll just write and organize it all in VS Code and maintain a Git repo. I’ll have to explore some more and see where my level of effort ends up.