What note-taking app has actually helped you grow your thinking in unexpected ways?

Posted by Amontillado
Oct 29, 2023 at 01:12 AM

I think I need to CRIMP more seriously. Here’s where I’ve gotten actual good:

OneNote - that’s all I can use it work. It doesn’t have the feel of a worthy tool. I have to keep wet wipes at my workstation. Wet clay collects on the sharp stick. I have to clean up at intervals through the day.

Obsidian - On my Linux system and on a local Windows box which I use for logging into company training. Notes in Obsidian have been helpful. I have a bunch of Java notes in Obsidian on my Linux box.

Curio - Outlining, mind mapping, kanban, planning, and brainstorming. It’s fine for knowledge management and I’ve used it for that. Lots of flexibility in linking and replicating notes.

Devonthink - A monster of an app. Yesterday I got some automation via Keyboard Maestro. I plan to start using the Annotation feature like Scrivener’s synopsis.

Via KM, I can hit a hot key on a document of interest. switch back to where I’m building a transcluded list, and hit another hot key. It inserts an HTML comment identifying the parent of the annotation, a link to the annotation to edit it, and transcludes the annotation. Since annotation templates all start with a link to the parent document, you end up with links to open both the annotation and the parent.

Thanks to the magic of regular expressions, it’s smart enough to recognize the difference between a link to a document versus a link to an annotation. The same “insert transclusion” hotkey works for either style link, with some differences in what it pastes.

Happy with that.

It’s not an outliner, although you could use it for one, but I also really like the word processor Mellel. It’s said to have a steep learning curve. I think the curve gets a lot easier once you realize it’s not Word and doesn’t work that way. Styles are particularly cool in Mellel.

Mellel is in Israel. There’s a free trial. It’s not a bad thing to support at the moment.

What note-taking app has *actually* helped you grow your thinking in unexpected ways?

What note-taking app has actually helped you grow your thinking in unexpected ways?