Piranesi and Notetaking

Piranesi and Notetaking

Piranesi

I recently listened to Susanna Clarke’s Piranesi.

Piranesi has stuck with me due to the classical themes, mysteries, and the notetaking. Oh, the notetaking!

The main character wanders a labyrinth taking meticulous, handwritten notes in a series of journals. He has many individual journals and, the hook that really got me, he also has an index which he maintains in another journal so he can look up previous notes. In this way, he can keep track of the tides that roll through the labyrinth, the seasons, discussions he has with the other, and the thousands of corridors and hallways.

There is more to the book than just notetaking, it is short, mysterious, and worth your time.

Notetaking

I take notes and lots of them.

Unlike Piranesi, I do not index them and I do not reflect back on them at any regular interval. But I can search them because they are digital.

I decided at some point to write a personal notetaking manifesto. That isn’t weird, trust me. Every person who writes online probably has something like this because it is not weird (right?). It also has to be reviewed and updated, it is a living document.

In my work flow, I use a few different systems and tools.

Joplin is where I capture most structured notes that be cataloged into work notes, drafts for blog posts, ongoing disputes with insurance companies, etc.

Google Keep is a drug I’m trying to kick because I feel like it will end up like google reader. But I do use it daily.

It is my daily driver mostly because I can have the widget display something akin to the sample below right on my phone screen:

- [ ] Mon
    - [ ] pick up kids
    - [ ] run
    - [ ] laundry
- [ ] Tues
    - [ ] Call insurance
...
- [ ] Misc
    - [ ] submit passports for kids 

I use Keep notes as ephemeral lists and interactive checklists. Whereas Joplin notes are where I store things. Additionally, Keep notes typically are generated from my phone, though sometimes from my computer. But a majority of Joplin notes are from a proper keyboard.

I use paper for physical lists like shopping or for diagraming ERDs and systems. Or pretty much anything else. I just…tend to not trust paper. I lose it. I know the act of writing helps with memory, but I struggle with losing it and it not being searchable.

I try not to just collect links in my notes. Links without context are what link collections are for.