The Best Way To Organise Notes: Folders? Tags? Or...?
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- čas přidán 5. 09. 2024
- Do you organise your notes using Folders, or Tags? Is there a better option? There is a (surprise) winner!
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Best argument for tags I've ever seen!
Is it me or did he not show an example of a note with links?
While the theoretical benefits of links may be nice, they are extremely tedious to keep up in practice as your collection/system grows.
With folders, you set up the folder once and you add every new document for this category to that folder. With tags, you set up a tag (or a set of tags) once and you add the tag(s) to every new note relevant for this/these category/categories. For retrieval, you simply move to that folder or filter your notes for the tag(s). That will give you both the exact note you might be searching for and all kinds of related notes. Easy.
With links, you have to set up all the links to all the existing relevant documents in your system as 1:1 relationships. And you have to remember all those other relevant documents in the first place (plus, links won't help you to search/filter them out at that point). And then, as your system grows, you have to retroactively add all the links to the old related documents (your note management software might be able to help you with that, but then you are bound to that software).
I wouldn't rule out links completely, but I would only use them sporadically and never rely on them to give me a complete picture of all the relevant notes for a subject or category in my system.
Not to forget that neither links nor tags work with files on your computer. There is no solution to overcome this that is independent of the (technical) filesystem.
And one last word regarding search. The fundamental weakness of search is that you have to know rather precisely what you are looking for. You cannot just browse your collection or a subset of it for 'something', like you can with folders or tags.
Good video, but it leaves some questions. I prefer a hybrid model using folders where most beneficial and tags for all files and notes. The linking you suggested as the "higher way" works well with notes (Apple Notes, Craft Docs, etc.) but I don't see how this works with regular files on my Mac. This functionality doesn't appear to be built in. Do you think of some smart workarounds that are less obvious but work on a Mac file system? An app like Hookmark, e.g.? Please, consider making a video on this if you have a solution.
try "Obsidian" PKM-Tool
The channel name does not lie. The contents always made me think.
Thank you! 🤩
Your videos always make me think. I love exploring ideas that you present.
Thanks!
I'd love to hear your thoughts on the time it takes to create links between notes. It seems to me it would be a lot more burdensome initially, but I'd love to see it in action and be persuaded otherwise.
I use a mix of both tags and folders to organize Apple notes but in reality it’s the search function I rely on the most. I could probably dump everything into a single folder and I wouldn’t even notice. Apple Notes’ search functionality is so powerful that nothing else is really needed.
I like the idea for describin tags and action tags ... working somehow similar, but I like your structured way to do this.
Unfortunatelly Apple Notes does not (yet) allow to put smart folders into parent folders....
The great thing of all the options .. it is not a either-or thing .... you can combine and try to find the best off all approaches ;-)
Thanks! ☺️ You’re right, Apple notes sometimes has limitations that restrict what you can do, but each person should explore all options and come up with their own workflow.
pls, examples of linked notes.
Some interesting things to think about in the video but I don't agree with the whole business example. Reports and such shouldn't and usually dont live in Notes. Notes is great at what it's meant for which is taking notes. So a good hybrid scheme would be to copy a folder structure from a business project to Notes and storing the notes about the project in the corresponding folders while the actual business docs are stored somewhere else. Adding the suggested action tags like descriptors and action tags then really adds value.
So I’m a bit confused as to how the linking is done. I’m adding links to each file as a capture new files or resources? Doesn’t that become even more difficult and tedious? Or am I missing something with how the linking is done?
The problem with categorisation ( or linking) is not the effort you put in, but the return you get from it. It's the "business case" consideration that I was referring to in the video. Usually, if you feel it's a difficult or tedious process, it is probably because you are categorising without a clear goal in mind, resulting in high effort and low return.
In reality, there is no need to link every note, and there is no need to do it as you capture them. That need only arises if and when you have a specific goal in mind (or if you have one of those "ah, this reminds me of ...." moments).
Until then, you could even decide to place all notes you capture in a generic "everything" folder.
Could you use this linking system on Apple Notes?
I think the conceptual model of “Folders”, “Tags”, and “Links” is fine, maybe excellent. But, I believe it becomes irrelevant when a person has created more than a few hundred notes. That has been my experience. Over the last 10+ years, I have created 8,000-10,000 notes. Every time I created a new note, I thought the information was important enough that I would likely want to find and use it again sometime in the future. (Heck, that’s really the only reason to create a note!) But, I can tell you now, that I can’t remember what’s in the vast, vast majority of my notes. - - - Yet, at any time in the future, I may need some piece of information and I “think” I created a note a couple years ago with the information I need now. But, how am I going to find that note? I submit that it’s going to be tough to find it, whether I use the “Folders”, “Tags”, or “Links” organizational method. I’ll end up trying several test searches and may or may not find that note.
So, this begs the question: “How does a person remember things?” I believe it is because he/she has associated it with one or more of the 4 W’s: Who, What, When, and Where. If a person adds one or more of the 4W’s to each note at the time when he/she created it, it will materially increase the chance of finding a note sime tome in the distant future.
Here’s how it can be done:
* Who - The are people. Short names are better. Add “Who” as a tag to the note.
* What - This is the over-arching topic of the note. Put this in the title of the note. Fewer words is better. - - - Other topics or sub-topics can appear in the body of a note. These can all be found with the note app’s search function.
* When - Apple Notes automatically creates and controls values for the note Creation Date and Edited Date. To search by either date, a user can create a “Smart Folder” and have Apple Notes find those notes which meet the criteria. - - - In some cases, those two dates may not be sufficient. Then the key date of the event can be added to the start of the title (like 2024/06/30) or in the body of the note.
* Where - This can be any kind of location: Countries, states, counties, cities, buildings, streets, etc. - - - “When” is best implemented as a tag.
I completely agree. And as said in the video the search function is really good in Notes. Probably its strongest feature. You can write down a phone number from a person you met in Paris in 2024 regarding some DVDs and there you have your 4 Ws. Later you can search for any of these 4 and you will find the note without any tags or folders.
great points in this thread - just a few thoughts:
1) Niklas Luhmann (of Zettelkasten fame - see my video about that on this channel) had 90 thousand notes in his archive, collected over 50 years. He was still able to leverage it when writing books/articles. However, he accepted that some notes would completely disappear in the system, never to be seen again. I think this is a very important point, as I feel we often strive for perfection (i.e. a system that never forgets anything) when we would be much better served by a system that works well 80% of the times.
2) great point about search and how people find things. We should always try to summarise the content of a note (in particular, the ones we haven't written: eg, a research paper, a link to a webpage, a video interview, etc) in *our own* words, because those are the ones we'll use in a few years to find that piece of information. The "4 Ws" sounds like a good method, but of course each person will search in different ways.
@@Patrick-NP I have just made a shortcut that lets you select any file in Files and with that selection it automatically creates a new note including filename, file path and tags referencing the file name. Best of both worlds :)
@@thingsmymacdoes Would you care to share that shortcut? Sounds really interesting to me!
@@hansjc It won't let me. I'll make a short video about it.
First like or first comment? I got both! Great video as usual.
Legend! Thanks!
And you never gave a single example of how to link notes in a way to enable following from note to note to note. The concept seems to me to be unworkable without some idea of what/how i would want to link a note to another note. An example or two would go much further than 10 minutes of talking about it.