Notes are personal, informal, quick and dirty. They are not for public consumption, but for your own personal use, like a leather notebook you keep in your backpack.
Notes are open-ended and never finished. “Taking notes” is a continuous process, in which you can noodle on ideas without an immediate purpose in mind.
Notes have low standards for quality and polish. They are easy to jot down, because it’s fine if they are messy, incomplete, or totally random.
Notes naturally mix diverse types of media. Just like a paper notebook might contain drawings and sketches, quotes and ideas, and even a pasted photo or post-it note, notes naturally combine different kinds of media in one place.
How to use notes apps as a “universal inbox”
it can function as a “universal inbox” for capturing any kind of information coming your way. By paying close attention to a “home base” that you know you can always depend on, you’re free to strike out towards the frontier of knowledge, and experiment with the most cutting-edge new apps.
The most common pitfalls in adopting notes and productivity apps
Switching frequently between apps
My recommendation is to instead pick one notes app, and invest in it for the long term.
Focusing too much on the long term
As important as it is to preserve your notes over the long term, this can also become a pitfall. I’ve seen people spend so much energy creating multiple, totally secure backups, or using file types that will never change, that there’s no energy left over for creating! Remember that all this work is designed to make it easier to produce meaningful results. Don’t make a hobby out of engineering a system so resilient that it can survive a nuclear war!
My recommendation is instead to balance short and long-term perspectives, prioritizing doing good work in the medium term of the next few years.
Waiting until you have the whole system perfectly figured out to get started
This is perhaps the most common one, and the most problematic, especially among perfectionists. It’s understandable to feel anxiety and fear when embarking on such an important undertaking. It’s so tempting to try and have all the details perfectly worked out before you take the first step.
But ultimately, you can’t know exactly what will work upfront. An approach that works for someone else may not necessarily work for you. Even this one. The only way to build a second brain is to start small, and make incremental improvements over time. Trust yourself that you will learn and grow right alongside it.