Discussion Forum > "Notes apps are where ideas go to die. And that’s good."
I’ll note: Our memory behaves like our notes. We can remember much stuff, but most of it is irrelevant ever-after and never recalled to mind.
February 28, 2022 at 17:35 |
Alan Baljeu
Alan Baljeu
Mike Brown:
<< Fewer than 2% of books from university research libraries are ever checked out (a stat I heard from my grad school days); I'd venture a guess that the same percentage holds true of our notes in notes apps and files on hard drives. >>
That would certainly be true of my notes in Evernote - and it's quite intentional.
For instance I scan into Evernote all my purchase vouchers. It doesn't take very long to do, but over the years I have accumulated a lot of them. Most of them I know perfectly well will never get looked at again. BUT each now and then I am asked for "proof of purchase". And if I don't retain all of them, the one I need will have been shredded ages ago.
Similarly every purchase one makes through Amazon is recorded on their site. Once again I am never going to look at most of them, but each now and then I want to re-order something I can't remember the name of, or I want to recommend a product to a friend. The list of my orders is easily searchable so it takes no time to find the answer. But that wouldn't be the case if they weren't all there.
And sometimes I just go for a random wander through Evernote, which invariably sets off some new trains of thought. That process wouldn't work if I keep only relevant up-to-date notes on Evernote.
This reminds me a bit of something I've written about before. People often complain that we don't have any great novelists anymore and that the vast majority of books are complete rubbish. But that has always been the case. If you look back at the books being published at the same time as, say, Dickens was writing, most of them have deservedly been completely forgotten.
Who remembers today the following? All published around 1865, the year of "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland", when Dickens, Dostoevsky and Mark Twain were at their height.
"Nathalie" by Julia Kavanagh. Miss Kavanagh's best imaginative effort. Its manner is gracious and attractive. A sentiment, a tenderness, are commanded by her which are as individual as they are elegant.
"Lost and Saved" by Hon. Mrs. Norton. Will be read with eager interest. It is a vigorous novel. Mrs. Norton's best prose work.
"Annals of an Eventful Life" by George Webb Dasent, D.C.L. A racy, well-written, and original novel. The interest never flags.
Good ideas, like good literature, rise from a seed-bed of bad or forgotten ideas.
<< Fewer than 2% of books from university research libraries are ever checked out (a stat I heard from my grad school days); I'd venture a guess that the same percentage holds true of our notes in notes apps and files on hard drives. >>
That would certainly be true of my notes in Evernote - and it's quite intentional.
For instance I scan into Evernote all my purchase vouchers. It doesn't take very long to do, but over the years I have accumulated a lot of them. Most of them I know perfectly well will never get looked at again. BUT each now and then I am asked for "proof of purchase". And if I don't retain all of them, the one I need will have been shredded ages ago.
Similarly every purchase one makes through Amazon is recorded on their site. Once again I am never going to look at most of them, but each now and then I want to re-order something I can't remember the name of, or I want to recommend a product to a friend. The list of my orders is easily searchable so it takes no time to find the answer. But that wouldn't be the case if they weren't all there.
And sometimes I just go for a random wander through Evernote, which invariably sets off some new trains of thought. That process wouldn't work if I keep only relevant up-to-date notes on Evernote.
This reminds me a bit of something I've written about before. People often complain that we don't have any great novelists anymore and that the vast majority of books are complete rubbish. But that has always been the case. If you look back at the books being published at the same time as, say, Dickens was writing, most of them have deservedly been completely forgotten.
Who remembers today the following? All published around 1865, the year of "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland", when Dickens, Dostoevsky and Mark Twain were at their height.
"Nathalie" by Julia Kavanagh. Miss Kavanagh's best imaginative effort. Its manner is gracious and attractive. A sentiment, a tenderness, are commanded by her which are as individual as they are elegant.
"Lost and Saved" by Hon. Mrs. Norton. Will be read with eager interest. It is a vigorous novel. Mrs. Norton's best prose work.
"Annals of an Eventful Life" by George Webb Dasent, D.C.L. A racy, well-written, and original novel. The interest never flags.
Good ideas, like good literature, rise from a seed-bed of bad or forgotten ideas.
March 1, 2022 at 8:25 |
Mark Forster
Mark Forster
That’s exactly how I think of such. If asked what my favorite music is, my first answer is classic music of every genre. Modern pop isn’t inferior to 60s rock. We’ve simply forgotten all the bad 60s rock, and haven’t had a chance yet to forget all the bad modern pop. Ditto classical music. In 1760 a huge amount of truly mind-numbing works were created for the instrumentalists. We simply can’t find them today as they’ve all been discarded.
March 1, 2022 at 14:22 |
Alan Baljeu
Alan Baljeu
Notes apps are where ideas go to die. And that’s good.
http://reproof.app/blog/notes-apps-help-us-forget
The somewhat rambling post is in synch with one or two recent zettlekasten/Roam/Obsidian posts I've run across, where the writers are coming up against the same old organizational problems: where to put stuff, how to find a note when they need it, limitations of bi-directional linking, notes divorced from context, etc.
In the post, the writer observes something I've noticed in my own use of Amazon wishlists, Pinboard bookmarks, read-later apps, and Evernote notes: once a thought, note, or page is saved somewhere, I feel secure knowing they're stored and so can forget about them. But then I also forget they're there and never go back to them again. So we wind up with tons of old, stale notes that we feel comfortable having but never use.
The writer concludes that that's as it should be. We get the pleasure of capturing the note or thought, stuff it in an app or notebook thinking we've done something of value, and then get on with things.
I was reminded, of course, of dismissing tasks that are stale or no longer relevant. Notes age too but there is no algorithm for reviewing or actioning notes. [1]
I have stuck with Evernote, and find that the checklists I store there for work and personal use are the most frequently referenced. I start a new diary note every morning and basically capture everything that happens to me in a bulleted list; I trust Evernote's search to help me find something *if I ever need it*.
Fewer than 2% of books from university research libraries are ever checked out (a stat I heard from my grad school days); I'd venture a guess that the same percentage holds true of our notes in notes apps and files on hard drives.
[1] When i have time, I use an Evernote query to find all notes written on a day in a specific year, likeso:
created:20210227 -created:20210228
created:20200227 -created:20200228
created:20190227 -created:20190228
the queries offer a way to sort of randomly walk through my corpus of notes, delete old or outdated notes, update notes, etc. It's a little clunky but has its uses.