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Tyler Termini

What do you use to take down quick notes?

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This is a rather open-ended question. Fair answers include: apple notes, a small steno pad, Evernote, Obsidian, voice memos...you get the idea. This can be any type of note, but I'm more-so interested in where do you record your "shower thoughts"—those quick thoughts you have that you just HAVE to record and that seem to strike you from the blue. I'm curious, because despite all the fancy apps out there capable of note-taking (I'm a diehard Notion user), I still pretty much only use two things for jotting down quick ideas: the native iOS Notes app and a physical steno pad. Why? The iOS notes app is always with me, I can access them on my MacBook, it has quick and simple rich-text abilities (nothing crazy), and I can dictate into them if needed. It's just a workhorse, even though I wish that it had the interface of Notion. And when I'm taking a break from the screen or I just need to take a note FAST, I use the steno pad, because guess what: even for a hotkeys-everything vim-using keyboard warrior like me, picking up a pen and scratching a note, drawing, or diagram down is still irreplaceable. Plus it makes for intuitive reviewing, since I automatically read all the previous stuff on the page I'm scratching notes down several times a day. What do you use for quick note-taking when ideas strike?

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Joanna Kurylo
Okay so ideally, it would be notion, because I try putting everything there! But I find it's hard to just open up notion and figure out what workspace and what team space and what account. I wish I can just save a "quick note" to my notion where I can later figure out where I want to put it exactly. So I end up just using Apple's notes.
Tyler Termini
@joannakurylo Yeah this is actually my core problem not only with the note-taking process, but with pretty much anything that happens on a screen for me...especially when it comes to output (vs input). "Where do I put this?" Then you get distracted trying to make sure it's going to the right place, and then you realize things could be structured better so you re-structure everything, etc... All our digital experiences are (naturally) oriented towards making data organization much more intuitive. That is what computers are best at, after all. But all of a sudden anyone who uses computers very frequently basically also becomes somewhat of a librarian. Perhaps that's a good extension to the layman's skillset? There's a note-taking app out there (I'm totally blanking on the name) that uses AI to smart-categorize your notes so that you can just drop a note in and 90% of the time, it's shuffled away in the right area. If anyone knows this app...please let me know!
Rich Watson
standard memo app on my phone. or if it's related to our app then I just put ideas and notes in a discord channel
Qudsia Ali
I write them down in the notebook or note-taking app on my cell phone.
Cora Sullivan
I use Google docs for short notes. Want to become more financially aware?? Money Accounts helps a range of financial news, reviews, guides, and tools.