Ok basically what the title ask. There are so many note taking apps available and also the good old notepad, but, how do you take notes? What do you actually take-keep notes on? Is it like complicated things or simple ones?
All time times that I started using an app or a pen and paper intended up just using a simple reminder for things. Others I just remember.
More important. Than taking notes is what are you gonna do with them. This conditions how, where, and with what you take notes.
If you’re never gonna look at them again and just generally use it to think, brainstorm, or remember things better. Then it doesn’t matter where, just use whatever is immediately available to you.
If it needs to be later referenced, shared, archived or processed into finished products for personal projects or work, there are several options. Note taking apps, text editing software, plugins for different editors. Each will do things different and will link differently to different work pipelines.
My current pipeline is notes either on the phone or on a notepad. Then I clean and process said notes on OneNote (don’t judge, work pays for it and it is the only one available). Where they are more structured, tagged, detailed, hyperlinked or whatever else it takes. That’s where I also take notes for meetings or training and study sessions.
Finally, I use those notes for writing reports, minutes, and presentations. Which are then sent to the actual institutional archive.
Me and all my colleagues erase old notes once they’re no longer relevant for data protection, so we don’t use the archive features of ONote. But the encrypted sharing and sync is very useful for collaboration and to save your work in case of hardware failure.
On my personal life I have permanent places of data storage, and take notes with whatever I happen to have at hand. Samsung notes, paper, notepads, whatever. Data always end up either being deleted or sent to a more permanent place. Just like with cameras, the best tool is the one you have at hand when you need it.