About note taking

I too have tried a great variety of tools/apps for notetaking and for now have settled on using markdown notes semi-organized in Joplin and an old-fashioned dead-tree notebook for a weekly planner...

The semi-organization I mentioned is vaguely /a la GTD/ but I don't follow it strictly.

I have an interest in org-mode but it seems like a huge commitment to learn it (really a huge commitment to learn emacs is what it really boils down to).

I'm not a computer guy and have no bloody idea how to take notes. Every solution seems more labyrinthine than the last.

Orgzly on mobile, and Org-Mode on desktop

At the moment the notes I keep on mobile are divorced from Desktop (no syncing), but this has the benefit that I write the important things twice (once for mobile and copied over into desktop), so I have a clearer mental image of what I need to do.

There is a PR on Orgzly at the moment that tries to enable git synching, so at some point, my mobile and desktop notebooks will meet each other, like two universe colliding, hopefully with little interference

I want to offer an alternate perspective: stop wasting time trying to make notes with links, charts, images and fancy stuff like that. Your Second Brain doesn't need any of that, it just needs the text to jog the memory. Your brain is better at a lot of things than your Second Brain will ever be.

Keep your notes in markdown format or with no markup at all. Organize them into proper folders. Put the top level folder in Dropbox or use Syncthing. The Dropbox mobile app has a built-in text editor. For Syncthing, you might need a plain text app on your device.

For quick notes like you mentioned, use a small legal pad style notebook. At the end of each day, type up all of the notes you took. Make sure those notes end up in the proper files / folders. Throw those pages away and start the next day with a fresh page.

If you want an even simpler system, some people get by with a single text file.

This system is neither inferior nor superior to a system like Notion, what matters is the habit of note taking. I do believe this system has lower friction / maintenance costs though. To me, Notion seems far more like a tool for curation/presentation than it does for friction-less note-taking.

Just my two cents :)

Personally I use a mess of post-its as random assorted notebooks and notepads when I don't want to be using any electronics.

If I want the experience of writing but in a format that is easier to share I use the I-Pad pro I bought for college a while ago.

When I'm on a computer I use Obsdian which is free (mostly) but is sadly not opensource. (Specifically I use Zettelkasten functionality that the application provides.

Entropy has mocked, chewed up, and spit out every note taking expedition I've been on.