Ask HN: Do You Take Notes?

1. Regularly 2. Digital 3. Never 4. Pretty much everything that comes into my head that I cannot immediately dispatch or resolve.

  1. Yes, a lot.
  2. Both
  3. Nope
  

Here is how I take and keep notes. It is always an ever-evolving process. https://brajeshwar.com/2025/notes/

I write down ideas in a Moleskine or lookalike notebook. When I review ideas, I see them in context.

Digital notes have one context: the universe. So, I use Apple Notes to record stuff I need anywhere and everywhere, such as to-do lists (not a separate app). AND a 3x5 index card I can dispose of, or not, because I don't want to be constantly fumbling with the phone, and index cards fall out of pockets.

I keep a fairly detailed record of activities in a journal, currently a "Daily Agenda" by Blue Sky, available at CVS, the least esoteric of items and sources.

I save online articles as PDF's and when they don't render, as links, and given how disastrously flakey air-drop is, usually as emails. I dropped Evernote when they fired the entire U.S. staff. The reason for saving stuff as PDF's is because internet search has gone to hell with AI and promoted garbage, and is often infuriatingly bad (hint, hint, it really sucks) and whatever is saved on my computer is curated BY ME. Often times, search results are 80% or more items for sale, not the information I seek.

I don't use AI. I think of AI as cat food. Some genius thought: "Cats like beef, turkey, fish, and lamb, so why don't we mix them all together so they'll be happy all the time?" Give me a few really good ideas, or photos, or musical pieces instead of an amalgamation of everything, chosen to be most likely.

If creativity consists largely of taking good ideas from one context and trying them in another, it's the opposite of a drag net trawling the information ocean for that cat food blend. And where's the quality control? "Russia's 'Pravda' Disinformation Network is Poisoning Western AI Models." [0]

[0] https://www.enterprisesecuritytech.com/post/russia-s-pravda-...