(2018-06-04) King Welcome To The Note Taking Apocalypse

Tim King: Welcome to the Note Taking Apocalypse. I’m an organiser. I like to keep the words I write collected in specially labelled drawers, for the time that I need to quickly find a specific piece of text I wrote months ago without having to hunt through multiple folders (or god forbid hard drives).

I’m also a believer in keeping research and writing a little separated so I don’t end up writing more backstory than actual story. Personally I use a self-hosted wiki (Dokuwiki) for my research and exploratory writing, and use Ulysses as my premier writing application when I’m getting down prose.

The hardest part for anyone remotely interested in a solution among this immense array of software is that each and every note taking app developer to date has decided to reinvent the wheel every time they’ve turned on their compiler. It gets even worse once you open the door on purpose-specific note taking applications.

When it’s all boiled down there are a few things a note taking app needs to absolutely nail, but tack-on features don’t make the cut.

Frictionless and gets out of the way

Things like copy and paste that gives the user choice to preserve or ignore formatting is a tiny little issue that can save a user an absolute ton of rework when moving from an older platform. Similarly not preserving copied links causes much the same kind of headache. Other things like poor image and file support, clunky search and lack of speed all cause friction.

Customisable, flexible organisation

Often the reasons why people dislike a piece of note taking software is because they feel they are being bent into a shape they’re not used to and forced to use the paradigms present in the particular piece of software rather than a more preferred method. This is where the flexible organisation is a must. It should work for the user in a way that helps them succeed, not break them by demanding they conform to the developers preference.

The right to chose a better theme

Making that space ‘operating system default white’ may seem like a good idea at first, but like staring into the sun it quickly hurts.

It needs wiki-like superpowers

If there is one feature that excels above all others in information software of the past two decades that deserves its place in the note taking pantheon, its the humble double bracketed internal link (WikiWord).

Sadly, this is the one major feature that is always neglected, or is piecemeal at best… and one time note taking king Evernote is to blame.