3 basic rules for a successful note taking methodology
Ability for a tree-like organization of notes. It can be as simple as some directories in your OS with text files and subdirectories. Or a cool app with Notebooks and Sub-notebooks etc. It doesn't matter.
Ability to search everything at once. It can be a
grep
command or a an app with text search functionality. It doesn't matter again. Strive to have easily searchable titles and content in the notes (What "easily" means here, depends on your search preferences and habits).Ability to effortlessly synchronize your notes to different hosts. Maybe you'll put your simple directories and subdirectories of text files in Dropbox or something. Maybe you'll use a paid or open-source application with a mobile app or a web client etc.
Some more thoughts about the rules:
I put my thoughts and the reasons for writing this quick post, in the end, to not waste your time.
Only after some time I was able to deduct the whole note-taking thing to those 3 simple things, and be free from wasting my time trying to hyper organize things or searching for the best tool instead of doing what matters.
I tried many times to find the holy grail of organization. I tried to have all of my knowledge-base and notes as a big super organized entity and all the various parts connected in a meaningful way. Guess what? I failed the same amount of times.
You think you have found a new nice way of doing things, and most of the times it proves to be not scalable. Organization fails, and you start to have complex interconnections and many times overlapping islands of knowledge and content in your notes. And that's ugly and it rubs you off as a disorganized mess. Guess what again? It doesn't matter…
There is no holy grail of organization. The purpose is to organize your knowledge and your notes as much as you can and to find a simple methodology to allow them to serve you as tools when the time comes, and those simple rules have served and serve me well.
Your rules might be different and that's OK, extend them, adapt them or throw them away as it suits you. What matter the most is successfully doing your job.
Personally, I use Joplin for the last few years but again, it doesn't matter. You can use obsidian or simple text files or whatever else is out there.