Re:Why Evernote failed to realize its potential
by mikestew on Tuesday April 02, 2019 @01:09PM
(#19556363)
After over 30 years of Franklin Planners, Apple Newtons, GTD, Sharp Wizards, Ecco (how I miss you), Field Notes, and a laundry list of others I have forgotten, I believe I have found the Holy Grail: a combination. Leuchtturm 1917 notebook for the bullet journal, Bear Notes on the Apple devices, vimwiki for heavy lifting on "real computers".
Most of my time is spent in the paper journal for day-to-day. I use the Bear Notes complication on the Apple Watch to take a quick transcribed note that will probably end up in the paper journal. I also use Bear for shopping lists and checklists that I keep on the phone. And then for project notes, lab notes, anything worthy of an outline, or anything I don't want to hand-write or fiddle with on a phone, I use vimwiki. (I'd use Bear, but I have a Windows desktop at work, and Bear is Apple-only.)
To put it another way, there are three tiers:
1. Hand-written, used most frequently day-to-day.
2. Digital Lite: Bear for quick notes, or reference when not at a desk. Don't particularly care about long-term persistence of these. If persisted, often goes in #1 ('do taxes next week').
3. Digital Industrial Strength: Long-term storage, and long form documents.
Trying to squeeze it all into one do-it-all tool became a fool's errand, IMO. Sometimes I need to just hammer a nail, sometimes I need to split wood; one hammer won't do both.
Most of my time is spent in the paper journal for day-to-day. I use the Bear Notes complication on the Apple Watch to take a quick transcribed note that will probably end up in the paper journal. I also use Bear for shopping lists and checklists that I keep on the phone. And then for project notes, lab notes, anything worthy of an outline, or anything I don't want to hand-write or fiddle with on a phone, I use vimwiki. (I'd use Bear, but I have a Windows desktop at work, and Bear is Apple-only.)
To put it another way, there are three tiers: 1. Hand-written, used most frequently day-to-day.
2. Digital Lite: Bear for quick notes, or reference when not at a desk. Don't particularly care about long-term persistence of these. If persisted, often goes in #1 ('do taxes next week').
3. Digital Industrial Strength: Long-term storage, and long form documents.
Trying to squeeze it all into one do-it-all tool became a fool's errand, IMO. Sometimes I need to just hammer a nail, sometimes I need to split wood; one hammer won't do both.