I’m a big believer in the importance of taking notes. It’s been a critical part of my career.
That said, there are some people that go crazy about taking notes. They have special apps, they watch Youtube videos, they pay $15/month for sophisticated notes apps. They take expensive courses. They spend time “curating” their notes.
For me, notes are useful for learning new things. That’s sort of important when you’re paid to do research. I have to track research ideas. I have various bits of knowledge that needs recording.
What I don’t understand is spending hours organizing notes and writing about your notetaking philosophy and learning new apps. I mean, you’re just writing stuff down. There’s not much more to it. What matters is what you’re writing down and if you can find what you need when you need it. Maybe there’s something magical about those systems. I don’t know. I have no trouble with my simple notetaking approach.
Here’s a Reddit discussion where a lot of other people make the same point.