I honestly don't have it all figured out, but I've done a few iterations on my system and I'm in a much better place with it than I have ever been.

I am currently using a system that uses all 3x5 notecards that I keep in a little notecard box, and separate with tab-separators. I've based the organization system on the zettlekasten system, which you can read about here: https://www.amazon.com/How-Take-Smart-Notes-Nonfiction-ebook/dp/B06WVYW33Y

I have a couple of different sections of notes so far. Monsters, Factions, NPCs, Treasure, Locations, and Next Session. As I'm doing prep, I just grab a stack of notecards and put every new concept on a new card. Events, Ideas, Little notes, procedures, anything goes into the 'next session' thing. I clarify thoughts on the cards and file them together into bundles that represent the locations, events or beats of the next session depending on what I'm running.

I can also pull cards out of my archive as necessary (monsters, NPCs locations, etc)

One thing I do a LOT that helps is to TRY to make concepts fit onto one side of a single card. Sometimes I'll overwrite a card, and have to re-write it to make it fit. Jettison ideas and clarify stuff. Cards get re-written a lot. If you find yourself re-writing a lot, that's a good thing.

There are a lot of benefits to using index cards. It keeps each concept concise. It lets you use each as a card. You can randomly select or deal cards out for wandering monsters. You can hand treasure cards to the players to keep in their inventory. You can let players take an NPC card and run the NPC if they hire them as a hireling. You can lay out a bunch of cards in front of you as an ad-hoc control panel... the list goes on and on.

Check out this book: https://www.amazon.com/How-Take-Smart-Notes-Nonfiction-ebook/dp/B06WVYW33Y

It helped me organize better than OneNote or Notion (or anything else I've tried all of them). The approach I take now is create a note first and then link it later. This way I never have to create categories ahead of time (or notebooks in OneNote)

Amazing indeed. After some research I discovered the book How to Make Smart Notes that explain very well the Zettelkaszen method. The book is very oriented for university studies but a lots of ideas can apply to anybody and Bear seems to be the best tool for it.

You're very welcome!

Also, I highly recommend investing some of your time into reading (and taking notes on!) How to Take Smart Notes by Sönke Ahrens. I say "invest" because it will take some time. For better and for worse, he doesn't just tell you what to do. It took me a long time to figure out how the hell I'm supposed to being taking notes on the book that's meant to be teaching exactly that. It felt a bit like a chicken-and-egg problem. But if you press on and do your best to incorporate what you learn from the book into the notes you take on the book while reading the book (what a sentence this is!), then you'll get from "What the hell am I doing!?" to "I actually understand this well enough to see why the default recommendations are what they are, and well enough to know when and why I should alter those recommendations for myself" much faster in the long run.

In a nutshell, he doesn't just tell you what to do and hope you make the connections needed to do a good job of implementing the instructions. He wrote the book to make you actually understand the Zettelkasten method. It takes more time upfront as a result, and you'll be frustrated at first about how much it slows down your reading while you're figuring it out, but holy cow it's worth it.

Thanks!

I have a digital Zettelkasten, but to my surprise, I think I might switch to a hybrid system. Taking impermanent literature notes while reading is just too easy with a keyboard, so I end up taking too many notes. It's sort of like how if you highlight too many lines, the highlighting becomes unhelpful because you can't tell what's important anymore. By taking the literature notes by hand, I expect to be considerably more selective with what notes to take and more efficient in how I write them. Then, while I can still make sense of those quick notes, I'll them into permanent notes on my computer.

On the computer, I've settled into using Obsidian, but Zettlr and Notion are good options too. Really, as long as a text editor supports bidirectional links and/or backlinks, it should work particular well. You've got options. But of course, you don't actually need those features. They're just really nice to have.

In any case, I highly recommend the book How to Take Smart Notes by Sönke Ahrens if you want more information on how to start your zettelkasten. But really, just get started. Just accept that you're first several notes will be formatted inconsistently as you figure out how to do it. And the /r/Zettelkasten community is very welcoming and helpful too!

Getting a zettelkasten started is definitely an investment. It took me a month just to wrap my head around how to do it because it was so different from every other workflow I knew, and then another couple months of faithfully adding notes before chains of thoughts started to emerge within the zettelkasten itself. But yeah, I really wish somebody had told me about this methodology when I started ~~my thesis~~ ~~grad school~~ ~~undergrad~~ high school, or maybe even earlier.

Anyway, my zettelkasten isn't the only aprt of my workflow that I'd consider game-changing. If you aren't using Zotero or some other reference manager, then give one a try. Also, XMind and other mindmappers might provide more helpful ways of organizing things like your paper's structure and tracking your usage of different types of sources.

I'd also suggest taking stock of what your weaknesses are and spending a limited amount of time trying out different tools that can help. For example, if you know that you thrive when you have a routine, then you could use something like Strategr to plan your typical weekday and then keep it open on the side of your screen. As another example, if you get demotivated and beat yourself up for not working enough, then you could get a wall calendar and stamp each day that you work for at least ten seconds (because every step is a victory) to have an incentive to not break the chain) that also serves as a visible testament to your effort. Get stuck fixating on tasks that aren't actually important? Mindful Mynah. Bad managing your breaks throughout the day? Pomotroid. Eye strain because you're looking at dense blocks of some soul-killing font like Times New Roman? Treat yourself to a better text editor like Scrivener and a better typeface like my personal favorite Sina (the regular non-italic weight is free, and you can buy other weights as needed… or you can find a typeface within your budget that brings you joy). But yeah, instead of procrastinating by endlessly searching for every tool and life improvement for every problem that anyone has ever had, actually take the time to make a list of your specific workflow impediments.

Last of all, don't just backup your work every once in a while. Make sure your entire workflow lends itself to keeping everything backed up. And make sure your backup regimen is actually good. I mean seriously, take a minute to imagine how absolutely awful it'd be to lose your work because you assumed you were backing up your data adequately instead of actually taking the time to look up what makes for a bulletproof backup system.

That's all I can think of right now. I've veered out from zettelkasten to my broader workflow, but hopefully this has been helpful. If you have more specific questions, then I'll try to provide more specific answers. :)

Read "how to take smart notes" https://www.amazon.co.uk/How-Take-Smart-Notes-Nonfiction-ebook/dp/B06WVYW33Y

I use obsidian using zettelkasten system.

> Could you maybe explain a little bit more what the benefits you get by maintaining these notes in a Zettelkasten, compared to some generic notes-in-folders approach?

1. Bottom-up organization

With normal folder-based systems, you need to start by making the hierarchy. That'll be fine at first, but there's a good chance that you'll start to accrue notes that don't fit the hierarchy. You can accept the increasing unsuitability of the hierarchy for a while, but you'll eventually need to reorganize everything into a different folder hierarchy.

With Zettelkastens, the order automatically emerges from the connections between notes. Some nodes will have lots of connections and will naturally become hubs. It's really cool to watch this process happen over time if you have a program that shows you the web-like graph of your files.

2. No silos

With normal folder-based systems, the folders immediately create hard separations between files. So if you're working in one folder, you won't have a chance to see files in other folders that would've sparked an idea. You won't discover connections within your system, in other words. You'll only make connections between things in your head, and even then you'll only do that if something triggers the memory.

On top of this huge shortcoming, you'll find yourself in situations where a something would be useful to have in more than one folder. Each time this happens, your choices aren't great. You can make a duplicate (and put up with maintaining two or more separate files), make a "see other note" note (and put up with the exponentially increasing number of clicks it takes to do basic things in your workflow), soft link your files (and keep your fingers crossed that this won't come back to bite you when you need to restore backups, transfer your notes to a different filesystem, or unwittingly break the link by changing the pointer), or hard link your files (put up with the "alias effect," and really hope it doesn't come back to bite you when it comes to transferring files).

With Zettelkastens, notes simply connect to each other as needed. With increasing frequency as the Zettelkasten grows, you'll stumble across connections you otherwise wouldn't have made, which is why Niklas Luhmann called the system a "conversation partner."

And because you'll never have an issue of deciding where to put files, you'll never have to "pick your poison" with duplicates, "see other note" notes, soft links, or hard links.

3. Increasingly wieldy and useful as it grows

With normal folder-based systems, growth becomes a problem. Eventually there are just too many files in a folder. So what do you do? You divide them into subfolders, which exacerbates all the aforementioned problems. Over time, the instability compounds because the subfolders will eventually need their own subfolders, which will eventually need their own subfolders, and so on. Each time you do that division, you decide whether to keep putting up with the increasingly labyrinthine collection of notes or try to reorganize everything into a more efficient hierarchy (which will only kick the can down the road).

With Zettelkastens, the opposite happens. Because of the way the notes connect to each other as needed, and because connections are what make the whole thing navigable in a sensible way, it automatically and exponentially becomes more organized and insightful as you add notes.

If you want to learn more about how to Zettelkasten, then I highly recommend you go directly to How to Take Smart Notes by Sönke Ahrens.

Congratulations! That's awesome!

You asked for how you can prepare, so I'll share something with you that I wish somebody had told me about: Zettelkasten. Here's a comment I wrote for somebody else, just to spare myself from reinventing the wheel here (which is in keeping with the Zettelkasten spirit, come to think of it):

> I've been struggling to complete my thesis for a long time. About a month ago, I learned about the Zettelkasten method and wish somebody would've told me about it sooner. So, now I'm telling you about it. It's weird and took me a long time to wrap my head around it, but it directly addresses a lot of the problems I was having.

> If you check it out and have the kind of "holy shit this sounds like exactly what I need" reaction I did, then PM me and I'll try to give you a boost up to my level of understanding of how to actually do it. (I've invested the last month meticulously studying the methodology because it was so alien to any other workflow I'd ever seen. I still have more to learn, but at least I can offer some simplified "just do this, then this, then this" instructions so you can get started before you properly figure it out, share my notes from a book about the Zettelkasten method, tell you about some of the software I've used, etc.)

If you learn the Zettelkasten method and start making your own before you go, then I imagine you'll be a very happy camper indeed.

Good luck to you!

Cited book (by Sönke Ahrens) has been recommended by the official RoamResearch twitter account in the past :-)

https://www.amazon.com/How-Take-Smart-Notes-Nonfiction-ebook/dp/B06WVYW33Y

https://twitter.com/RoamResearch/status/1285014747935432704?s=20

How to Take Smart Notes

I wish I'd read this 10 or 15 years ago. Leaving aside the Zettelkasten method (which so far I've found to be very effective, but I understand that not everyone will necessarily want to implement it in full), I didn't appreciate at all how important it was to write things down. And to do so in full, coherent, sentences, as though written for another person to read:

> Focusing on writing as if nothing else counts does not necessarily mean you should do everything else less well, but it certainly makes you do everything else differently. Having a clear, tangible purpose when you attend a lecture, discussion or seminar will make you more engaged and sharpen your focus. You will not waste your time with the attempt to figure out what you “should” learn. Rather, you will try to learn as efficiently as possible so you can quickly get to the point where actual open questions arise, as these are the only questions worth writing about. You quickly learn to distinguish good-sounding arguments from actual good ones, as you will have to think them through whenever you try to write them down and connect them with your previous knowledge. It will change the way you read as well: You will become more focused on the most relevant aspects, knowing that you cannot write down everything. You will read in a more engaged way, because you cannot rephrase anything in your own words if you don’t understand what it is about. By doing this, you will elaborate on the meaning, which will make it much more likely that you will remember it. You also have to think beyond the things you read, because you need to turn it into something new. And by doing everything with the clear purpose of writing about it, you will do what you do deliberately. Deliberate practice is the only serious way of becoming better at what we are doing (cf. Anders Ericsson, 2008). If you change your mind about the importance of writing, you will also change your mind about everything else. Even if you decide never to write a single line of a manuscript, you will improve your reading, thinking and other intellectual skills just by doing everything as if nothing counts other than writing.

This book is an interesting argument for the Zettlekasten system, which Roam and some other apps implement. I think it's likely overkill for the level of research that legal practitioners do, and almost certainly overkill for law students who are tasked with learning an isolated body of law (i.e. whatever the professor covers) and don't need to synthesize or develop novel links as much.

It would help to know more about your current approach, what you find is lacking, etc. If you're "trying to get more out of" your reading, then your problem might not be note-taking as much as it is reading itself, and in that case you should read about reading instead.

What I used to use

In undergrad, I didn't really take notes in psychology. I just paid attention.

During graduate studies, I also didn't take a lot of notes. I started to take some with OneNote (which I have used for personal notes and other things for a long time). I wasn't not taking notes in classes, more like, writing out career plans or taking notes in workshops where there were activities (e.g. coming up with an "elevator pitch" for my research).
My framework has always been to absorb knowledge as a process, then update my thinking to be whatever the newest version is, forgetting the old.

After a while, it became clear that I needed to cite more papers so I needed to know where I got information. I started writing notes on the PDFs of journal articles themselves. This was more a place for me to write my ideas about the article, not a summary of the article. I tried writing an annotated bibliography with article-summaries in a Word document for a while, but it felt like it was taking up too much time.
I use Zotero for reference management. If annotating PDFs is appealing to you and you use Zotero, get the "Zotfile" add-on as you can import PDFs and export notes from those PDFs. I didn't, so now I have a bunch of PDFs and there's no simple way to export the notes into any other format; they're just comments on the PDF.

What I use now

Now I use Obsidian. This is what I recommend since it gets better the more you use it. It feels much more robust for longer-term note-taking that actually results in retention of ideas and (more importantly) creation of new ideas. Plus, you can use if for studies, but it can also be used for any kind of notes, like if you read a book or listen to a podcast or read a blog/magazine.
A buddy of mine wrote about Obsidian here. That same buddy recommended this book about note-taking. "Roam Research" is a similar product (though it is for-pay; more features, though); there are plenty of YouTube videos about note-taking in Obsidian or Roam Research that go into practical details of how to take good notes and into the broader philosophy of note-taking so that it can become a useful life-long skill.

I think the question you should be asking yourself is "What is the purpose of taking notes?"
Are you trying to remember stuff? That's something, but it's also of limited utility. Perhaps a better purpose for taking notes is to generate new ideas from the content you consume. If you remember everything, what is that worth if you cannot make connections and turn it into new ideas? Especially in academia, where the currency is publications and grants, you need to be able to write new things, not just remember something.
Food for thought!

You mean to the book? Here it is on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B06WVYW33Y/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_awdb_t1_0Bv8FbPYKC3GW

I use a combination of Roam, Evernote, and Signal/WA for planning, information collection and organization, and knowledge production.

Information collection happens more often than not on Evernote first. Link dumps especially.

I also have added my own number in Whatsapp and Signal, so I can text myself ideas, pics, videos and links, which I then check and possibly incorporate somewhere in Roam later. Roam on mobile is so slow and unusable that I don't bother with it. But it's fine because I like to use my phone as little as possible.

With my company we use Clickup for project management, so my work tasks are there, but I also write them down in Roam.

Every morning I start with preparing my Daily Notes page where I have three separate bullet points: Productivity, Leisure, and #notes. First two are to-do lists. I have a GTD-style backlog page from which I drag tasks into the Daily Notes page, as well as drag over whatever I didn't manage to do yesterday, if needed.

Depending on the type of work I have to do during the day, sometimes I'm hands on assembling stuff (have a hardware tech company) the whole day without looking at Roam, sometimes I'm working on my laptop the whole day, designing, comms and literature research, in which case I rely on Roam a lot more.

I've been using Roam since late August and am still nowhere near to unlocking the full power of Roam or getting the perfect workflow running with it.

What I'm learning about now is the Zettelkasten method for information gathering and idea generation. Highly advise the book "How to take smart notes: ..." by Sönke Ahrens that does a really good job at practically explaining the Zettelkasten/slip-box method, and is very concise, no fluff. I'm still trying to figure out how to incorporate it best in Roam that works for me.

Another Roam-related Zettelkasten writeup.

I don't have any getting started guides, I think the best way to start using Roam is to... wait for it... start using Roam. It's your own exobrain you're building, not mine or someone else's, so your system of organizing thought is going to be unique to yourself, otherwise it's not going to work for you. I think what's more important than a guide in Roam, is the ability to make using Roam a part of your daily habit. Especially initially when everything is still poorly defined and the structure/flow frequently changes. It might take a while until you settle on certain formats, and it's important to keep at it and not get discouraged. The same as learning any other new skill.

The power of keystone habits with Roam Research - nice article by Cortex Futura on chaining habits, where you hook a new habit you want to develop on an existing habit you've already developed by leveraging the delta feature in Roam. A wider implementation of this concept to every day life was written by James Clear in "Atomic habits".

You can also check out Tiago Forte's YT channel with the series "Tiago learns Roam".

For all keyboard shortcuts and tips, check out this site.

Hope this helps. You really just have to keep using it and developing your exobrain. Also follow Roam, Connor (CEO) and #roamcult on Twitter, there's a lot of interesting stuff being discussed and useful videos, demos, links and articles being shared frequently. You can learn a lot from those as well. Good luck.

If it is business professional, then you are probably going to need a suit and tie. You can start with something cheap and work your way up to nicer clothes. Also, if you can find someone at work who you think won't be a jerk, ask for pointers as to where they got their suit/shirt/shoes and how to get a good fit.

If you think you are different from others when it comes to goals, read back through this group. Every week or so, someone asks for help figuring out what to do with their life. I think it is especially common for people to live minute to minute without many goals when they don't have a lot of hope and when their lives are tough (and let's be honest, it is hard to be poor). Goals assume that you have a future, but lots of people are struggling to make it to tomorrow. I'd suggest picking realistic goals that can help you now, like maybe reading a book or watching a video on something related to your business. Then, expand to something bigger, like getting your GED (I think you said you dropped out of school), or taking a class at a community college, or meeting a goal at work. When you start feeling better about yourself, start making goals for you. On the flip side, there is nothing wrong with being in the present moment and not thinking much about the future. I had goals. I achieved them, and honestly, now I just do my thing. My life isn't fancy, but I have what I need. I still have a lot of things I work on, but I can't tell you what I plan on doing in five years. So, you don't have to push yourself to have giant goals if that isn't who you are. Just remember that sometimes you need to be able to answer the question "what do you see yourself doing in five years?" at a job interview.

It sucks that you haven't been able to feel proud of yourself, because it sounds like you've actually done well. I hope you are able to eventually find something in yourself that you can be happy about.

Oh, and one more thing: if you didn't spend a lot of time in school, you might be missing out on some skills that other people take for granted. I've seen this book recommended a number of times, and it might be helpful for you. If you don't know how to take good notes, you could miss out on important things. https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B06WVYW33Y/

Chair, Supervisors, colleagues, they don't know about that. Their writing is a trial-and-error process based on their experience from reading papers. In fact, I'd argue that their writing is no different that Ika Antkare's work. The true difference is just that their writing has a tangible idea (not necessarily concrete, but tangible, acceptable, maybe a bit of salt on the state of the art).

In reality, they do not have a functional framework as to how to write. Their writing is just an amalgam of mimicking papers they have written before.

Ideas aren't the biggest hurdle. The biggest hurdle is how to write well quickly. We just develop our own framework for that.

I am in Engineering, but I believe that the Zettelkasten - which comes from humanities, particularly Luhmann's sociology - is a good part of a writing workflow. Phrasebanks are another aid to actually express ideas properly using the right words.

Read How to Take Smart Notes by Sönke Ahrens. Very approachable, very instructive.

That's unfortunate to hear! I have struggled with anxiety and depression as a result of my ADHD too. It's such a weight to carry, isn't it? :/

What I'd recommend to you, then, is learning about metacognition. Metacognition is thinking about thinking. It involves the awareness, planning, evaluation, and monitoring of one's own thinking processing and performance. Metacognitive strategies help you keep track of your own mental chaos. I only found about it a few months ago and it's been life-changing for me.

Learning more about resources that externalize the information you're holding in your brain can also be a good idea. Things like concept mapping, argument construction checklists, the second brain, and the zettelkasten method. I struggle a lot with the same things you mentioned, and externalization strategies (thinking on paper, before writing) are the things that help me the most. It can be time-consuming, but it helps to manage the frustration that comes with too many thoughts too fast to process.

I also use an app called Live Transcribe from Google to just speak freely what comes to my mind and the app transcribes it very well. This braindump helps to purge the thoughts and helps to make space in my head to organize things afterward. Then I use checklists and outlines to keep track of what I'm writing.

I hope you'll find solutions that work for you! It's a long, frustrating journey, but it does get better when you find what works for how your brain ticks. Good luck!

I recommend checking out "How to take smart notes": https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B06WVYW33Y/. It absolutely transformed my note taking technique.

Here's a summary of the book on Forte Labs: https://fortelabs.co/blog/how-to-take-smart-notes/

I've had a similar story, trying multiple different apps to store my notes. I've used Apple Notes, Evernote, Simplenote, Bear, Obsidian, etc.

But, even though you're not asking this question, I'd like to raise it: how did you end up with notes in so many different note-taking apps?

If you end up spending that effort into merging all the notes into one place, how will you avoid another proliferation of note-taking apps?

Unfortunately, I don't have an answer to your original question but let me provide an answer to this new question. I really hope you find a way to merge the notes into one app but if you want to end up having useful, effective, and long-lasting notes then the notes themselves, regardless of the app, need to be of high quality.

Recently I read How to Take Smart Notes by Sönke Ahrens (for which I wrote notes and then my own summary using these permanent notes) which explains the Zettelkasten method of taking notes.

It relies on having atomic, self-contained, concise, highly connected, and personal (written in your own words) notes. Both the book (and my summary) explains in more depth this method.

I hope it helps.

You should use Bear as a Zettelkasten: https://zettelkasten.de/

Which is covered in this book: https://www.amazon.com/How-Take-Smart-Notes-Nonfiction-ebook/dp/B06WVYW33Y

I've been struggling to complete my thesis for a long time. About a month ago, I learned about the Zettelkasten method and wish somebody would've told me about it sooner. So, now I'm telling you about it. It's weird and took me a long time to wrap my head around it, but it directly addresses a lot of the problems I was having.

If you check it out and have the kind of "holy shit this sounds like exactly what I need" reaction I did, then PM me and I'll try to give you a boost up to my level of understanding of how to actually do it. (I've invested the last month meticulously studying the methodology because it was so alien to any other workflow I'd ever seen. I still have more to learn, but at least I can offer some simplified "just do this, then this, then this" instructions so you can get started before you properly figure it out, share my notes from a book about the Zettelkasten method, tell you about some of the software I've used, etc.)

Basically following the Zettelkasten method. Working great so far. Check out How to take smart notes by Ahrens. https://www.amazon.com/How-Take-Smart-Notes-Nonfiction-ebook/dp/B06WVYW33Y