I'd like to believe there is a happy medium.
The problem likely is an obsession with any of the following:
Trying to keep your notes accurate.
Trying to have a "good" organizational scheme (categories? folders? tags?)
Trying not to have your notes on a topic fragmented. (Didn't I write about this before? Let me find my earlier note and add to it. Oh, and let me find the appropriate places within a note to add the new info).
I've suffered from all of the above. Late last year I decided to start afresh. I use org mode + capture. All notes go in one org file. I don't try to find a prior note on the same topic. I just tag the new note (hopefully with the same tag as before), and start writing. I don't check if I've written some thought before.
I then have a function that takes a tag as an input, and creates a new (temporary) org file with only the entries from that note. It's in the same format as my blog's publishing SW, so if I want, I can output to HTML and view it in the browser - with each note being a blog post.
6 months in, though, I've never needed that function.
What I like about this:
I enter freely without worrying about how it should be organized - I tag it with whatever comes to mind at the moment.
I rely on basic search when looking for something. It's not great, but I'll live with it.
If I ever do work on a long term project where I can work only very sporadically, that export function will be handy.
I never randomly browse. The fact that the file has X notes not acted on - doesn't bother me. That it's all in one file - is surprisingly nice. Since it's in Org mode, I can always do queries on it (but haven't so far).
The problem likely is an obsession with any of the following:
Trying to keep your notes accurate.
Trying to have a "good" organizational scheme (categories? folders? tags?)
Trying not to have your notes on a topic fragmented. (Didn't I write about this before? Let me find my earlier note and add to it. Oh, and let me find the appropriate places within a note to add the new info).
I've suffered from all of the above. Late last year I decided to start afresh. I use org mode + capture. All notes go in one org file. I don't try to find a prior note on the same topic. I just tag the new note (hopefully with the same tag as before), and start writing. I don't check if I've written some thought before.
I then have a function that takes a tag as an input, and creates a new (temporary) org file with only the entries from that note. It's in the same format as my blog's publishing SW, so if I want, I can output to HTML and view it in the browser - with each note being a blog post.
6 months in, though, I've never needed that function.
What I like about this:
I enter freely without worrying about how it should be organized - I tag it with whatever comes to mind at the moment.
I rely on basic search when looking for something. It's not great, but I'll live with it.
If I ever do work on a long term project where I can work only very sporadically, that export function will be handy.
I never randomly browse. The fact that the file has X notes not acted on - doesn't bother me. That it's all in one file - is surprisingly nice. Since it's in Org mode, I can always do queries on it (but haven't so far).