At first, it seems strange that there are so many note-taking apps/webapps/programs out there - Onenote, Joplin, Standard Notes, Evernote, Google Keep, Notion, Bookstack, Trilium, and a million more that I haven’t even heard of - but it makes perfect sense considering how personal each of thought processes are. Sure, we all learned how to write our ABCs and were oftentimes told in class what exactly to copy down onto paper from the whiteboard/chalkboard/projector, but we all likely paid attention to different things as needed. Underlining or highlighting certain parts, circling certain words or sentences, only putting certain bits of knowledge into flash cards. For every unique person’s note-taking process, there is an app for it.
Even within one person, there can be many mental models of notes - throwaway notes, important notes, notes with a due date, notes of a particular tag/category, notes that are rough drafts for more extensive documentaion later, etc. It seems like searching for the perfect note-taking application is a bit of a fool’s errand. Your best bet is to take some time every now and then to try a different app and simply see if you like it; and if you do like it, great! Keep using it until you find specific deficiencies that you need to have coverage for, and search for specific tool(s) for that coverage. If you do find something that has everything you need, that’s wonderful - but be prepared to simply use the closest/easiest tools available. It may be a lot simpler and easier to adapt your habits to use a limited set of tools, rather than search endlessly for tools that satisfy every one of your unique habits.
I’ve discovered that I tend to have two broad categories of notes - quick notes, and documentation notes.
Bookstack (which I’ve mentioned in a previous post) is fantastic for organized documentation, but there’s a bit too much friction/lag for me in creating new pages/notes. The organized structure is fantastic for categorization and consumption, but it’s less great for temporary things like quick TODOs and brain-dumping - because it’s a webapp, there’s the inherent lag/speed issue of communicating over the internet, and I lose access to it if I don’t have internet access. The developers are working on a mobile app, but it’s not here yet (definitely looking forward to it!).
So for now, I also use Joplin for my quick notes - things that are temporary, a rough draft, TODOs, save-for-laters, initial ideas, etc. It’s a data lake my ‘phase 1’ thoughts, and I migrate things to Bookstack as needed for long-term, better-formatted documentation.
Like any knowledge base, it’s going to require discipline and work. All these great tools are out there - I just need to sit down and adapt myself to it.