How I Take (and Organise) My Notes As a Software Engineer

[00:00] Now, taking notes is incredibly important as a software developer or for any career our brains just aren't designed for remembering lots of information. in a way that you can find it later on.

[00:15] as well as the software I use to make sure I can find them when I need them. so I've used things like notability to try and keep notes in a digital format.

[00:30] But I find every time I always end up just taking less notes as a result, that friction and allows you to take notes a lot more easily. have somewhere to take my notes when I need them.

[00:46] because it just makes it easier for doing things like diagrams and flowcharts. to do list for all of the items I've got to complete that day.

[00:58] I'll add it to the bottom of my to do list in my notebook. I particularly like the soft leather effect cover notebooks, so I tend to lean towards Moleskine or Lechturm1917 as my go to choice.

[01:14] I like to have a range of colours to hand so I can highlight things in my notes. with whatever I have on my desk, which is usually something like a Bic. then these are generally typed up into my note taking application.

[01:30] and that use is mostly divided into business and personal. So for anything that's related to content creation, such as producing YouTube videos or writing blog posts, these I always keep track in notion.

[01:45] because it has different views that you can set up. so I know what I'm currently working on and what I've got coming next. so I know when my blog posts are going out or when my videos are due to come out.

[01:59] for my personal coding projects, such as doing any work on my website. things like blog post ideas or YouTube video ideas. I can add them quite quickly to my backlog so I don't forget them.

[02:13] Part of the reason that I do this in notion is because it's easily shareable. and I hire some help to help me produce my YouTube videos, for example, then I can give them access to my notion board and all the resources I have in there.

[02:26] most of what I keep in motion is really transactional in nature. I keep track of my blog posts and when they go out, but I don't really Now, part of the reason I do this is because notion is a proprietary platform.

[02:41] but it's not particularly easy to export and get it into the formats that you need If notion was to suddenly disappear or have a massive server error, if I was to lose it or be quite upset

[02:56] I haven't lost lots of knowledge because I'm not storing in Notion. long term, I'll put this all into Obsidian.

[03:08] It works on all platforms, but it's not as polished as notion is. you need to use plug ins and it does take a bit of tinkering to get it to work.

[03:20] everything is just stored as markdown files and folders. you'd still have all your notes in a very readable format. that you need to be able to back up your own data.

[03:35] So Obsidian does offer a Cloud sync option for a monthly fee, but generally to GitHub as well. I want to keep these, I then type manually into Obsidian.

[03:50] with taking notes, it can all be a bit disorganized to begin with, but over time I went through quite a few iterations on how I organize my notes into my friend bought me, this book Building A Second Brain by Tiago Forte,

[04:04] and he goes through the four main areas that you should store your notes in. to describe this, which is projects, areas, resources and archives. you should put your notes in, depending on what you're working on.

[04:18] and there's also a link to a complete summary of the book on my website. but I've also incorporated some other concepts

[04:30] from How to Take Smart Notes, which is based on the Zettlekasten method. The first is the inbox. I have a few automations set up from other applications that I'll cover in a bit.

[04:44] everything in here needs to be sorted or broken down into individual notes. My second folder is projects. whether that be a redesign of my website or notes on a course I'm taking.

[05:01] The third folder is the knowledge folder. a digital garden of knowledge with links to other bits of information. which is where I differ from the Building A Second Brain book.

[05:17] It's more of an interconnected web and knowledge. These are notes on high level topics. The idea of the knowledge folder is that each note should be quite small.

[05:33] It's more like a few paragraphs explaining a concept. When I do write a comprehensive book summary or an article for my blog, then this gets stored in the references folder.

[05:47] big master note, but later break it down into the key areas of knowledge. I do not delete it, I just move it to the archive. My six folder is what I call extras.

[06:03] where you can specify a folder for attachments or for templates. I use automation to take highlights from other applications,

[06:15] If the highlight is useful, but I don't want to turn it into a permanent note. If it comes up in my search results, then I might decide then that As I mentioned earlier, I have automation set up that all feed into Obsidian.

[06:31] All of this goes into my inbox folder for me to then sort out later. Matter lets you save articles to it or tweets from Twitter Now, I used to use Instapaper for this, but Matter has a really good feature where

[06:46] it will expand it for you so you can see it all in one place. and this can be really great to have all of your newsletters in one place.

[06:58] that you follow, Now once all my highlights have been made in matter Now readwise syncs all of my highlights from my Kindle books as well as I can

[07:14] Readwise has a great feature where they send you an email summary and remind yourself about some of the key concepts in the books that you've read.

[07:27] all of these highlights from both Matter and readwise sync into my inbox folder. So it's easy for me to find highlights when I need them.

[07:40] one on the 11 Ways to Make Money as a Software Developer. Thank you for watching and I’ll hopefully see you in the next video.