I didn't have a name for it, but I evolved to this same exact system myself. I use HeyNote [0] for mine.

[0] https://heynote.com/

This seems almost uselessly simple to me. The “cognitive overhead” of a list of notes feels trivial considering this is a person who managed to put their words online.

The issue isn’t cognitive overhead, it’s not having rituals to review and refine your thoughts. Everyone has to jot down ideas from time to time, but if you never take time to stop, review, and organize your thoughts then sure it’ll feel like a lot of cognitive overhead.

This system seems quite similar to sending messages to oneself on Signal/Telegram/whatever. What I like about using messenger apps is that every note gets a timestamp and that messenger apps are, in my experience, more polished than note-taking apps.

This feels similar to a GitHub issue.

1. Editable description 2. Comments

Why does the perfect note-taking system seem to be such blogging catnip? And the post always basically says "here's my system", never "here's why taking notes is valuable" or "here's something objectively valuable that was enabled by my note-taking system".

By the way, here's my note-taking system: https://renormalize.substack.com/p/my-markdown-project-manag...

All joking aside, append-and-review does seem like a nice pattern for maintaining attention on a big heap of odds and ends, which is probably useful for a researcher like Andrej Karpathy.

I also use a single text file. I have developed my own notation to give it some structure [1]. I have a parser for the notation that creates tree of the document. Then I write various programs that walk the tree and do cool things. I have been happy(didn't feel like I needed anything else) with my system for some years now.

Checkout the video: https://youtu.be/CpcsOiETgxA

[1] https://github.com/PratikDeoghare/brashtag

Apologies for low quality of video and code. :)

-----------

Example file:

  ```
         [x*x for x in range(10)]
  ```
  #out{}

Now if notebook program is watching the file then it will send the code block to jupyter server and write results to `#out{}` "bag". And file will look like this.

  ```
         [x*x for x in range(10)]
  ```
  #out{
         ````````````````````````````````````````````        
         [0, 1, 4, 9, 16, 25, 36, 49, 64, 81]
         ````````````````````````````````````````````}

Most of my attempts at note taking usually end up devolving to this. Not to say it’s a bad thing, I think it’s effective enough.

I may keep separate append-and-review topics per major area (work, personal, cooking) but that’s about it.

Usually in form of an outline / list, append in the front, and with deeply nested sub-points, as I “discuss with myself in writing”.

Same, except I append to the bottom of an Apple note.

(I append, the author's really prepending. Anyway...)

When the note gets too long, I cut and paste it to what I call the big note: a 127000-line, 4.9 MB text file I've been maintaining for 14 years.

Trivially searchable, can get context from neighboring notes (What else was happening around this time?), and easily parsable when necessary.

Ok but todos have a time cost. It takes time to watch a YouTube video or read a book or make a slide deck. Todos often have deadlines as well. You can't capture all of this in an unstructured text file unless you create your own grammar (like what Andrej showed). Even after that, you need to visualize what's in progress and what's blocked because of some other todo, and before you know it, you have reinvented a shittier version of Linear.

Next up: everybody claims this the best way to do note taking. Single note on Apple notes is now all the rage and single-noting startups crop up in droves. Give this man a breather honestly.

I used to like Reflect Notes which had an "infinite " scrolling daily note. Are there any other similar apps to that? it's kind of nice to have everything laid out on one screen but i need a little more structure than Karpathy's single note which feels more brittle somehow

I use RememberTheMilk for this work - especially the notes feature for appending thoughts. Giving items a due date ensures I need to review things.

An important part of this system would be, when do you ever review? Everyplace I do this, I never check it, because when do I ever have nothing to do?

I do it similarly, but I still start another note every week, as it “feels cleaner”. I find that the global search works pretty well on Apple Notes, and by splitting by week I get a sense of around when I might have taken that note, which is helpful sometimes.

After using Apple, and OneNote (which suddenly became unusable thanks to syncing becoming paid without warning) and others, I noticed in some cases the software was wiping the bottom of my large notes (or maybe not syncing them). Confirm indeed that the bottom of your increasingly large note is still there. Also need some method to backup or verify integrity of content added, because Microsoft wiping OneNote sync is one of many ways those services betray your memories and leave you empty handed.

I just use it to store anything in small tiny notes and then use the excellent indexing and search to find what I’m looking for on my phone or laptop.

I do something very similar but I add to the bottom instead of the top. It keeps things chronological which is nice when referring back to things.

It’s also much more similar to how you would take notes on paper or in a notebook.

I just wish some note taking app would have a setting that allows me to open a note at the bottom instead of the top!