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The Perfect Note-Taking App

2020-08-23 · Long video (solo, talking head or whiteboard) · Ali · recording, 11:46 · watch on YouTube

Topic: Tools, apps and tech · mode: Explanation and tutorial

Ali compares choosing a note-taking app to finding a spouse: there is no perfect app, the right one fits your personality (gardener, librarian or architect), switching has a cost and app-hopping is unfulfilling, but using several apps is fine; he combines Notion, Roam Research, Evernote and Drafts.

What is said

The parts of the video and what is said in each (★ — how much it matters to the video).

00:00:00 — Intro: finding the perfect note-taking app is like finding someone to marry

00:00:29 — Soulmates: there is no perfect note-taking app

  • ★★★ Ali says there is no perfect note-taking app, just as there is no soulmate; it took him ages to realise this. — 00:00:29

  • ★ Alain de Botton (quoted): Ali quotes the philosopher Alain de Botton: compatibility is an achievement of marriage and should not be its prerequisite. — 00:00:29

    “compatibility is an achievement of marriage. It should not be its prerequisite.”

  • ★★ Since every note-taking app has pros and cons, Ali says, what matters is finding one that gels with your personality and then learning to use it properly and make it work for you; you and the app grow together. — 00:01:11

00:01:39 — Personality archetypes: librarians, gardeners and architects, and the apps that suit each

  • ★★★ Borrowing an analogy from the blog Ness Labs, Ali sorts people and note-taking apps into three types: gardeners, librarians and architects. — 00:01:59
  • ★★ For librarian personalities, Ali says, Evernote or OneNote suit best: everything has its distinct place, every note sits in a notebook and notebooks sit in stacks. — 00:01:59 · Evernote, Microsoft OneNote
  • ★ Ali says people joke that Evernote is a write-only system: you put things into it and then never really look at them. (playful) — 00:02:29 · Evernote
  • ★★ Ali is not much of a librarian type himself, so he does not use Evernote or OneNote as his main note-taking apps, though many people he knows do. — 00:02:29 · Evernote, Microsoft OneNote
  • ★★ Tiago Forte, who runs the online course Building a Second Brain, uses Evernote as his second brain, Ali says. — 00:02:29 · Tiago Forte, Building a Second Brain, Evernote, second brain
  • ★★ Ali says Tiago Forte's online course Building a Second Brain changed his life. — 00:02:29 · Building a Second Brain, Tiago Forte
  • ★ Ali says Evernote is very old, made around 2004, yet still has fantastic features that librarian types will gel with. — 00:02:58 · Evernote
  • ★★ For gardener personalities Ali points to less structured, open-ended apps such as Roam Research, Obsidian and RemNote; he uses Roam himself because some of his thinking is in gardener mode. — 00:02:58 · Roam Research
  • ★★ For gardeners, who want to start from a blank slate and build their garden from the ground up, Ali says Evernote is way too rigid and Roam Research is really useful. — 00:03:27 · Evernote, Roam Research
  • ★★ Architect personalities, who want to build their own structured system without a rigid hierarchy or pure freedom, suit Notion, Ali says; he fits this type most. — 00:03:56 · Notion, Evernote, Microsoft OneNote, Roam Research
  • ★★ Ali uses Notion most of all because it gels with his architect side: he can be rigid with notes and notebooks or use databases and linked databases, without Roam's free-flowing network. — 00:04:25 · Notion, Roam Research

  • ★★★ Ali says the note-taking app matters, but finding one that fits your personality matters more; moving your whole life to Notion because Ali Abdaal and Thomas Frank use it is the wrong way to think. — 00:04:55 · Notion, Thomas Frank

    “what's more important is you find one that fits your personality”

00:05:08 — The economics of divorce: the cost of switching apps

  • ★★★ Switching note-taking apps, like a divorce, is messy and expensive, Ali says: it takes energy to learn a new system, so decide whether the new app's features are worth the switching cost. — 00:05:24 · Evernote, Notion
  • ★★ Ali advises against switching note-taking apps just because a new one appears: switch when the benefit of Notion or Roam outweighs the value you have built up in an app like Evernote. — 00:05:57 · Notion, Roam Research, Evernote

00:06:22 — Meaningless sex: shiny new toy syndrome, and notes as a way to outputs

  • ★★★ Hopping from app to app out of shiny new toy syndrome, from Evernote to Notion, Roam Research and Obsidian, is probably unfulfilling, Ali says: you only go round in circles. (hedged) — 00:06:55 · Evernote, Notion, Roam Research
  • ★★★ The point of a note-taking app, Ali says, is to take notes for your own learning, creativity and organisation and turn them into outputs: what matters is sharing knowledge in blog posts, tweets, videos or Instagram posts. — 00:06:55
  • ★ Ali says polyamorous relationships almost never work out: in theory they should, but accounts from people who tried them suggest they are really hard. — 00:07:25

00:07:33 — Polyamorous relationships: Ali's system of Notion, Roam, Evernote and Drafts

  • ★★★ Using several note-taking apps is completely fine, Ali says: there is no need to find one app for everything, since different apps have different pros, cons and ways of thinking. — 00:07:56
  • ★★★ Ali uses a combination of four apps for his note-taking: Notion, Roam Research, Evernote and Drafts. — 00:07:56 · Notion, Roam Research, Evernote, Drafts
  • ★★ Evernote forms the base long-term memory layer of Ali's note-taking system. — 00:07:56 · Evernote
  • ★★ Ali uses Evernote as a set-it-and-forget-it filing system for PDFs and receipts: searching "corporation tax" finds his company's corporation tax number through its optical character recognition. — 00:08:25 · Evernote
  • ★★ Evernote is the easiest place to save research resources, Ali says, because it handles images, scans, PDFs, web pages and snippets, while Roam Research and Notion need some hacking to accept everything. — 00:08:55 · Evernote, Roam Research, Notion
  • ★★ Ali uses Roam Research for personal notes: its daily notes feature for notes on his day, and notes on books, podcasts and videos he has watched. — 00:08:55 · Roam Research
  • ★★ Ali finds Roam Research's bi-directional linking really nice but uses Roam only about 10% of the time and Notion over about 80%, as an architect type and for its team collaboration features. (hedged) — 00:09:24 · Roam Research, Notion
  • ★★ Ali's team built its own pipelines in Notion for videos, the email newsletter and Skillshare classes; Roam Research is hard to use as a team, and Evernote lacks the flexibility for kanban boards and to-do lists. — 00:09:53 · Notion, Roam Research, Evernote, Skillshare classes
  • ★★ Ali uses Drafts only for quick capture, dictating podcast notes into it on his Apple Watch while driving: it syncs well with Evernote through the API, dictates well and loads very quickly. — 00:10:22 · Drafts, Apple Watch, Evernote
  • ★★ Ali says Roam Research and Notion take ages to load, and Evernote is really slow and bloated. — 00:10:22 · Roam Research, Notion, Evernote
  • ★★ Ali says a digital note-taking system depends on your personality and what you need to get done, should evolve with you over time, and need not be perfect from the start. — 00:10:52
  • ★★ Ali's whole digital note-taking system is built on the online course Building a Second Brain, in which he is a mentor. — 00:10:52 · Building a Second Brain

00:11:13 — Playlist, Building a Second Brain sign-up and sign-off

In the description and comments

  • ★ Asked whether to write active recall questions in Google Sheets or Notion, Ali says either works, and he prefers Notion. — creator comment · Google Sheets, Notion
  • ★ Ali Abdaal (channel): Asked what is wrong with Apple Notes, the channel answers that nothing is. — creator comment

Humor (significant)

  • Saying different people are attracted to different personalities, Ali disclaims his own experience of love — 00:01:11

    “in relationships and love and stuff, or so I've heard”

  • Ali likens leaving Evernote for Notion to a happily married man tempted by a hot new secretary — 00:05:24

    “Do I wanna switch my life over and get a divorce and just kind of get with the secretary?”

  • Right after the secretary scenario, Ali declines to condemn it — 00:05:57

    “I'm not saying that's a morally bad thing to do necessarily”

  • Ali names his fourth similarity between relationships and note-taking apps — 00:05:57

    “our fourth similarity between relationships and note-taking apps is that meaningless sex is ultimately unfulfilling.”

  • Ali sums up his four-app setup in the language of the analogy — 00:10:22

    “I am in a polyamorous relationship with Notion, Roam, and Evernote”

Threads in this video

Where the stories that moved here went next

Mentioned

Central: Evernote · gardeners, librarians and architects · Notion · Roam Research

Also: People: Alain de Botton · Thomas Frank · Tiago Forte

Projects: Skillshare classes

Works: Building a Second Brain

Organizations: Ness Labs

Concepts: bi-directional linking · quick capture · second brain

Products: Apple Watch · Drafts · Microsoft OneNote · Obsidian · RemNote

Only in the description or credits: Apple Notes · Google Sheets

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