I have 2,600+ notes in Apple Notes and can barely find anything.
My kid just dumps everything into Telegram saved messages. Running a small research - curious what systems people actually use (not aspire to use).
Do you have a setup that works or is everything scattered across 5 apps like mine?
My kid just dumps everything into Telegram saved messages. Running a small research - curious what systems people actually use (not aspire to use).
Do you have a setup that works or is everything scattered across 5 apps like mine?
Comments
The real issue isn't where you store notes — it's whether you find them when you actually need them.
I've gone through Notion, Confluence, and plain markdown. The pattern is always the same: I diligently save everything, then never look at it again because the moment I need it, I'm in a completely different context (a ticket, a chat, a meeting).
The "low friction = actually use it" point resonates. I've started thinking the answer isn't a better note-taking app, but surfacing the right information where the work happens, rather than making people go find it.
This is actually the truth, we all have tens or hundreds of priceless saved links. However, I claim that 90% are forgotten after a day or two, maybe that's actually something that small language models can fix ?
By moowmoow 2026-03-0313:39 Spot on — the "90% forgotten" problem is real. I think the fix isn't really about the model size, though; it's about surfacing the right thing at the right moment. If the system can detect what you're working on and push relevant saved knowledge to you proactively, you don't need to remember what you saved in the first place. The hard part is getting the context matching precise enough to be helpful without being noisy.
By nicbou 2026-02-2512:12 It's hard to keep it all together.
I use Obsidian for journaling across devices. My work notes are in a Markdown folder under the project. My personal notes are in a paper notebook and scanned when I run out of pages. Links are bookmarked.
The paper notebook solves the recall problem; it's just a few pages back. Most things I write down are only useful for a few months, then they become a mere artifact of my life at that point in time.
My only friction with hierarchy-type store of bookmarks is the orthogonal labeling scheme remains poorly or unsupported.
Slapping a tag or two (or many) is bandaid.
Need a way to navigate a tree for a bookmark that is repeatedly tagged and filed across hierarchy.
Perfect example: retirement, budget, investment firms, reviewed
Each day has a focus, and it often arrives differently to a same bookmark.
Handcrafted Wikipedia category tree is a good start but still no navigation panel and a search box thereof.
By a_protsyuk 2026-02-2418:36 This is the fundamental problem with hierarchies - knowledge is multi-dimensional but folders are one-dimensional. You shouldn't have to decide if "Vanguard 2026 review" lives under /retirement or /budget or /investments. What if you could just search "retirement investment options I reviewed" and find it regardless of where it was filed - by meaning, not by path?
