I Keep all notes in a single folder because it makes it easier for me to keep my note-taking practice. This combined with the fact that I use Writing as a medium for making sense means that I have knowledge notes, references, cookbooks, gibberish, journaling everything at the same place.

This can reduce the quality of my Notes as a lifelong thinking partner. To solve this, I use note “types” to separate different kinds of writing, and filter based on need. Every note is defaulted to a draft on creation. draft notes are my “inbox”. By the time I’m done writing, it’s obvious whether it’s a journal, gibberish, note, or reference, and I update the type.

Types I use:

• draft: rough ideas and quick capturing. The default type when creating a new text file. Update once the note is taking form. Draft notes are my “inbox”.
• journal: putting thoughts down to process them. Their purpose is to declutter my head, express an emotion, or just write unintelligible texts.
• note: linked and adequately expressed note. Since notes should be continuously refined, note doesn’t mean that a text is “complete”, but just means “not horrible” or “presentable”.

Over time I added new types:

• reference:
  • implementation/troubleshooting steps I followed to achieve something (usually software engineering related)
  • notes from some content I consumed, e.g. a podcast, a book.
  • tags help me differentiate between the two: Tags can be used as implicit folders in knowledge notes
  • #TODO: reference type is too muddy. Using it for “cookbooks”, “webclips”, “notes for things I read”, “things to look refer to for ideas” is just too noisy. But adding more types will make this thing horrible to work with. See below.
• implicit: empty notes to be filled later - Backlinks can create implicit nodes in networked notes.
• structure-note: bringing various notes together: Outline notes are useful for telling a story, e.g. tying together the various ideas of a book. I don’t use these a lot. ¹

Structure or just friction?

I am on the fence about having so many types since I might end up with Problems of hierarchical taxonomies, like decision fatigue and fuzzy boundaries. I usually Try-things-out-and-improve-iteratively-as-needed.

Related: Andy Matuschak’s Taxonomy of notes