I find they give me a slightly higher chance of remembering on the fly, but unless it is something extremely specific like noting down passwords to things I use, it is too hard to find the note for the thing I can’t remember.
Similar to you, I’ve found that writing the notes helps me to remember stuff, but I found that my on-the-fly remembering really improved when I started to make my notes more findable by the use of tags. It doesn’t even need to be a formal tagging system — even just including “#tag” in the note body helps me to find things better.
The key to this approach is asking yourself in what context you might want to refer back to a past note, and to not just add a scattershot of possibly relevant tags. For example, if I’m writing down my thoughts about a movie that I want to talk about to a friend, I might write “I should ask #Becky what she thinks about this”, or “this reminds me of what #Sarah was saying about #thing” (if #thing is a topic I’ve written other notes on). I found that doing this became easier over time, and this was reinforced by the fact that I found myself referring back to my notes more often (which also helped me to make more connections between thoughts I’d been having)
Edit:
To give an example relevant to the original post, I might tag a note about a good movie with #movie (I don’t need to qualify that with “favourite”, because that is too specific, and realistically, if I’m writing about a movie, it’s probably one that I like), or a brief note about a great restaurant might be tagged with #goodfood and #city
I use tags but in a different way.
I have a poems tag for poems I’m writing.
Then a few for worldbuilding different worlds.
Just a lotta tags for different writing projects.
One for dreams I write down right as I wake up from one.
Etc. About 35 tags
Do you ever use your notes tho?
I find they give me a slightly higher chance of remembering on the fly, but unless it is something extremely specific like noting down passwords to things I use, it is too hard to find the note for the thing I can’t remember.
Similar to you, I’ve found that writing the notes helps me to remember stuff, but I found that my on-the-fly remembering really improved when I started to make my notes more findable by the use of tags. It doesn’t even need to be a formal tagging system — even just including “#tag” in the note body helps me to find things better.
The key to this approach is asking yourself in what context you might want to refer back to a past note, and to not just add a scattershot of possibly relevant tags. For example, if I’m writing down my thoughts about a movie that I want to talk about to a friend, I might write “I should ask #Becky what she thinks about this”, or “this reminds me of what #Sarah was saying about #thing” (if #thing is a topic I’ve written other notes on). I found that doing this became easier over time, and this was reinforced by the fact that I found myself referring back to my notes more often (which also helped me to make more connections between thoughts I’d been having)
Edit: To give an example relevant to the original post, I might tag a note about a good movie with #movie (I don’t need to qualify that with “favourite”, because that is too specific, and realistically, if I’m writing about a movie, it’s probably one that I like), or a brief note about a great restaurant might be tagged with #goodfood and #city
I use tags but in a different way. I have a poems tag for poems I’m writing. Then a few for worldbuilding different worlds. Just a lotta tags for different writing projects. One for dreams I write down right as I wake up from one. Etc. About 35 tags
I do. A looot. Especially recent notes. Like last week.
I literally just write 30k words on hallmark movies on my notes app lol.
Also I just need to remember one word of any thought and I can search and find it
Holy shit, that’s a journal not a note. A note is short.
Man 50k is a short book.
I am trying to stop myself from writing any more despite my strong instincts to do so.
I don’t want to write a damn book here
If you enjoy it, it’s a good hobby.