I generally don’t use Apple Notes. I typically keep stuff in Drafts or Obsidian. However, there are a few people that I share Apple Notes with mainly because it makes sense for them versus me.
Example:
w/Spouse - Specific food orders at different restaurants due to food allergies when getting food for our kids.
w/Project Team - discussing timeline, brainstorming, etc
w/Youth - there are 2-3 youth that have questions regularly for me when it comes to the Church, or something they are reading, so we have an ongoing note for the various topics. (probably better to use Notion)
Outside of these situations, I don’t really use Apple Notes because I have my own workflow. Again, the only reason is for the situations above and because they are all Apple users and not tech savvy, so I kept it simple.
Now, I am reviewing my Apple Notes… and there are 70 notes in there over the years. It’s all under 1 folder. Does anyone have a better way of organizing?
I had a very robust database that was quite similar structurally to Forever Notes. I watched those videos and modified my notes repository to follow Matthias’ methodology regarding the Hubs, links, tags, and collections. It was as if I found the missing piece of a 10,000 piece puzzle. It has rally made my notes substantially more useful and accessible.
Maybe @FrMichaelFanous could just borrow some of the pieces to tie his system together.
Yes, Forever Notes is cool. Even if you don’t want to maintain that many links, a little linking or making a few more Notes folders helps. I find 7-8 folders in Notes make it obvious what I have. (My favorite folder is “kid art” that they make with Quick Notes on the iPad when I’m not around–takes half a second to move a new drawing into it when I notice it.)
I am trying to find a better way of organizing since I clearly use Apple Notes (although not as heavily).
It’s been operating on 1 whole folder…recently went into this idea of folders with people. About to dive deep into all the 70 notes and begin categorizing…I keep asking myself.
Do I really want to organize my folders by the names of people I share it with? It feels like it goes against everything I do in other apps like Omnifocus, Obsidian, DevonThink, etc (I organize by areas of life)
But because I am not an active user and the notes are with specific people, I feel like it makes more send to have a folder by person.
Does anyone else experience similar challenges? I know this is a first world problem, I get it.
I use a slightly modified version of Johnny Decimal throughout my system, whether with notes apps (Bear, Drafts, Apple Notes), task management (Omnifocus), or files (Finder, DEVONthink, etc.) In particular, I like that I don’t really have to think about where to put something regardless of app, as the structure is more or less the same.
To explain how this would be addressed in the Forever ✱ Notes system, you would keep the heirarchy flat, but on the ✱ Home note you’d organize the notes however it made sense to you and then link them from there. So, one way to do this would be to put a person’s name as a heading and list related notes as bulleted items under it.
To make the ✱ Home note more useful, you can download a shortcut that makes it easy to get to that note. (e.g., you type “Home” in spotlight/Alfred/Raycast/etc. and it goes to that note — you can also program your iPhone’s action button to activate that shortcut.)
