Note Taking Introduction

Taking notes is not that easy as one might think at first. Because you do not simply want to write something down and leave it. You want to access that piece of information at some point in the future! And you want to do it efficiently and fast.

No one wants to search for a note that you created yesterday with information that you already forgot again for more than a few moments. If it takes longer to find the note, than just googling it, this process is already to be doomed. Don’t just write notes for the sake of writing them.

🗒️ Markdown?

This is why Markdown-files and the ecosystem around them are a really powerful way to create, organize and find notes when you need them. Because Markdown makes it really easy to write down, link and organize notes.

Find your notes

You can already try it out: Type for instance #container in the search field. You will find all notes tagged with this tag. No need to remember specific names to find a certain note. Just try to pinpoint your note with corresponding topics or information.

But let’s get back to the roots first… Let’s take a look at a few examples:

Internal-Links

You want to create link to another note that corresponds to your new one? It’s as easy as this:

… Link to the other Note: [[Note Taking Introduction]] …

If this gets rendered by a Markdown viewer (or by this web page) it will look like this:

… Link to the other Note: Note Taking Introduction …

External-Links

You want to create an outgoing link to an URL from a web page that you found? It’s as easy as this:

… Link to the webpage Note: [webpage](https://www.neulen.net) …

If this gets rendered by a Markdown viewer (or by this web page) it will look like this:

… Link to the web page Note: webpage …

Callouts

You want to make something clear or make an information stand out? Callouts like this one right here can be created very fast:

> [!info] Just another callout
> info text

This example would be rendered like this:

Just another callout

info text

Tags

You can also tag specific paragraphs or even the complete file with tags like this:

#tag

Formatting

Formatting is also really easy and can be done right from any text editor that you want to use:

# Heading 1
## Heading 2
...
- bullet point
	- Bullet point of the bullet point
...
- [ ] open task
- [x] closed task
...
*italic text*
**bold text**

LaTeX-Math

You can even include LaTeX math notations:

$$
f(x) = \int_{-\infty}^\infty
  \hat f(\xi),e^{2 \pi i \xi x}
  \,d\xi
$$

Which would work out to this:

$$f(x)={\int }_{-\infty }^{\infty }\hat{f}(\xi ),e^{2\pi i\xi x}d\xi$$

💡 Bottom Line

So what is the bottom line? It is really easy to create notes that are structured and have links in them with files that are just plain text and a syntax that is for the most part the same between specialized Markdown editors.

Thus, you have links between your notes or you can use tags to easily connect your ideas and stuff that you always forget. This flexibility and the independence from just one single software provider that dictates how you should take notes and manage your knowledge makes it a powerful tool for taking notes everywhere and anytime.

Which Editor?

Which Editor you use is completely up to you. There are the big players like logseq or Obsidian, but there are also more lightweight alternatives like QOwnNotes. If you are crazy you can also go EMACS Org Mode or NeoVim and show everybody that only command line will do it for you.

They all offer different features and styles in note taking or even more advanced features like JavaScript or Plugin support to optimize your notes even more. You have to find out what your style is and what you want to accomplish.

The Ecosystem

The Ecosystem of Markdown is exceptional. It is not only limited to taking notes. It ranges from the documentation of git projects - with the obligatory readme.md in every repository - to even defining the complete content of a website just based on markdown files - like this page!