r/NoteTaking

so I'm struggling with taking and organising notes, how are you guys doing it?

like, do you read then highlight?

but then what do you do next? do you, transcribe all the highlighted notes into a document and write? is there a better way?

I'm looking for advice on techniques are any software you guys might be using for this?

i know you might be able to use AI, but my issue is the accuracy, like it wont always highlight the stuff i find relevant or useful.

can anyone help?

What are the best tablet apps for importing PDFs, writing annotations directly on them, and taking side-by-side notes? Looking for recommendations and your preferred workflows

I’ve used notion since I was in high school but I’ve noticed how they keep trying to push all these AI features onto me. I don’t particularly agree with AI, I do not want it to do thinking for me especially not when I am trying to make sense of my studies myself. Sometimes it useful for memorization but other than that I don’t need it and its actually driving me crazy lol. What I liked about notion was how you can set up your space and organize your notes. So is there any place else i can go to on desktop that will allow me to do the same without AI agents ?

I'm a software engineer, mostly freelancing right now. A lot of my projects get talked through over coffee chats in person, and some ideas just show up out of nowhere when I'm out with friends. I also go to local events sometimes, like an AI workshop I went to last week. In moments like that I really want to save some interesting ideas and conversations.

But it's not always convenient to pull out my phone or carry a notebook around. So a lot of ideas that pop into my head are gone almost right away, and when I want to use them I can't remember a thing lol.

Is there an easier way to do this? How do you guys record your in person meetings?

Over the last few days, I've been thinking about ways to improve my productivity across my personal life, studies, and work.

My initial idea was to start using a Kanban board together with a calendar/planner.

At first, I thought about using a physical whiteboard with markers. I don't really like using sticky notes, so I liked the idea of writing directly on the board. However, I realized that this would create another problem: I would constantly have to erase and rewrite things, and the board would need regular cleaning to prevent stains and ghosting.

Then I thought about adding an extra monitor to my computer and keeping a digital Kanban board on it. The downside is that my computer would need to be turned on whenever I wanted to check my tasks.

After that, I considered building a small dedicated setup with a Raspberry Pi. But that would introduce even more things to buy and configure: a display, cables, power supply, mouse, keyboard, and so on.

Eventually, I came to the conclusion that a tablet might actually be the ideal solution.

I don't need anything particularly powerful, since the main purpose would be to keep a Kanban board, task manager, calendar, and possibly a few other productivity apps open. Because of that, I could buy an older and relatively inexpensive Android tablet instead of spending a lot of money on a newer model.

I actually found a used tablet that comes with a charging station, which seems almost perfect for this idea. I could leave it permanently on my desk in landscape mode, at a comfortable viewing angle, and use it as a dedicated productivity display while I'm working on my computer.

The problem is that I don't have much experience with Kanban or similar productivity methodologies yet, and I'm also not sure how I should structure a setup like this on Android.

I have a few ideas, but right now it feels like I would have to experiment through trial and error until I find a workflow that works well for me.

Has anyone here done something similar?

I'd really like to hear how you use a tablet as a dedicated productivity station, especially for:

* Kanban boards

* Task management

* Calendar and scheduling

* Personal projects

* Work or study organization

I'm particularly interested in adopting Kanban because I think the visual nature of the method would work really well on a tablet that's always sitting on my desk in its charging station.

I'd appreciate any advice on apps, workflows, board structures, dashboards, or even pictures/videos of similar setups.

I have done so much reading for articles and all this time I feel like I've never really nailed down my reading/annotating/notetaking workflow.

Reading physical books is nice but handwriting in annotations takes forever and then there's the task of taking those annotations and making notes with them. I have obsidian for that but when it's time to actually do that it always feels like a massive pain.

I also use Zotero and I really like the epub/pdf annotation within Zotero, and I can just extract my highlights and make notes within the highlights, but for that I feel like I often lose some amount of comprehension from physical reading. Also the annotations/notes can't be as specific as handwriting them.

idk, just curious if anyone else has a system they really really enjoy.

i use obsidian as my second brain, and recently i’ve been using claude code with it more and more.

most of my useful knowledge slowly ends up inside the vault.

but meetings are still kind of outside the system.

a meeting happens → notes or transcript goes into some other app → a few weeks later i remember:

“wait… what did we actually decide?”

then the real problem starts.

which meeting was it?
which app has the notes?
did i write anything down?
was it in granola, fireflies, otter, slack…?

and if i want the important part inside obsidian, it usually becomes manual copy-paste.

how are you handling this?

do you:

• write meeting notes directly in obsidian?
• use granola/fireflies/otter and leave everything there?
• record and transcribe meetings locally?
• manually move only the important decisions into your vault?
• or just accept that meetings live outside your second brain?

especially curious about this:

when you suddenly remember that something important was discussed a few weeks ago, how do you actually find what was decided?