Ask HN: How does an hacker (you) write his notes in the notebook

by digamber_kamat on 2/22/2011, 12:44 PM with 8 comments

Apparently a notebook and a pen is the most loved gadgets of hackers.

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2245560

I am not surprised with this, in fact I love making notes about everything.

But how do you guys organize these notes? Does your notebook has sections ? Does it have an index?

Do you write in plain English or have you developed your own shorthand ?

I liked the book "Personal Software Process" and my note-making is largely inspired from that.

I have an Table of Contents, Timelog, Sections, Plans for the week-ahead, review of last week and a running counter which tells me how much time I am spending on each activity every week.

What about you guys ?

  • by JoeAltmaier on 2/22/2011, 3:07 PM

    Date and initial each page in the corner. Right-side page for topics, left-side for scratch.

    Summarize every couple of days with a Todo list on a fresh page; check off items on previous pages.

    Review last dozen pages every few days, looking for un-checked items.

  • by noig3 on 2/22/2011, 5:42 PM

    I use notepad as well as dead tree notepads and pen.

    Any kind of ball point pen. The notepad must be a reporters notepad or a regular sized notepad. I dislike writing on pieces of paper that are too small.

  • by bartonfink on 2/22/2011, 2:57 PM

    I just date everything and avoid structure. I use paper as a free-form extension of my own memory, so everything needs to be as ad-hoc as possible.

  • by silent1mezzo on 2/22/2011, 3:35 PM

    I categorize it into Random Thoughts, Startup Ideas and Programming snippets (things I think of for my current projects).

  • by mkr-hn on 2/22/2011, 3:02 PM

    I use a mix of a small hard-backed notebook and OneNote.

  • by JonLim on 2/22/2011, 9:15 PM

    > an hacker

    Urge to kill... rising...