my notetaking system, early 2026

the process is still evolving, but i’m going to describe my notetaking system as of right now. i started from zero in novemberish last year and am getting happy with the cadence and quality of my notes as of starting this new system.

the biggest change that comes with the new system is that i’m now paper first, even if i’m sitting in front of a computer. the procedure for taking and processing paper notes is on a weekly cadence:

1. at the beginning of a week, start a new page with the date as a header.
2. create two sections on this page: consumption and todos. (usually consumption takes up two-thirds of the page, and todos one-third.)
3. create a third section starting on the next page: notes.
4. write down the titles of media consumed over the week in the consumption section. if i have additional thoughts or context to add for a piece of media, then an endnote indicator (a superscript number like ²) is added. then, the additional notes can be added to the notes section.
5. write down tasks to be completed for the week under todos.¹ if additional context for a task needs to be written down, the task gets an endnote, just like consumption media items. if/when i complete tasks, they get an X.
6. and then the notes section is pretty freeform, where each distinct note has a heading and/or references the endnote indicator from its antecedent consumption log or todos task.
7. at the end of the week, digitize all of the notes and save them to my personal wiki, where notes may get incorporated into blog post drafts, longer private articles about things i’m learning about, or emails i intend to send. by “digitizing” i mostly mean “type out”.
8. if i think an uncompleted todo items are important enough to carry forward, they get added to the next week’s todos section.

that’s kind of it for now. it’s a very lightweight process i don’t have to think about. i think the next refinements to occur will be on the processing/digitizing side of things.