notes-notes-notesOnNotes

Sharing

If it's easy for you to do so, share non-private notes files with the world via a 'notes' or 'braindump' section of your website. (don't share your 'general' 'day-to-day' notes.txt). But also have a folder for private notes that aren't shared.

File format

keep notes in plaintext, with a '.txt' file extension.

different topics go in different files. There should also be one plain 'notes.txt' file with 'general' day-to-day notes, or notes for topics.

Large projects

if there are some topics/projects that generate lots of notes (more than ~1000 lines), then give them their own folder and split your notes into multiple files.

There should be one 'main' subtopic file with a summary of the topic/of the most important decisions made and data about the project.

There there are other subtopics.

Each subtopic has:

• a main file for that subtopic (just named subtopic.txt), which contains the most important information and settled decisions
• one or more 'thoughts' files for that subtopic (named subtopicThoughts.txt, subtopicThoughts2.txt, etc), which contain details and decisions which are probably decided but not as settled
• one or more 'notes' files for that subtopic (named subtopicNotes.txt, subtopicNotes2.txt, etc), which contain random notes, ideas, proposals, discussion of proposals, and 'toread' links from other places and text copied from other places

Optional: one 'contents' file listing what the other subtopics are, with short (one line) descriptions of most

Formatting

don't sweat spelling, grammar, punctuation within your notes. But do write things in enough detail so that you'll understand what you were trying to say a few years later.

in most of your notes, don't bother to quote or attribute quotes from elsewhere. Even though you are sharing these, these are just your personal notes, not a book. But if you do publish some of them in a book later, try to identify and attribute those parts that were copied from elsewhere.

Separate sections with '---'.

Indexing

use file folders to organize topics.

See also [1] section "my tips on categorization for indexing".