Mostly I just jot down ideas in my current notebook (I have scores of notebooks full of things) and that allows me to stop thinking about that particular thing because I’ll get around to organizing it into my todo list sometime very soon. Then, months later but also seemingly in the blink of an eye, I’ll remember that I wanted to do it and feel an oppressive guilt wash over me for never even starting it. The feelings of shame and regret swirling around all the tasks become denser and more opaque until they dwarf me and I live in their shadow every waking minute. There is no light here, only tasks. Melville knew my plight: “they heap me; I see them in outrageous strength, with an inscrutable malice sinewing them.”
I use emacs’ org mode to do something kind of like GTD. Org Mode suffers from the same problem as much of emacs, that it’s so flexible and customizable that you can do anything you want, and so everyone has done something kind of different, and if you want real workflow tools you’re generally stuck spending a lot of time editing customization or writing your own. It’s also a real problem for good mobile support, because no mobile client will do everything that the full org-mode supports, so the audience for a particular set of mobile functionality is small. There’s a decent stab at a modern iOS org-mode app that syncs with dropbox now - Beorg - but I fear for its longevity.
The main things that are important in the system for me, is an inbox I can add to from anywhere, and a way to schedule TODOs in the future and repeating. Finally, support for a ‘review’ step is really important to make sure you’ve actually looked at everything recently. I use a bunch of fiddly custom org “Agenda views” for this.
I’d really love to have something that did what I need without being the endless pile of yak fur that is org mode and emacs, but I haven’t found it yet.
Thanks for asking about this, I have so many things to say about. I’m going to explain the methods I use, and then the tools I use to accomplish them. Please skip ahead to the last paragraph to learn about a GTD tool I’m working on.
The TL;DR: I make use of all of the following techniques in order of importance: Getting Things Done, The Checklist Manifesto, The Pomodoro Technique, Eat That Frog, and Chain Calendaring (or Seinfeld Calendaring), and a regular Calendar. Without giving details, I’m just going to say: when I am at my best, these systems keep me at my best. When I am at my worst (I often call it “the dark place”, non-suicidal, thank you for worrying about me), these systems keep me alive and enable me to get back to my best as quickly as my brain will allow.
Calendar every time I need to be somewhere that is not my house or office, it goes in my calendar. I assume I’m at the office 9-5, and home otherwise. Everything else goes in the calendar. If it doesn’t make it to my calendar, I absolutely will not do it, or even remember that I was supposed to until days or weeks later.
Chain Calendaring keeps me motivated to do things every day that my brain would tell me I can just do tomorrow. That’s nearly everything that would improve my life and make me a better person, really. Sometimes I break all of my chains when I’m in a dark place: starting my chains back up is one of the first things I do when I turn the corner.
Pomodoro (do focused work without distractions for a set period, and reward yourself with a break after) and Eat That Frog keep me doing the things that I don’t want to do. Basically anything and everything about my jobby job, especially in times of darkness, but only slightly.
Checklists ensure that I will not forget to do things because I’m tired, in a hurry, or otherwise just not entirely with it. For instance, I have a checklist for my morning bathroom routine that includes “squeegee the shower doors and floor” because when I’m in a hurry or tired or cranky I will skip it, and it builds up. I have checklists for everything. Before I had a “boxing gym kit list”, I forgot one thing every training night and I haven’t forgotten a single thing since I started following the list. (Yes, I tracked this retroactively by looking at my chat histories with both my wife and my boxing partner.)
GTD is the big one, and this is the one that keeps me sane. Or at least, lets me allow myself to slip into dark mode periodically. When I’m at my best, GTD means that I’m always doing the thing I should be doing when I should be doing it and forgetting nothing. When I’m at my worst, I go into limp mode, and every thought I have goes into my inbox for triaging when I’m not at my worst anymore. Sometimes after turning the corner, I have a thousand items in my inbox. Sometimes I have two months of unopened mail in my physical inbox. (Right now my digital inbox is hovering around 300 items, and I have three weeks of unopened mail, but I’m starting to turn the corner.) Getting the thoughts out of my brain and into an inbox means I can get through my dark times faster and without spiraling out of control because I know that when I’m ready to deal with it, those things will all be there and I won’t have forgotten anything.
Now, tools. I deliberately left this for the end because the methods are the things that keep me sane. The tools come and go, and I’m currently switching mine up anyhow, but I have good news on that. My calendar is synced to my devices via nextcloud, and I use native applications on all of my devices. For chain calendaring, I currently use a paper calendar and draw in different coloured sharpies. I use my phone’s timer for Pomodoro. My checklists nearly always go on index cards because they’re the most durable, and I put the checklist where it needs to be: one’s in my gym bag, one’s in the bathroom on the shelf, most are next to my chair.
But, I’m replacing all of those with custom tools I’m building myself on Nextcloud because that’s the world I want to live in.
For GTD I currently use Nirvana, and a physical inbox. I don’t like it, and I hate that it’s hosted and owned by someone else. So I’m making my own GTD system (and other tools) which are backed/synced via Nextcloud. My GTD app is called FocusFrog, and I hope to have the MVP finished some time before the summer is over. One of the things that it will prominently feature is an inbox aggregator, so you can give it API keys or credentials for GitHub, Trello, Jira, your IMAP server, etc, and get a single view of all of the many inboxes in your life. Because I lean on my systems for everything, if you make positive noises about FocusFrog here, you’ll get an individual item in my “Launch FocusFrog MVP” project that says “tell username on losters about FocusFrog MVP” with a link to your comment. Because that’s the only way I can function in life.
As someone in a similar position to you, I have a similar setup. Lots of process keeps me moving when things need that much process to move anywhere at all. I tried writing my own GTD solution, but in the end I settled with the lowest-tech version possible: Manila folders and paper. The extra time and effort it takes to enter things prevent me from accepting commitments I can’t realistically entertain, especially when times are not so great as they are when accepting said commitment.
This, similarly, keeps me moving when it’s most critical, and I have been saved by my setups more than once.
I would very much so love to try your tool when you launch, I used to rely on OmniFocus, but since my personal preferences have shifted towards using Linux as OS, it’s become less and less attractive, and so I eventually transitioned away.
Thank you for your elaborate post, from someone in a similar position. :)
Thanks! It’s always nice to hear from folks in similar situations.
Amusingly, I had an immediate negative reaction to “Lots of process…” because I have a kneejerk negative reaction to the word “process”, but also because I hadn’t considered these workflows to be heavy in “process.” I genuinely consider them to be the lightest thing that will possibly work: lists, with context. It was an interesting experience to read that, and have that realization about myself and my workflows. :)
I also used OmniFocus when I was a Mac user, and loved it. My ideas are actually inspired by the amazing workflow I was able to achieve using OmniFocus and the collection of synchronization tools you’ll find over here: https://github.com/seattlerb?utf8=%E2%9C%93&q=omni&type=&language= I am hoping that with FocusFrog I can optimize the Collection with aggregation of Inboxen, and the inbox processing with really good UX.
I know I’ll say something which is not super popular by a hacker’s standards (GUI apps, closed source etc) but this is what works for me :-)
My requisites are:
Has to work excellently offline since I need to work on the train
Must sync to the cloud so that I can access all info from my phone. However, phone input is not 100% necessary, as I usually carry my laptop, but I need to be able to quickly access notes and tasks on the phone.
As few apps as possible
Everything must be searchable
This is my workflow; I use a Macbook Air and an iPhone 4S which limits me somehow. I used a 5S and an Apple Watch but my Watch killed my phone. I honestly miss the Watch.
A notebook when I’m working and it’s rude to open up my laptop to take notes, e.g. when I’m meeting a client. In any case, I move all notes to Google Docs afterwards. My notebook is just a “draft”
Google docs for work. Everything goes here. When I need better formatting or compatibility I use MS Office and Keynote. Google Drive for Mac syncs my files.
Calendar.app for meetings and events that must absolutely be done at that specific time (not tasks!)
Things for GTD. All my tasks are there. The latest version is fantastic, an amazing piece of art, I can’t recommend it enough!
Tasks.app because I’m using an old iPhone which cannot run Things for iOS, so I brain-dump tasks there and import them automatically to Things when I’m on my laptop.
Notes.app for everything else, especially personal stuff – I use it like many people use Evernote
Stickies.app for ultra quick notes that stay floating on top of anything else, or to write down the status of projects – this is useful because I have a virtual desktop for every “project” and sometimes I leave them opened for weeks before I come back to them. They do not sync, but they only apply to applications in my laptop, so I don’t need to access them from my phone.
Mail.app for email. My inbox is not a task list anymore thanks to Things (read comment below)
My least-optimized workflow regards messaging – I need to use all of iMessages, Whatsapp, Signal, Skype and Telegram. Such is life :(
Other tips:
I’ve tried jrnl and org mode, but they don’t work on my phone, so I can’t use them
I use the same app for personal and work stuff (e.g. Things). I like when I can selectively disable notifications for specific accounts (e.g. Mail) but it’s not a requirement, I have enough willpower to ignore work notifications when I’m disconnecting
I used a heavily hacked version of IMAP inboxes for to-do’s. I wrote a script that created labels for days (e.g. 2018-05-23) and moved emails back and forth (like Boomerang) to surface them to my inbox for specific deadlines. I don’t use that anymore because Things has a shortcut to import mails into tasks and assign them a deadline. Furthermore, using mail as tasks is a bad habit. But I think my solution was clever enough :)
I have gVim on my dock and whenever I need to quickly edit any file I just drag it there. Formerly I used TextEdit.app for this, but gVim is better for most use cases.
I use Preview.app extensively to quickly edit images and PDFs. For heavy work, I use Pixelmator and Affinity Designer
I have a system built on top of workflowy. In there is my main gigantic tree of bullets and I truly have everything in there: personal, hobbies, work, packing lists, checklists, meeting notes, etc. I use tags to mark a handful of things that need attention soon, #p for personal and #w for work. I have a workflowy favorite that filters the huge tree down to just those bullets tagged as such so at any time I can fit on a single screen everything I need to get done near term. As that list gets small, I revisit the main things, reprioritize, and choose what gets tagged for completion next.
I have a daily routine thing similar to pushcx but it’s got a bit more smarts in it and it’s basically a template of a full week. So it knows what day of the week today and tomorrow are and allows me to tweak each day’s daily routine for weekly things like fitness class every Tue at 6pm, taking it easy on the weekends, etc. Each day I have a script that spits that out and I paste it into workflowy, cross-reference my calendar for any meetings/appointments to remember, and then just go about checking them off. My feelings on this are basically the same as pushcx’s: it’s helpful to have that and I’m pretty rigorous about it being realistic and achievable. There’s generally a morning and afternoon block for work and for that I switch to a particular project’s area in workflowy for the details and next steps for a particular work project.
I have a bunch of org files which are synced to my phone with SyncThing. These cover everything from my personal & work projects to chores like apartment cleaning & shopping. Most of these files are loaded into the agenda view, which is the primary way I consume these lists.
On my phone, I use Orgzly to read and, to a lesser extent, write to the files. I also export my agenda to an ICS file which is loaded into my Google Calendar for reminders.
I keep a reasonably detailed plan of my days in Google Calendar. I usually divide my day into a few slots for gym, work, and meals, as well as a few unallotted slots for downtime, reading, music & co. I find this helps me avoid procrastination, and keeps me focused on the task at hand.
One of the things on my meta-to-do list is replacing Google Calendar with a self-hosted solution.
Someone just mentioned this thread to me on IRC and I wish I’d seen it earlier because this article is no longer accurate for me. Owning a smartphone prompted me to replace Trello (it was very bad on my mobile browser when last I looked and it doesn’t have an app in F-Droid) with SimpleTask Cloudless, an app implementing the todo.txt format. I miss project colors, but otherwise am very satisfied by plain text. I’ve replaced the daily/monthly cadence with a daily/weekly/quarterly cadence. Daily habits are now tracked in the Loop Habits app. On busy/important days I do timeblocking that’s based on Cal Newport’s and the book Time Management For System Administrators.
And yet, with all this, I have not gotten around to the six-month-old task “write new personal workflow post +blog” or any other blog posts because they haven’t been a priority. No regrets - the strategy of priority is probably much more important than the tactics of workflow.
At work, I use OmniFocus. I’m very happy with OmniFocus, but don’t use my work computer at home so can’t also put home tasks in it. I don’t have a Mac at home so I can’t sync it.
At home, I usually just keep tasks in a notebook, I tried Bullet Journal in a loose leaf file but I’m not disciplined at keeping it up. And therein is the problem I have with all of these systems; I lack the discipline to keep them going. And then everything gets out of hand again, and then I need to find a system again.
Lots of index cards, legal notepads and moleskins.
index cards are for small things that will need to be organized.
legal notepads are for raw notes that usually dont live more than a couple days.
valuable notes get copied over into a moleskin with additional context and info so it will make sense in the future.
Mostly I just jot down ideas in my current notebook (I have scores of notebooks full of things) and that allows me to stop thinking about that particular thing because I’ll get around to organizing it into my todo list sometime very soon. Then, months later but also seemingly in the blink of an eye, I’ll remember that I wanted to do it and feel an oppressive guilt wash over me for never even starting it. The feelings of shame and regret swirling around all the tasks become denser and more opaque until they dwarf me and I live in their shadow every waking minute. There is no light here, only tasks. Melville knew my plight: “they heap me; I see them in outrageous strength, with an inscrutable malice sinewing them.”
I follow this exact workflow pretty much, but I skimp on the notebooks as an unneeded I/O step.
The savings in wasted paper I pass on to my therapist.
I mostly use notecards for that.
I use emacs’ org mode to do something kind of like GTD. Org Mode suffers from the same problem as much of emacs, that it’s so flexible and customizable that you can do anything you want, and so everyone has done something kind of different, and if you want real workflow tools you’re generally stuck spending a lot of time editing customization or writing your own. It’s also a real problem for good mobile support, because no mobile client will do everything that the full org-mode supports, so the audience for a particular set of mobile functionality is small. There’s a decent stab at a modern iOS org-mode app that syncs with dropbox now - Beorg - but I fear for its longevity.
The main things that are important in the system for me, is an inbox I can add to from anywhere, and a way to schedule TODOs in the future and repeating. Finally, support for a ‘review’ step is really important to make sure you’ve actually looked at everything recently. I use a bunch of fiddly custom org “Agenda views” for this.
I’d really love to have something that did what I need without being the endless pile of yak fur that is org mode and emacs, but I haven’t found it yet.
Thanks for asking about this, I have so many things to say about. I’m going to explain the methods I use, and then the tools I use to accomplish them. Please skip ahead to the last paragraph to learn about a GTD tool I’m working on.
The TL;DR: I make use of all of the following techniques in order of importance: Getting Things Done, The Checklist Manifesto, The Pomodoro Technique, Eat That Frog, and Chain Calendaring (or Seinfeld Calendaring), and a regular Calendar. Without giving details, I’m just going to say: when I am at my best, these systems keep me at my best. When I am at my worst (I often call it “the dark place”, non-suicidal, thank you for worrying about me), these systems keep me alive and enable me to get back to my best as quickly as my brain will allow.
Calendar every time I need to be somewhere that is not my house or office, it goes in my calendar. I assume I’m at the office 9-5, and home otherwise. Everything else goes in the calendar. If it doesn’t make it to my calendar, I absolutely will not do it, or even remember that I was supposed to until days or weeks later.
Chain Calendaring keeps me motivated to do things every day that my brain would tell me I can just do tomorrow. That’s nearly everything that would improve my life and make me a better person, really. Sometimes I break all of my chains when I’m in a dark place: starting my chains back up is one of the first things I do when I turn the corner.
Pomodoro (do focused work without distractions for a set period, and reward yourself with a break after) and Eat That Frog keep me doing the things that I don’t want to do. Basically anything and everything about my jobby job, especially in times of darkness, but only slightly.
Checklists ensure that I will not forget to do things because I’m tired, in a hurry, or otherwise just not entirely with it. For instance, I have a checklist for my morning bathroom routine that includes “squeegee the shower doors and floor” because when I’m in a hurry or tired or cranky I will skip it, and it builds up. I have checklists for everything. Before I had a “boxing gym kit list”, I forgot one thing every training night and I haven’t forgotten a single thing since I started following the list. (Yes, I tracked this retroactively by looking at my chat histories with both my wife and my boxing partner.)
GTD is the big one, and this is the one that keeps me sane. Or at least, lets me allow myself to slip into dark mode periodically. When I’m at my best, GTD means that I’m always doing the thing I should be doing when I should be doing it and forgetting nothing. When I’m at my worst, I go into limp mode, and every thought I have goes into my inbox for triaging when I’m not at my worst anymore. Sometimes after turning the corner, I have a thousand items in my inbox. Sometimes I have two months of unopened mail in my physical inbox. (Right now my digital inbox is hovering around 300 items, and I have three weeks of unopened mail, but I’m starting to turn the corner.) Getting the thoughts out of my brain and into an inbox means I can get through my dark times faster and without spiraling out of control because I know that when I’m ready to deal with it, those things will all be there and I won’t have forgotten anything.
Now, tools. I deliberately left this for the end because the methods are the things that keep me sane. The tools come and go, and I’m currently switching mine up anyhow, but I have good news on that. My calendar is synced to my devices via nextcloud, and I use native applications on all of my devices. For chain calendaring, I currently use a paper calendar and draw in different coloured sharpies. I use my phone’s timer for Pomodoro. My checklists nearly always go on index cards because they’re the most durable, and I put the checklist where it needs to be: one’s in my gym bag, one’s in the bathroom on the shelf, most are next to my chair.
But, I’m replacing all of those with custom tools I’m building myself on Nextcloud because that’s the world I want to live in.
For GTD I currently use Nirvana, and a physical inbox. I don’t like it, and I hate that it’s hosted and owned by someone else. So I’m making my own GTD system (and other tools) which are backed/synced via Nextcloud. My GTD app is called FocusFrog, and I hope to have the MVP finished some time before the summer is over. One of the things that it will prominently feature is an inbox aggregator, so you can give it API keys or credentials for GitHub, Trello, Jira, your IMAP server, etc, and get a single view of all of the many inboxes in your life. Because I lean on my systems for everything, if you make positive noises about FocusFrog here, you’ll get an individual item in my “Launch FocusFrog MVP” project that says “tell username on losters about FocusFrog MVP” with a link to your comment. Because that’s the only way I can function in life.
As someone in a similar position to you, I have a similar setup. Lots of process keeps me moving when things need that much process to move anywhere at all. I tried writing my own GTD solution, but in the end I settled with the lowest-tech version possible: Manila folders and paper. The extra time and effort it takes to enter things prevent me from accepting commitments I can’t realistically entertain, especially when times are not so great as they are when accepting said commitment.
This, similarly, keeps me moving when it’s most critical, and I have been saved by my setups more than once.
I would very much so love to try your tool when you launch, I used to rely on OmniFocus, but since my personal preferences have shifted towards using Linux as OS, it’s become less and less attractive, and so I eventually transitioned away.
Thank you for your elaborate post, from someone in a similar position. :)
Thanks! It’s always nice to hear from folks in similar situations.
Amusingly, I had an immediate negative reaction to “Lots of process…” because I have a kneejerk negative reaction to the word “process”, but also because I hadn’t considered these workflows to be heavy in “process.” I genuinely consider them to be the lightest thing that will possibly work: lists, with context. It was an interesting experience to read that, and have that realization about myself and my workflows. :)
I also used OmniFocus when I was a Mac user, and loved it. My ideas are actually inspired by the amazing workflow I was able to achieve using OmniFocus and the collection of synchronization tools you’ll find over here: https://github.com/seattlerb?utf8=%E2%9C%93&q=omni&type=&language= I am hoping that with FocusFrog I can optimize the Collection with aggregation of Inboxen, and the inbox processing with really good UX.
Been using jrnl to keep notes of things I’ve done or ideas I intend to execute on.
jrnl is great. I use it as my personal journal.
I like posts like these!
I know I’ll say something which is not super popular by a hacker’s standards (GUI apps, closed source etc) but this is what works for me :-)
My requisites are:
This is my workflow; I use a Macbook Air and an iPhone 4S which limits me somehow. I used a 5S and an Apple Watch but my Watch killed my phone. I honestly miss the Watch.
A notebook when I’m working and it’s rude to open up my laptop to take notes, e.g. when I’m meeting a client. In any case, I move all notes to Google Docs afterwards. My notebook is just a “draft”
Google docs for work. Everything goes here. When I need better formatting or compatibility I use MS Office and Keynote. Google Drive for Mac syncs my files.
Calendar.app for meetings and events that must absolutely be done at that specific time (not tasks!)
Things for GTD. All my tasks are there. The latest version is fantastic, an amazing piece of art, I can’t recommend it enough!
Tasks.app because I’m using an old iPhone which cannot run Things for iOS, so I brain-dump tasks there and import them automatically to Things when I’m on my laptop.
Notes.app for everything else, especially personal stuff – I use it like many people use Evernote
Stickies.app for ultra quick notes that stay floating on top of anything else, or to write down the status of projects – this is useful because I have a virtual desktop for every “project” and sometimes I leave them opened for weeks before I come back to them. They do not sync, but they only apply to applications in my laptop, so I don’t need to access them from my phone.
Mail.app for email. My inbox is not a task list anymore thanks to Things (read comment below)
My least-optimized workflow regards messaging – I need to use all of iMessages, Whatsapp, Signal, Skype and Telegram. Such is life :(
Other tips:
Well, that was longer than expected. Feel free to ask me anything!
I have a system built on top of workflowy. In there is my main gigantic tree of bullets and I truly have everything in there: personal, hobbies, work, packing lists, checklists, meeting notes, etc. I use tags to mark a handful of things that need attention soon, #p for personal and #w for work. I have a workflowy favorite that filters the huge tree down to just those bullets tagged as such so at any time I can fit on a single screen everything I need to get done near term. As that list gets small, I revisit the main things, reprioritize, and choose what gets tagged for completion next.
I have a daily routine thing similar to pushcx but it’s got a bit more smarts in it and it’s basically a template of a full week. So it knows what day of the week today and tomorrow are and allows me to tweak each day’s daily routine for weekly things like fitness class every Tue at 6pm, taking it easy on the weekends, etc. Each day I have a script that spits that out and I paste it into workflowy, cross-reference my calendar for any meetings/appointments to remember, and then just go about checking them off. My feelings on this are basically the same as pushcx’s: it’s helpful to have that and I’m pretty rigorous about it being realistic and achievable. There’s generally a morning and afternoon block for work and for that I switch to a particular project’s area in workflowy for the details and next steps for a particular work project.
I have a bunch of org files which are synced to my phone with SyncThing. These cover everything from my personal & work projects to chores like apartment cleaning & shopping. Most of these files are loaded into the agenda view, which is the primary way I consume these lists.
On my phone, I use Orgzly to read and, to a lesser extent, write to the files. I also export my agenda to an ICS file which is loaded into my Google Calendar for reminders.
I keep a reasonably detailed plan of my days in Google Calendar. I usually divide my day into a few slots for gym, work, and meals, as well as a few unallotted slots for downtime, reading, music & co. I find this helps me avoid procrastination, and keeps me focused on the task at hand.
One of the things on my meta-to-do list is replacing Google Calendar with a self-hosted solution.
I wrote a piece on this: https://zwischenzugs.com/2017/12/03/how-i-manage-my-time/
I’m using tasks on Nextcloud for work stuff, and a series of activity-oriented tabs in Sublime text for personal/smaller things.
I try to move away from lists in sublime text, but I always end up coming back.
Someone just mentioned this thread to me on IRC and I wish I’d seen it earlier because this article is no longer accurate for me. Owning a smartphone prompted me to replace Trello (it was very bad on my mobile browser when last I looked and it doesn’t have an app in F-Droid) with SimpleTask Cloudless, an app implementing the todo.txt format. I miss project colors, but otherwise am very satisfied by plain text. I’ve replaced the daily/monthly cadence with a daily/weekly/quarterly cadence. Daily habits are now tracked in the Loop Habits app. On busy/important days I do timeblocking that’s based on Cal Newport’s and the book Time Management For System Administrators.
And yet, with all this, I have not gotten around to the six-month-old task “write new personal workflow post +blog” or any other blog posts because they haven’t been a priority. No regrets - the strategy of priority is probably much more important than the tactics of workflow.
Badly.
At work, I use OmniFocus. I’m very happy with OmniFocus, but don’t use my work computer at home so can’t also put home tasks in it. I don’t have a Mac at home so I can’t sync it.
At home, I usually just keep tasks in a notebook, I tried Bullet Journal in a loose leaf file but I’m not disciplined at keeping it up. And therein is the problem I have with all of these systems; I lack the discipline to keep them going. And then everything gets out of hand again, and then I need to find a system again.
I have a TODO file in my home directory for generic tasks and separate TODO files in the target project directories.
Lots of index cards, legal notepads and moleskins.
index cards are for small things that will need to be organized. legal notepads are for raw notes that usually dont live more than a couple days. valuable notes get copied over into a moleskin with additional context and info so it will make sense in the future.
I recently tried out https://workflowy.com/ . I really like the simplicity and flexibility.