Comment by jasode

>do folks review their notes at all? I suspect back links aren’t the actual problem. During undergrad, I found I rarely reviewed my class notes,

Discussing the word "notes" is not easy because it encompasses a bunch of different uses.

- (1) notes as transcription of an external source or memorization aid: e.g. a professor might say something and a student writes that down. Or one comes across a fact and makes a note of it.

- (2) notes to organize internal thought: a canvas for generating/synthesizing/connecting/etc ideas. Things like personal commentary on topics, weighing pros/cons of different future actions, drafts of song lyrics, research ideas, etc.

I think your comment is mostly based on thinking of notes as (1). A lot of people that constantly review notes are talking about category (2).

Sometimes when I spend an hour trying to figure out the right ffmpeg command line options or Linux "find" syntax that works correctly, I'll copy paste those as "notes" in my "tipsandtricks.txt" file. Those feel like a combination of (1) and (2).

Also, if the mental model of "notes" is dominated by (1), it would seem like having a hypothetical universal recording tool combined with a more complete search engine would make note-taking obsolete. I mentioned in a previous comment that such a search engine still wouldn't handle type (2) notes: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30153479