I use Obsidian with several thousand notes for everything "writing" (structured - studying, definitions, thinking things through, and unstructured - memorable moments, stories, people, random streams of thought). "Actionable" things (todo lists and tasks) have their own place. My motivation is quite similar - I feel like I just forget things. And it's been wonderful! It's so nice to write about a nice moment, and be reminded that it happened - small things you'd otherwise forget.
On a practical level the crucial features of what's been working for me for a few years now (inspired by Obsidian community and Andy):
* Notes have to be very clearly "bounded" - break things into smallest logical "statement" units, and interconnect notes instead of having behemoth notes with everything in one place
* Note titles have to be an explicit "statement or sentence summary of the contents, with relevant context" - which really helps with search / discoverability. E.g. "Browsers are the most common and visually advanced applications that make use of the internet, but there are also many others" instead of "Web browsers" or "Applications that use the internet". Or "The day I embarassed myself at football". An alternative of this is to have explicitly clear headings.
* The idea of putting notes into a "reverse spaced repetition" algorithm where instead of spacing things you've learnt further and further into the future, you are spacing things that are "fruitful" nearer and nearer in the future (and when you have less to add, further into the future, when eventually a note becomes "evergreen"). You then have a "queue" (mine is always packed) of notes that are due, and you pick them up as you like. This can be achieved with https://github.com/st3v3nmw/obsidian-spaced-repetition and is described better by Andy: https://notes.andymatuschak.org/zJrfPCbY7GcpV9asEc8NTVzXTAV4...
With the above things combined, I usually sit down just to write and unload things from my mind and enter notes into the (basic) "attention algorithm". That way I never stress about polishing notes, and there's always a time in the future when I come back to a note written a long time ago, make some edits, maybe split it into a couple of notes, clarify the title, maybe merge a duplicate (if something has come to mind twice, it's clearly important to me!!). With explicit titles I almost immediately know what the note is about, trigger new connections (between the time I've written the note and now, some other relevant thing may have surfaced which changed what I think or know, or I've come up with a clearer way to describe the same thing).
Your comment is such a great bait :D
As much as things could be really cool in VR, the simplest argument here is that as a human you can do much more than just look at things and listen to things...
I feel like a good way of seeing internet, and a lot of the global systems (fast food, porn, addictive video games, drugs etc.) we've created is that they amplify - the good and the bad - human nature. Too much of anything is unhealthy.
Many of these things are concentrated, always-available versions of an "important thing" - food, relationships, novelty, power fantasies.
These systems we've created aren't revealing anything new, they are just taking advantage of what triggers our brains the most.
I completely disagree with "controversy, outrage and out-group animosity" are our common goals. They are just some, among many, items effective at grabbing our attention.
I think when it comes to organising work / papers / notes, etc., over time you converge to more and more minimal tools, that do some particular thing really well and really fast, rather than continuing to use a more locked-in GUI version that hides limitations behind ease-of-use. Evernote is great - you just might find that you'll outgrow it at some point and look for something with a bit more fine-grained control.
I'm speaking from the point of view of having looked at using all the different flashy to-do lists, all the different 'revolutionary' note taking tools (including Evernote quite extensively), and now using Obsidian, which is basically an IDE for markdown with ability to link files to one another.
The simpler tools force you to come up with systems of organisation / linking if you want to do something more complex, but that's the great thing - you get to build your own system incrementally to a point where it's something that actually works really well for you. It's also Electron, so you can write your own plugins!
I've got the same exact pair - they are awesome, super comfortable and flexible.
It's important to note that as for any thin-sole shoe, it takes time to get used to what is much more like walking barefoot - your foot placement and posture changes, as you use the ball of your foot and your calf more. Think of it as the difference between running with a heel/neutral strike with padded running shoes and a toe-strike when running barefoot.
Re. longer hikes and rocks, the sole is well protected and quite tough - they are indeed built for hiking; consider walking briefer hikes in them for a while so that your foot / calf muscles to get used to the difference before taking on long and more exhausting hikes that increase the chances of a twisted ankle.
I've found ideas from Andy Matuschak extremely useful - https://notes.andymatuschak.org/About_these_notes?stackedNot...
On a practical level the crucial features of what's been working for me for a few years now (inspired by Obsidian community and Andy):
* Notes have to be very clearly "bounded" - break things into smallest logical "statement" units, and interconnect notes instead of having behemoth notes with everything in one place
* Note titles have to be an explicit "statement or sentence summary of the contents, with relevant context" - which really helps with search / discoverability. E.g. "Browsers are the most common and visually advanced applications that make use of the internet, but there are also many others" instead of "Web browsers" or "Applications that use the internet". Or "The day I embarassed myself at football". An alternative of this is to have explicitly clear headings.
* The idea of putting notes into a "reverse spaced repetition" algorithm where instead of spacing things you've learnt further and further into the future, you are spacing things that are "fruitful" nearer and nearer in the future (and when you have less to add, further into the future, when eventually a note becomes "evergreen"). You then have a "queue" (mine is always packed) of notes that are due, and you pick them up as you like. This can be achieved with https://github.com/st3v3nmw/obsidian-spaced-repetition and is described better by Andy: https://notes.andymatuschak.org/zJrfPCbY7GcpV9asEc8NTVzXTAV4...
With the above things combined, I usually sit down just to write and unload things from my mind and enter notes into the (basic) "attention algorithm". That way I never stress about polishing notes, and there's always a time in the future when I come back to a note written a long time ago, make some edits, maybe split it into a couple of notes, clarify the title, maybe merge a duplicate (if something has come to mind twice, it's clearly important to me!!). With explicit titles I almost immediately know what the note is about, trigger new connections (between the time I've written the note and now, some other relevant thing may have surfaced which changed what I think or know, or I've come up with a clearer way to describe the same thing).