I like to try various note-taking tools, from early Evernote and Youdao Cloud Note, to later Shimo Document, Notion, Obsidian, Logseq, Agenda, Craft, Lattics, as well as Yuque and Feishu Documents. It can be said that I have experienced mainstream note-taking tools.
I am obsessed with experiencing them because I am trying to find an all-in-one note-taking tool to achieve the so-called All-in-one. But in the end, none of them could persist.
Therefore, I have to reflect on the purpose of pursuing All-in-one.
The answer is to gather all information in one place, switch applications less, and locate note content faster.
But after the emergence of AI, this answer has been upgraded to gather all information in one place and become a personal database, allowing AI to understand me better and provide more personalized solutions.
Whether it is the answer before the upgrade or the answer after the upgrade, to achieve All-in-one and enjoy the benefits it brings, the premise is to have enough personal information data, or in other words, enough notes.
The problem is, how can someone who is not so fond of recording and taking notes have enough notes?
Just like the principle of habit formation, taking notes requires consistency and a comfortable environment, which is created by note-taking tools.
However, the ideas behind each note-taking tool are different, and the environments they create are also different. Each person's preference for the environment is also different, so there will be problems where others strongly recommend a tool, but we don't find it convenient to use.
Tools serve a purpose. If we define the purpose of using note-taking tools as: taking more notes to build an All-in-one personal database, and then let AI provide personalized solutions based on our personal database.
Then, the first step, which is also the most crucial step, is to take more notes. In the past two years, flomo has been highly praised because it focuses on how to make us remember faster and more. flomo has become the tool I use to take the most notes, it is my inspiration and material collection library. Over the past three years, I have already recorded more than 1000 entries.
However, in order to make these records more valuable and turn them into my own insights, they still need to be organized, structured, and transformed into articles. flomo is obviously no longer suitable for this step. I need to find another tool that allows me to write articles smoothly. It should be like an editor that meets my personal aesthetics and habits. For example, I hope my editor can:
- Support Markdown
- Allow custom fonts
- Support block dragging
- Have a dark mode
- Support multi-column writing within the app
- Fast startup speed
- ...
Notion, Yuque, Agenda, and other apps cannot meet these requirements. Currently, I am using Lattics. You will also have your own preferences and requirements to decide which tool to choose as your editor.
After solving the problem of taking more notes, the second step is to work towards All-in-one, consolidating all the records and written articles into one place to create a database for AI.
Because it is a collection, it is more about executing operations rather than thinking and creating. Therefore, note-taking tools that serve as databases are more concerned about whether they support large amounts of data and AI analysis, rather than the writing experience.
Notion may be the most suitable tool on the market currently. It has a supreme position in the note-taking tool industry, allowing many information tools such as Readwise and Podwise to provide the option to export data to Notion with one click. Even flomo supported syncing memos to Notion a long time ago.
In addition, due to the abundant funding and strong team strength behind Notion, its progress in AI is faster than other note-taking tools, making it more suitable for personal databases.
In this way, All-in-one is divided into three steps, and each step can be completed using the most convenient tool available on the market, and finally, everything is consolidated together to enjoy the benefits of All-in-one.
Of course, this is just my personal experience and preference. If you are not afraid of recording and writing, and can write quickly, write a lot, and write well with any tool, or if you don't have the obsession with All-in-one, then you don't need to go through the same trouble as me.