Why I've ditched my notetaking app
I used an app called Bear for taking notes, and when I did my once in a blue moon cleanup of Bear I realised something: most of my notes were useless.
They were either links, random notes, blog posts I'd already put up, some quotes, an old list of ideas for new blog posts, posts for my dear creative soul series, and random story ideas that I never worked on. All in all, there were only a couple of notes I still needed, the rest was trash.
I had a whole app I paid for (which would be extended in February) and I only had a couple useful notes.
I realised two things.
- Most of the notes I had were only for a specific time, or on a topic I was interested in at the time. This meant that most of the notes I had could be trashed.
- All my useful stuff, things I look at regularly, are in Tot. There are only seven tabs, one of them unused, the rest all serve a specific purpose.
I transferred all my blog and short story ideas to the lists I already kept in Tot, added the notes to the unused tab, added the few links I wanted to keep to my raindrop, exported the posts for dear creative soul to IAwriter (the app I use for my creative writing), added the few quotes I had to my digital commonplace book in Tot, and deleted the rest.
Then I deleted Bear and cancelled my subscription.
Now I have my notes I still need to reference in the tab in Tot, and all my lists etc live in other tabs.
I feel so liberated. I had no idea how much the long list of notes in Bear were weighing me down, mentally.
It's working so well.
And having all my notes in one tab in Tot makes it so clear what I need to keep and what can go. I add all the new notes on top and when I'm done, I check my list to see if things are still needed.
It's perfect for me.