what do you write about in your notes?
filenine asked:
i saw you made a post about using obsidian! the article you linked to about zettelkasten was very interesting.
i want to start taking notes to keep track of things, and i want to improve my writing. what do you write about in your notes?
Oh hey, my first ask! ❤️
It’s been about 5 months since I started using Obsidian and I’ve taken quite a few notes since then!
So, I have a few experiences to share about how that’s been going:
journal
Like I mentioned in my previous post, I typically record problems and how I address them in my journal. I also record what I’m doing, why I’m doing them, and what I intend to do next. This can help me remember why I might have done something a certain way months down the line — something that has actually helped me multiple times both in my indie work and at my previous job.
For example, we once had a major production outage at my last job. During the outage, I took notes on each step that we took. For example, I wrote down the exact SQL queries we used in our attempts to fix the database and the exact changes we made in the configuration of our web servers.
After the outage was resolved, we needed to report what happened to those who weren’t present during the entire outage and we also wanted to do a retrospective to discuss ways to prevent the failure from happening again. The notes I took during the outage made these tasks pretty straightforward to do, since I just needed to edit the notes I took into a more readable/narrative format. We also needed to clean up resources that were allocated (such as temporary test servers) and write stories for other issues we encountered that were less severe.
As another example, these notes are often quite nice to have when a coworker asks why the code I wrote 5 months ago works the way it does or when someone asks me to explain the thing someone else on the team explained to me several months ago.
In my indie work, I generally run into misunderstandings with the tools and game engines I am using instead. In those situations writing down the problem, how I fixed them, and why I think the solution works can help me when the official documentation doesn’t help me enough.
zettelkasten
Though I didn’t mention it in my last Obsidian post, I do use the Zettelkasten note-taking style as well. For these, I generally write down interesting information that I encounter that don’t really require a chronological retelling like I would normally do for my journal.
The notes really range in length and topic. Sometimes it’s notes about how a recipe I tried went (so I can improve on it later), a link to something I want to remember, or notes about a chapter in a book. Or anything else really.
For example, here’s a short note about something I want to remember:
Speed running:
- is fast actually fast? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iQ_tc3P2UDY&t=846sAnd here’s a longer, abridged note:
Skymines notes for teaching the rules.
General overview:
- What is the game about
- General actions you take: Acquire Cards and Helium-3, Research, Invest in Companies
Explain:
- The card market
- The bonus actions
- The technology
- The turn tracker
- The company tracker (some cards have shares)
- The company share value
- The player board, starting research, and starting hand
- (Do player setup, get crypcoin and 2/3 bonus markers)
- Explain phases: planning, action, and preparation
- Planning:
- Play up to 3 cards face-down
- Show how the other two slots become available
- Show the bonus tile
- Action:
- Flip all cards face up
- Doing some action will require you to flip cards face-down, but some actions will only count cards that are face-up. So you will want to think about the order of the actions you want to take.
- Choose one:
- Purchase cards and invest in company. Spend as many resource cards of one type as you'd like (can do partial), optionally buy one card, then spend the rest on any company tracks (you can split). Explain the company bonuses, how you count how much stock you have, and passive benefits don't stack
- Expand by spending all energy cards (cannot do partial), spend energy to cross lines or encroach on existing outposts, get benefits of spaces, then lay down the outposts. Explain the share price spots that cannot be covered.
- Research action. First, explain that points must be spent immediately and that points gotten at the same time through expansion are considered to be received simultaneously. You get Crypcoin for the left-most spaces. Show where the tiles go, A cannot go in A spaces. Any points you can't or don't want to spend can be converted to crypcoin. Three steps for the action: You can spend two coins to flip a tile face-down so that it has no requirements or rewards. Move the upload marker. Get two tech points. Get rewards of the tile you stop at. The scientist you're using does not count for the tile requirement. The round marker technologies cost money and give additional victory points at the end of the game.
- Field scientists, get two helium and one coin, and then one more for every two helium buildings for that company. The freelancer gives two helium and one more for every other field scientist.
- Bonus actions, explain majority spaces (the majority scientist tile counts both research and field scientists), then the ones you pay money for, then the ones that get you bonus tiles. Explain how the bonus +1 resource tile works
- Passing: pick up one discard pile, flip all cards face up, rearrange them, then move each card into the corresponding discard pile.
- Preparation phase:
- Reveal the next round research tile, move the coin into the bonus spot, return bonus tile and redistribute them as necessary, collect bonus markers, refresh card market.
- Scoring
- Count shares then multiply by value, helium score, research score (don't forget bonus points from research tiles).
- Whoever has the highest portfolio value is the winner.
Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jNRGp1ddCnIGenerally, these notes eventually get collated into a more “central” note (which I call “Subject Notes”) summarizing my current understanding of the topic, just like I do for the issues I run into in my dev journal.
For example:
# Note-taking strategies
I use [[meta/obsidian/obsidian|Obsidian]] to take notes, but there are many ways to take notes. This documents the note-taking strategies I use and how I practice them.
# Current Strategies
There are a few note-taking strategies I am currently using in this vault:
* [[meta/inbox-note|Inbox Note]]
* [[meta/journal|Journal]]
* [[meta/subject-note|Subject Note]]
* [[meta/zettelkasten-note|Zettelkasten Note]]
# Former Strategies
There are a few note-taking strategies I used to use:
* [[meta/development-journal|Development Journal]]; using the [[meta/journal|Journal]] strategy instead.
* [[meta/mutable-note|Mutable Note]]; using the [[meta/subject-note|Subject Note]] strategy instead.
# History
![[_data/zettelkasten/2023-05-27-2329-0500|2023-05-27-2329-0500]]
![[_data/zettelkasten/2023-05-28-1248-0500|2023-05-28-1248-0500]]
![[_data/zettelkasten/2023-05-29-0137-0500|2023-05-29-0137-0500]]
writing
Sometimes these notes help me with writing. They sometimes turn into blog posts, like this one.
However, I don’t really do that as much as I’d like (I should blog more). I’m not sure how useful all of what I said will be for writing, since most of this is geared to prioritize assisting me in my development rather than writing, but hopefully this will help inspire you to try something that works well for you.
I’m currently experimenting with a new note-taking style for world-building purposes for my next game lost contact which I suspect may be more helpful if you intend to focus on writing, but since I’ve used it for all of maybe two days I’m not certain that I have very many useful things to say about that quite yet.
