How to detect friction in your note-taking app?

[@Y-Soightnie]

That is a perfect description: Friction. I find friction in almost all the applications that offer "linking your thinking" solutions. I spend more time maintaining them than using them. For about 3 years I have used Obsidian. It is essentially a "note dump." I keep a Moleskine 3.5x5.5 and write notes that I eventually transfer to Obsidian. I try to relate them, but that is so tedious I just do the minimum. (But I keep those little notebooks all in a drawer.) P.S. Ms Pereira..I love your accent.

[@BiaResearcher]

Sometimes the friction comes from the app, sometimes it comes from the methods we are using. One example I like to give is to "organise notes". Organisation of notes can be super tedious or become a form of active procrastination. I used to become frustrated when organising my notes, that's why I changed it to "organising my ideas" (and that's where linking enters for me). Linking becomes a form of making sense of what relates to what rather than "structuring my notes" (if that makes sense 😅) I wonder if your friction with linked notes may be related to that. Also, thank you for your kind PS. It brought me tears (no kidding) 😊🙏🏻

[@helping_to_reach]

I think there is nothing bad in switching between app. As we do in research if something does not work for us, we change our method or design. But there is a difference in mindless switching, and knowing the true reason, why particular app did not worked for us. I think if we have proper valid arguments that why particular app do not suits our requirement for particular task. What do you think about that, please share. ??

[@BiaResearcher]

Yes, I agree. I have changed apps a few times and I don't regret it 😊 The problem, as you mentioned, is mindless switching, often with the hope that "the next app will be better" but without thinking "better for what?"

[@GustavoMontanha]

I find "app hopping" a destructive behaviour, I feel it's the same type of distraction you get from randomly scrolling through social media, and at the end of the day you're tired and empty, wasted time and energy. Sure, without trying how do you know if it's useful or the "best app" for you and your learning process? But that's more an excuse than a valid pretext. The focus should be on the objectives: are you in school and trying to pass a discipline? Are you a busy worker and need to learn continuosly from different sources and means? Are you a person who creates content or papers for journals as a living? One should take the time to master well one tool, and only after really mastering the tools, should we make the decision to improve our process. As such, I'm a strong believer on the power of sticking to a tool and having a strong community to help you really master the flow, the process and the tool. And, one needs to stop once in a while and evaluate: what are my results? How do I feel? What do I need to change and where?

[@BiaResearcher]

I agree. The app is a means to an end, and jumping from app to app without knowing what we are trying to do will just bring frustration anyway. Having said that, there is one thing we disagree on and one thing I would like to play devil's advocate about 😊 I disagree that we should master the tool (and fully implement that tool's process) before improving the process. That would be like using a hammer to fix a screw before we decide that twisting it is a better process. Some tools may throw our minds in the wrong direction to the point where our processes can't be optimised for what we want to do. So I believe, instead, that we should focus on our processes before fully focusing on a tool. Of course, to get started choose any tool, stay with it for a while, discover what you want, and then find a tool that suits your mindset and methods best. But it doesn't mean to marry the tool before thinking about the process. On the Devil's advocate side, there is one reason I find it useful to keep an eye on new apps, which is to: learn new ways of thinking. It doesn't mean to jump from app to app, but keep an eye on them. These new ways of thinking can provide a perspective on why we are finding friction in our processes, and then we can decide how to use our current app with that new way of thinking.