Notes. I really want to talk about notes.

And why it’s now more important than ever to take notes! Especially as I think less people than ever are now taking notes as, hey, you can “just prompt” things…

I’ve found something that works and I think is pretty nicely future-proof as well.

In some odd pre-existential crisis mindset, I’ve started to take WAY MORE notes than I used to. We know how the all-eating AIs are coming, so notes are a way to leave traces of my genuine thoughts and consumption patterns.

Notes of course are great for you to remember things, but they also serve as building blocks for anything you’re currently working on. That could be a grant proposals (Hello January ERC Deadline), a side project, or a paper — anything really!

And, increasingly, I am sure they can be used as fuel for an AI that REALLY will act as your second brain when you’re working on something. So, taking notes is also about forward-compatibility in some sense.

In the past, my note-taking regime has been a complete mess. Text files, Google Docs (funny story, I found a note to myself in Google Docs from 4 years ago…was pretty miserable back then it seems), Apple Notes, Google Keep, Pocket.

And the problem with these tools is that you just abandon them at some point and don’t bother to export. Then, just like that, a decade of your thinking and capture traces are GONE!

I’ve lost notes this way. We all have. It’s just how it goes with these platforms…

Why Plain Text Saves Your Future Self

I use Obsidian now (https://obsidian.md/).
Have for a while.

I’m even transforming every new paper to Markdown (https://github.com/datalab-to/marker) and adding to a separate Vault for academic writing-heavy tasks (maybe more on that later…)

And I love it for one very practical reason: everything lives as plain text files on my computer (ok, cloud, but still).

Just files.
Regular files.
That will open in any text editor, today or in 2050.

And I can delete from the filesystem if I feel like. Or edit. Or duplicate.
Old school.

And yeah Obsidian has plugins for everything. Which brings me to the system I’m here to talk about.

But let me first finish this coffee…hot, by the way. Yeah, summer’s over here too.

The Three-Tool Setup That Just Works

Alright, here’s what I wanted to share. Three tools, that’s it.

1. Shimmering Obsidian (Alfred workflow on Mac)

You know those thoughts you have at random moments? Just a random thing that comes to your mind, and it’s not exactly a todo-item or it’s not anything else that has a specific place in your heart (or computer)…Just an idea from some video, paper, or social media.. something you want to get back to but just “maybe.” Something you don’t want to lose but not really sure if you want to keep it either.

I used to lose all of those. Or send them to random places to rot.

Now I just hit a keyboard shortcut, type whatever chaos is in my head (or paste from clipboard of course), and it goes straight into a scratchpad in my Obsidian Vault. No opening apps. No “let me find somewhere to write this down.”

With this one: https://github.com/chrisgrieser/shimmering-obsidian!

Just brain-to-text.

Of course, this kind of relies on you being a fan of https://www.alfredapp.com/. Which you surely must be!

Right?!

Then every few days I randomly process the scratchpad. Sort the mess. Keep the good stuff, delete the garbage (most of it is always garbage).

But this is a great semi-permanent scratchpad, and way more importantly just a handy way to puke thoughts somewhere without distracting yourself with “all the other stuff” there somewhere (which is what happens when you open a software already full of your past notes…the temptation is just too big!)

2. Obsidian Web Clipper

This one’s saved me so much time lately: https://obsidian.md/clipper!

I’m writing a funding proposal right now. Wellbeing stuff if you care. And instead of bookmarking papers or copying paragraphs into Scratchpad.Docx that I’ll never find or open again, I use the Web Clipper with custom templates.

Hit the button. Choose my “ERC Proposal” template.
The whole page drops into Obsidian as a clean markdown file.
All those clipped pages just sit there, ready to use.

And yeah you know already how to use. Feed all Markdown (AI native format) to Claude –> start talking to the bunch of ideas in all that.

3. Claude Projects (for the revisits)

Here’s where it gets interesting.

Some years ago, it was impossible or at the very least absurdly time-consuming to visit your notes in-detail when writing something. 50 pages of scratchpad in a Word file? Good luck with that.

When I need to write the actual proposal in Overleaf (LaTeX is still the only real option for serious documents, sorry), I just grab my notes and feed them to Claude in a dedicated project for the proposal.

Not just “help me write about this thingy” but “study the documents I gave you as sources, and here are my half-formed thoughts around the subject at hands…now help me connect these ideas” + then I just ramble to the mic using SuperWhisper (https://superwhisper.com/).

The AI has real context, it has MY context and my thoughts.

And yeah I find this actually useful.

And there’s no Expiration Date

Overleaf, Google Docs, SharePoint (insert puke emoji here mentally please), all these different platforms where things live…. I am somehow way more happy when I have a trace of my doings in Obsidian, as text.

And the forward-compatibility benefit cannot be emphasized enough. One day (well, already now with NotebookLM) you can just feed it all to someone, and have a discussion with all your past traces.

With this in mind, I’m also trying to establish a habit of writing a daily note in Obsidian where I reflect on my mood, deep thoughts etc… Maybe some personal AI can psychoanalyse me in real time and see if stuff starts going (even further) South?

But that’s not working too well yet. Somehow I just don’t get in the mood for deep introspection with the keyboard. But that’s fine.

Happy with a pen and paper!

And I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that.