People often do not have their notes with them when they could most use them.
Or they are in several different sources, which are then forgotten about. Which defeats the point of notes.
My solution for that is to only write notes in plain text (.txt
files).
These are application-agnostic, so you can read, write, and edit them in whatever application is best suited for it. For example, I read and write notes in nvALT, but I edit them in Vim because it was built to do that.
To ensure your notes follow you, keep a flat folder (no nested folders) in Dropbox called “notes” or “writing” or whatever you want to call it. Then save all your notes to that folder.
There are countless apps for phones and tablets and any electronic device to read files from a Dropbox folder and to save to that folder. I use nvNotes on iOS, but Brett Terpstra has a very comprehensive list of alternatives for iOS here. I’m sure Android users can find their own version of such a reader.
So with minimal effort, your notes follow you and because they are in an open and universal format, they will hopefully outlive any company going out of business.
I’m looking at you, Microsoft, with your .doc files.