An Apple Notes Notetaking System You've Never Seen Before

0:00 Hey everyone, I hope you're doing well. It's been a long summer. I took some time off and school's back in session. So, let's get started. One of the things I've noticed recently with Apple Notes users is ways to organize your notes. And we all know we have folders, we have tags, we have smart folders, but we also have all these different methodologies, right? We have forever notes, we have parah, we have get things done, uh we have zeettocast, and these are all different methodologies to kind of organize your notes. But I would guess in your case, and definitely in my case, is that you have a bunch of side notes that really aren't fitting in the methodology that you've picked and they're just sort of these collections of things. They might be interesting ideas or articles or a place you went to or something like that. It just doesn't really fit anywhere in sort of a note

0:45 takingaking methodology. So, let me show you a 100-year-old system that helps fix this problem. So, the name of this method is systematic indexing. And as I mentioned, it's over 100 years old, developed by Julius Kaiser, who lived in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. And this was an innovative knowledge organization methodology that he developed. And it was largely only known by British industrial librarians until about the 1950s when the broader community of librarians and information scientists started to notice this this methodology. So let's take a look at it specifically and see how it works. The basic methodology that Kaiser used is very very simple. It's just concepts and processes. And all you're doing is tying those two to any kind of note as an index. And that note or source can be

1:32 anything. It's not structured in any way that's defined by a methodology. It can be free form. It can be just something you captured. And that's the real benefit of this method. And I think the best way to show this is with Apple Notes. And I'll show you what it what it means. Okay. I just have a general note here that I had captured for lighting on documentary film. And it's just something that was an interest. and I it was just some information. Now, this doesn't really fit anywhere generally because it's just a capture of some information and it has a link back and it has a tag for film. But let's take a look at Kaiser's method. Let's do a couple things here. What are the concepts in this? And then what are the process what I like to call action in this note as well. So the concepts

2:18 obviously here are documentary film. So let's just we're going to make that a new note documentary film. Okay, we're going to create that note. And the process action here is lighting. So it's we'll just call it um the action is lighting methods just so I remember that. Okay. So here's the concept. Let's move there. Here's the concept note. We know that was lighting methods. That's going to be the process. And then we're going to link right back to that cinematic lighting. And there's the note. And now when you look at this, you can say, well, wait a minute. What other kinds of processes do I have with documentary film? I might be

3:03 camera select, camera selection, or I might have um legal needs. And then maybe I'll have something on um scene setup. So you can see now I have a concept note. This is the concept at the top and then these are going to be the processes and actions. And as I continue to collect information about documentary film making, be it whatever process or action or thing that I'm doing with documentary film, I can add that process within here. And then of course I can just link back to the document itself. And then if I wanted to add say a PDF in here, I could do the same thing. I could link to that PDF on the particular topics. And obviously you can break this concept down into many sub subconcepts

3:49 if you want to. It's up to you on how you want to define those highle concepts. But in Kaiser's notes, he specifically says try to keep it as clear and concise as possible so you don't get a lot of confusion on that. All right, let's do something a little more innocuous. Here's just a general note I captured about a bookstore that inspired JK Rowling and Harry Potter. And this came from Reddit. And it's just a general interest thing that I that I put in my notes. Now again, it doesn't really fit in the methodology very well. It's just a thing on the side that I just have. And I went through and thought about Kaiser's method, and I captured two concepts in here, bookstores and Harry Potter that I might expand on in terms of actions with this. So obviously, one is finding bookstores while traveling. Um, another one might be fantasy, finding fantasy locations

4:36 generally outside of Harry Potter. But let's just say take the Harry Potter concept and I pre-prepared a note here. for you. So, you can see here under the Harry Potter concept, I have themed fantasy locations so that as I continue to collect those locations that might inspire Harry Potter, you can see you have the bookstore, you have a location in Scotland, you also have maybe thematic analysis, themes in the sorcerer stone, those kinds of things. And I can continue to expand those actions under Harry Potter if I want to. if there's other ideas or things that I want to do that are tied to that. So, I always think of these actions of things I want to do. Even if you say you go to a restaurant and you just want to capture that restaurant, it's an action of collecting information about

5:22 restaurants. That might be things of different ethnic types of food or different locations, that kind of thing. Okay, if you made it this far, you're probably thinking the same thing I was thinking originally when I started looking at this method. Is why can't I just use folders and tags to do this? Seems like the same idea, right? Well, not necessarily because first of all, you could create hundreds of tags that would tie to this, right? Do you want process tags? I I wouldn't want that. I don't want that many tags in there. And folder structures get difficult, especially if you get nested folders of different kinds of things. You could certainly nest folders with this same idea. Create a kind of a concept folder and a process folder, but I don't like navigating folders. I don't know if you do. And the other benefit here is that in the actual concept note, you can add

6:08 additional information. Now, you obviously could create a kind of a tag note and put information in there. But the nice thing about concepts notes is you can embellish those with other kinds of text and information. So, the more I used it and the more I thought about it, I started to see the real benefits here. You probably saw on some of those notes, I added the concepts tag. So, now I created a smart folder called concepts. I just click on that and I get a list of all the concepts for me. And now I can just go look at each one of those concept notes and all the processes underneath that. The other benefit here is how it ties back into these other methodologies, right? I could have a zetocast and on one side and then all these kind of ugly side notes that I capture, I can throw those into this concept format and then if for whatever reason I want to link from my zetocast

6:53 and out to that, I could. Or if I'm using Forever Notes, I could just link out to one of these concept notes out in there and and just utilize that. But at least gives me a way to organize all those random things. And I got to tell you, I got a lot of random things in my notes. Okay, for my last example, I just took a note from six years ago that I had captured just half-hazardly randomly, and it was about this 1949 special toaster with some unique engineering. And I look through this and I say, "Okay, what are the concepts in here? I'm not interested it to be modern toasters. I'm not interested in that or whatever sunbeam is or what other kinds of things would be in here. I'm more interested in engineering trivia. So, I would just create a concept here called engineering trivia. Jump to that.

7:39 Make sure it's a concept note to get into the smart notes. And then when I go to concepts, you're going to see it listed here with some other concepts. So, the process here is just collecting old analog ideas and we just of course link back to the toaster note and there we go and I can collect additional ones as I come across them. Okay, to wrap this up I have some final thoughts. Obviously I made some changes to Kaiser's method he was thinking a 100 years ago about manufacturing and I adapted this to Apple notes but some things still ring true. So number one keep concepts at a high level. He stressed this as a very important point because obviously if you create a lot of detailed subconcepts it's going to get just like folders. you're going to have too many of them. Next, try to think of common actions for

8:25 each. You saw that when I created a highle concept, I could think of other actions besides just the one note that I may have put in there. So, always try to think of some additional things that you might be doing for that concept. Third, use broad crosscutting tags for search. You may have noticed in some of these I did have tags and those tags help just with search that cross uh concepts and might cross your notes as well. Fourth, evolve this slowly. Obviously, you don't have to do everything at once. You could just start with some simple ones. See how that works. And the last one, clean up all those old random notes. So, this is a way you can evolve that this methodology very easily. Just find those random old things you collected, even if it's just an article or just a oneliner, and you can create a concept and tie

9:10 that all together and then get a little more structure around your notes. And I I have to tell you, I have found this vastly useful and I'm definitely going to adopt this. As always, I appreciate all you guys and the subscribers I've gotten so far. I'm sorry about the delay in the summer. It was a busy summer. A lot of things are going on, so I'm glad to get back to this. If you're new to the channel, welcome. And take a look at the other videos. Uh they'll help you with your Apple Notes work. And please subscribe. It doesn't cost you anything and it really helps the channel. So, I hope everyone's doing well. Take care and have a great day.