I Wasted 43 Hours Picking a Damn Note-taking App
But I finally got it - hopefully!
Is there anything more devastating to the soul than heartbreak? Selecting a damn notetaking program.
No, really. I’m not even trying to be dramatic.
I have wasted forty-three hours of my otherwise perfect life—hours I will never get back—scrolling through subreddits, watching over-caffeinated nerds compare things on YouTube, and repeatedly reading Medium articles with the same five screenshots in an attempt to find the answer to the surprisingly straightforward question, “What’s the best notetaking app?”
But the truth is there isn’t a “best.” The one who damages your life a little less than the others is the only one.
Evernote — My Long-Term Toxic Relationship
I spent ten friggin years on Evernote. That is longer than the average marriage.
I fell in love with a productivity tool for the first time — if you can call a green elephant with sync problems “love.”
Hey, Evernote was the best back then.
I filled Evernote with receipts, notes, ideas, reminders, diaries, book highlights, half-written love letters (don’t read them), screenshots, and recipes I’ve never tried.
I had a second brain.
My second brain is disorganized, clumsy, and a little erratic.
However, it began to exhibit signs of weakness, much like most relationships that started in the 2010s.
And I mean by cracks:
I wanted to toss my phone into traffic because of the sync issues.
A user interface that seems to have been created by a blind raccoon.
Windows 98 seemed snappy due to its slow start.
These are features that I never requested, utilized, or desired.
Increases in prices that amounted to emotional extortion.
I opened it one day, and it felt strange.
You know, like, “Why the hell are you breathing so loud?” when you’re lying next to someone you used to adore.
I thus decided to move on.
Notion — The Sexy Disappointment
Now, let’s talk about Notion.
Smooth.
Contemporary.
Awesome typefaces.
Lovely icons.
Instagrammable.
Every productivity geek raved about it as if it had given them radiant skin, healed their ADHD, and improved their credit score.
And I was duped. Hard.
The first week? I was intoxicated. Like, “Hey, maybe I do need a daily mood tracker and a visual database for my cat’s bowel movements.”
Until I lost sight of my original goal, I constructed dashboards, made templates, and nested pages within nested pages inside other nested pages.
Then reality set in.
I had no desire to develop a second brain. I want to make use of one.
It’s like being handed an Ikea truck full of stuff and told, “Go build your dream mansion.”
At first, it sounds enjoyable. It ends with you sobbing on the ground while surrounded by screws, wondering what went wrong.
Call me outdated, but I don’t want to wait three seconds for a page to load if I want to write anything down.
I’ll have enough time to forget my thoughts. It occurs often since I have more tabs open in my head than in Chrome.
So, yes. Notion and I? Hot start. Chilly cotillion.
We were that Tinder match with no long-term compatibility and too much promise.
The 43-Hour Spiral
You enter the Tool Limbo once you see that your new system is unsustainable and your old one is terrible.
It is dark. It’s a mess. And it’s chock-full of the type of stuff that makes you wonder whether you’re sane:
“Top 10 note apps ranked by aesthetics and serotonin levels”
“Obsidian vs. Notion vs Bear vs Roam vs your will to live”
Debatin.g indentation logic like it’s a political philosophy in Reddit posts with 400 comments
YouTubers who have $400 keyboards, wall-sized monitors, and too much spare time to explain why you’re the issue if your setup doesn’t resemble a sci-fi control room.
I tried everything: Bear, Obsidian, Notes from Apple, Google Keep, Logseq, Joplin, and Zoho.
I rage-deleted a handful in five minutes, so I can’t recall them.
They all began with optimism. They all ended in anger.
A few were too unsightly. Some are too simplistic.
Others need a PhD to function. On Windows, some didn’t function.
Some failed to sync with Android, and some were useless nonsense.
And I felt like a notetaking home waiting for the next dopamine rush for forty-three hours, unable to commit, trapped in this digital hellscape.
Craft — Finally, Some Peace
Then I discovered Craft.
I was first dubious. Such as, “Oh great, another pretty face.”
However, after using it for ten minutes, I exclaimed aloud — to no one — “Wait. This doesn’t suck, it does i.ened quickly. It was sanitized.
I didn’t have to connect eight separate APIs or take a blood oath for it to function on all of my devices.
Don’t set up hell—no ment—acrobatics. Open, write, and finish.
It doesn’t make an effort to be all things, which I adore.
It has enough features to be effective, but not enough to be a full-time, unpaid job.
The design is seductive without being overt, like a like or who understands when to stop talking.
Sync is perfect. My phone appears as soon as I input anything on my laptop.
It feels more like writing than fucking oil rig project management.
Craft moves aside. And its rarity cannot be overstated. Most encourage you to study, experiment, and admire them.
Craft? Craft wants you to put your thoughts in writing.
The Real Things I Learnt
I could say, “Go use Craft,” to wrap this up, but it would be a waste of time.
The point is that, rather than implementing the system, we are all out there looking for the ideal one.
Rather than thinking, I was thinking more about how to think.
My obsession was finding the technology that would enable me to be productive rather than just being productive.
And I understand that we want everything to be attractive, seamless, and straightforward. We want a sense of control.
However, what if selecting a note-taking tool takes up more time than actually taking notes? Congratulations! Your productivity has been boosted.
Avoid being like me.
Don’t squander forty-three hours of your life creating dashboards no one will ever see, testing shortcut keys, and comparing iconography.
What matters most is this:
Is it quick to load?
Do you find it enjoyable to use?
Without sobbing, do you remember what you wrote two weeks ago?
Is it compatible with your laptop, phone, and maybe that old iPad you forgot you had?
Congratulations if the response is yes. You have discovered your system.
Do the darn job now.
Epilogue: Will I Stick With Craft?
To be honest? I believe so. Three months have passed. In terms of notetaking years, it is essentially a lifetime.
But who knows? Maybe something better will come along that’s even easier and quicker and doesn’t require me to sacrifice a goat to sync between devices.
But for now? I’m getting along with Craft.
No nonsense. Not a drama. Simple, quick, and trustworthy notetaking. And that’s all I wanted after ten years of heartache.
TL;DR:
In my quest to discover the “perfect” notetaking software, I lost pieces of my soul and squandered forty-three hours.
Evernote let me down.
Thought tempted me, then drained me. I almost lost my mind. Then I discovered Craft. It functions. It’s not flawless. However, it gets the heck out of the way.
And occasionally? All we need is that.
Please let me know if you would want the second section of this, in which I demonstrate how I set up my Craft setup without coming across like an Adderall startup entrepreneur.
I have some hard-earned knowledge, templates, and techniques.
That is unless you guarantee that you would not enquire about Roam.
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Not trying to be rude, but how can I believe that you spent 43 hours picking a, "Damn Note-taking App" if you couldn't take a couple of minutes to pick out free stock images instead of using ai to put together the eye sores of images you used.