The Joplin notes app is a relatively recent addition to my Desert Island Apps list, but I love it. One of my criteria for said list is that the application needs to be able to grow with you: as your experience with the application develops, so will you requirements, and the application needs to be a framework on which you can build new workflows to keep up with your ever evolving needs. Joplin is one of those tools where, pretty much every time I say to myself, "I wish it did this...", a little digging results in, "oh wait, actually it does!".
I have hundreds of notes, many of which go back a very long time. I have used multiple different note taking applications over the years, but thankfully (well, they were intentionally chosen for this reason) they are all based on simple to export plain text, so I have always been able to carry this corpus of information with me from one place to the next.
But recently I have been reflecting on the fact that I very rarely look at any of these notes. There is a small subset of items which represent a frequently accessed set of reference information, but beyond that, it is a black hole that I throw junk into and never see again.
So what's the point? Well, I breifly dabbled with the idea that maybe what I should do is get an AI to look over all this informational detreutus for me, and have it surface the hidden gems of genius I have stashed away in there without realising it. But it quickly became apparent that this was a pipedream. AI doesn't find my babblings any more useful than I do.
So really I started to to ask myself is it worth it? And then I realised - it is the process of writing these things down that is valuable. I could delete the whole set of notes and it would still have been worthwhile writing them. Because the act of writing is also the act of thinking (at least for me, maybe not for everyone). When I write a note I digest the information into its essential part and almost "read" over my own shoulder, learning as I write. And I find that I can't shortcut this process. Even if I already think I have an idea of what I am going to write, it is still, in reality, a vague fuzzy image until I actually write it down.
In fact, ironically, part of the reason I probably don't need to look at the notes is because the act of writing them cements them into my mind and makes them more easily accessible from memory - meaning that even though I don't need to look at the notes, if I didn't write them down, I probably would!
So I think I will continue, and just like this blog, it doesn't matter if no one reads what I write. I enjoyed writing it, and that's all that counts.