Part of this is a lot of research — what words should be quickest to access, where should there be room for customization, etc.
Andy Matuschak has this concept of a taxonomy of note types.
I took his general idea, let it roll around in my head for a while, and came up with a variant that meshes better with how my brain works:
- Ephemeral: log of ideas/observations, possibly related to a specific task/project.
- Prompts: an idea/observation to revisit later and expand on.
- Outlines: a structured collection of related thoughts, not yet a cohesive whole.
- Evergreen: More comprehensive in nature, often (but not necessarily) taking the other varieties and refining/consolidating them into a single cohesive but potentially still growing note.
Logbooks and waste books are good examples of ephemeral notes.
I've found that, in practice:
- prompts are often interesting things pulled from ephemeral notes.
- outlines are often expansions on prompts and ephemeral notes.
- evergreen notes are when I want to refine something into one cohesive document.
I've streamlined this website to allow me to make good ephemeral notes, and it's allowed me to easily go back and refine them later on.
I'm doing quite a lot of research for this AAC software, and I'm hoping I can use this page as a tool to refine my ideas while letting other people see them.