[Framework Review] Forever ✱ Notes: Part 3
How not to forget what you ate five years ago.
Greetings, knowledge engineers.
Now that we’ve covered the most technical part of the system, let’s explore its spiritual and logistical aspects: the Forever Journal, its pros and cons, and using it on the go. Because, let’s face it, your best thoughts pop up when you’re out and about.
If you’ve missed them, here are part 1 and part 2 of this review.
Journal
Since the framework relies heavily on navigational linking, it could have opted for a simple sequential chain of notes, each corresponding to a separate day, connecting them with navigational links and, eventually, hub notes representing months and years. In a way, that’s precisely what
suggests you do, with a critical twist inspired by Forever Journal from Patrick @ New Prospectives, which, in turn, draws its inspiration from n-year forever diaries. I believe this is probably the best approach to digital journaling, and I use it, too.As a reminder, those classic 3- or 5-year diaries are notebooks with pages dedicated to a specific day of the year. So, when you open a page for the 24th of November, you will see it divided into three or five sections. You are only supposed to fill out the section dedicated to the current year. In other words, you’re flipping the diary from year-based to day-based, and that changes everything.
It’s a simple, ingenious idea that is surprisingly enriching. After one year of diligent journaling, you can A/B compare your current self with your past self, which we do nowhere near enough. This retrospection can be highly motivating. You might notice how, only two years ago, you were a lost teenager but have turned into an adult who has figured out many things today. It can remind you how much you struggled with the basics of the new language you decided to learn or how much you cared about a professional conflict you’ve now completely forgotten.
Reflecting on the past is vital for productivity and knowledge management. While it is generally best not to combine notes with your diary, the former can still include information that is good for periodic review, possibly leading to new notes or insights. This method is quite scientific and rooted in observation. This is why many esteemed thinkers and scientists maintain extensive notes they frequently revisit to discern patterns and inspire eureka moments.
Additionally, you might often refer to notes representing people or projects that are not part of your diary per se but which will contribute to your notes’ overall connectivity, termed a degree in the knowledge graph jargon. The more inbound and outbound links a node of your knowledge graph has, the higher its degree.
I have always felt that a diary is a continuation of my note-taking. It connects otherwise more sparsely connected notes and provides that temporal dimension to otherwise standalone atomic notes. I am convinced that your notes vault can also benefit from this “temporal glue” that has proved helpful for the thinkers mentioned above.
Although I still think the idea of an n-year diary is fantastic, I decided not to carry its analogue version around for minimalism-related reasons. Half the time, you’ll have blank paper. On most days, the only page that interests you is today. Even if you could modify your 5-year diary into a collection of separate sheets of paper, you could use a binder to keep only the strictly necessary sheets like some systems, such as Plotter, allow you to do. Yet, you’d still be bound by the limit of whatever page size you’ve opted for.
So, what do you do after five years?
You could add another sheet of paper to continue the sequence for this day, and that would be fine, but you’d always have some lingering blank space.
These are some reasons why keeping an electronic forever diary makes sense. Your digital notes will only be available for as long as necessary. It is forgiving of blank spaces should you interrupt your streak. Such a diary can last indefinitely, at least as long as the tool you use for it exists (yet another reason to opt for long-lasting formats such as plain text or Markdown).
…
Your Forever ✱ Notes journal part will be structured as an equivalent of an n-year diary.
Inside, you’ll see the division into years, going from the top to the bottom, with entries relevant to this day and the respective year.
From it, you can navigate to other related notes, such as the classic Home and the notes corresponding to the month, quarter, year, and calendar. Two additional links should enable you to navigate the previous and following days sequentially.
The extra month, quarter, and year notes mentioned above are a welcome variation from the classic n-year diary. Here, you can provide notes for each year at every level of abstraction. This way, you not only have visibility into the minutiae of daily granularity, but you can also zoom out to monthly and quarterly comparisons. The ultimate annual retrospective can be conducted in the year’s notes.
I find it a great way to keep a digital journal. The number of notes in the journal will be permanently fixed at 366 (because of February 29) for each day, plus 12 for the months, an extra 4 for the quarters, and an additional hub for the journal itself, totalling 382 notes. You will gain better visibility through at-a-glance comparison. You will automatically revise notes and always have everything at hand without carrying unnecessary bulk or moving sheets of paper from binder to binder. Most importantly, you’ll never forget what you ate that day five years ago.
Of course, you don’t need Apple Notes or the Forever ✱ Notes framework to implement this approach. A classic text document or a Markdown-based Tool for Thought can be an n-year diary.
Note: I don’t journal directly in digital form, even in front of the computer. There’s something particular about handwriting your thoughts and observations in the constantly open, aside-sitting paper notebook. This abstract effect is likely the lowest capture friction, but it could be something else. I don’t know. At regular intervals, I’ll transfer handwritten notes to the digital journal. This achieves several things at the expense of “wasted time”: short-term note revision, additional thinking, calligraphy, and touch typing exercises. I always hate myself for not having typed everything in the first place during such a transfer, especially if I’ve slacked for a few weeks or months on note transferring. This is how my brain works right now, but if you can work directly in digital form with the same level of creativity, all power to you.
What comes next are the pros and cons of the system. It is crucial, however, to note that they are a mix of framework-specific and Apple-specific advantages and shortcomings. I’m sure
would have made different design choices had Apple decided to adhere to the PKM rules and listen to the productivity community, which it might finally start doing now that the framework, launched on Peer List and picked up by the Verge, is gaining momentum. Nevertheless, Matthias’s hands are tied, at least for now. You can follow the evolution of the approach by following the RSS feed and various other means of staying current. The official website keeps you updated on what’s to come through the section dedicated to the roadmap.Pros
Forever ✱ Notes is by far the most visually appealing and creative way of circumventing the rudimentary customisation abilities of Apple Notes. However, compared side by side, it looks much like what early users of Apple’s HyperCard would have done with 8-bit graphics and three fonts. Kudos for sharing transparent PNG graphics to make notes look more Notionesque. Once again, it’s not all perfect, and the graphics show a noticeable thin border when the app is in light mode. There’s also a new Christmas gift graphics pack with sleek, unopinionated gradients if you prefer a less monochromatic look.
There is a quick way to create a new note: >>.
Apple Notes allows you to insert rich data types and renders them more conveniently than more generic text editors, including Markdown. Some note-taking apps support richer embeddings, such as videos, social media posts, or photo galleries, either out of the box or through extensions. However, in my experience, they don’t do as good a job as the Apple Notes app. Furthermore, many users want a pleasant and robust experience, even if it comes at the expense of total control. The opinionated design choices are precisely why many Apple users deliberately lock themselves in. However, this is not to everybody’s taste, and if you count yourself among those, I’ve also listed this lack of flexibility as a con.
If you can access the newly introduced Apple Intelligence, your notes vault could automatically become part of the knowledge base. This would allow you to “have a conversation” with your notes as we’ve always dreamed of, bringing you closer to having a PDL, or Personal Data Lake, available out of the box for “free.”
Given the limited customisation options, all Apple Notes vaults will be forced to look alike, which might or might not be an issue for you. Apple has always been opinionated, one reason for its software’s stability and robustness.
Cons
The onus of bi-directionally connecting notes rests with the note-taker.
There is no concept of a “blank” node. The note will always exist, even if it has no content. There is also no overview of all notes to detect those that require revision or completion visually.
Creating new notes and their links is not based on Wiki links. The introduction of new conventions feels like an additional cognitive burden. Now I must remember both the [[ and the >> shortcuts.
Apple doesn’t support nested tags, which is not a big issue for most; however, it is a significant drawback for the knowledge organisation needs of serious note organisers.
The ** shortcut mapping to ✱ might interfere with typing classic Markdown, where this character combination begins the bolded text string. If you use more advanced Markdown editors that automatically close corresponding modifiers, or if you’ve configured this additional behaviour yourself, you might accidentally end up with two Forever ✱ Notes signifiers where you don’t want them. This annoyance is easily overcome by mapping the result to a different character combo. And, of course, you can map your shortcut to any symbol other than ✱, customising it even further.
Apple Notes’ visual formatting is still quite rudimentary. It comes close to what I can do with basic markdown but falls short compared to what can be achieved with additional extensions and custom stylesheets. For some, however, this will be a positive aspect. Many applications have deliberately chosen to remain opinionated regarding visual rendering and only offer minimal fonts, colours, or block options. Nevertheless, this allows for more robust support of all of the above. Things look similar, yet they are beautiful, and they rarely break. Since this “tyranny” is a significant part of why many opt for the Apple ecosystem anyway, I have included this constraint as a pro.
There’s no way to keep several thoroughly segregated knowledge vaults apart from storing them in different folders within the same app. This might not be a big deal for most. Still, I tend to separate language learning, work, personal finances, music, thinking, etc., into databases I can access whenever needed and tuck away to declutter visual real estate. Not so with Apple Notes.
Maintaining hub notes is a chore without any hint of templating or automation.
One indicator that the integration is not yet where it should be is that many people use Apple Notes for to-dos instead of Apple Reminders, diaries instead of Apple Journal, and event planning instead of Apple Calendar. This will change as I witness a gradual blend of reminders with the calendar and mail with notes. So, it’s trending in the right direction but remains insufficient at the time of writing.
Taking Notes on the Go
Perhaps the most noticeable differentiating factor is the management of notes on mobile devices.
Although all the tools I use have companion apps, a mandatory requirement for anything I decide to use in the long term, none of the third-party ones come close to the comfort of using Apple Notes on a phone or tablet, which I also do not own.
I thought I’d use Scrivener mobile on a phone with a thin, wireless mini-keyboard, but I never do. On a train or a plane, I use a laptop. I thought I’d write on the go using dictation, but although it’s theoretically possible, I’m never in a secluded place with nobody eavesdropping. The awkwardness of this situation prevents me from using dictation for long mobile writing sessions. Instead, I’ll record a short voice note on the run or ask Siri to create a new note for me and dictate it into, you guessed it, Apple Notes. So far, it’s the best Zettelkasten “inbox” I have.
Then, I’ll move ideas around depending on whether they belong to my notes vault or long-form writing. Every day, I open Scrivener’s mobile companion app to sync what I wrote for peace of mind, which turns this beautiful companion app into a glorified third or fourth backup. This might change, but Scrivener is a complex, bloated professional application that’s difficult to make ergonomic on mobile screens, even large ones like mine.
DEVONthink is a brilliant document management system with a mobile companion app on steroids, but I no longer use it for writing. I never really did. Even if I decided to do so, for some reason, it would still feel like a less native approach that does not integrate as smoothly into the operating system as the native application. I have built custom Apple Shortcuts to be triggered upon a double and triple tap on the back of the phone for a quick note. I can use a smartwatch complication to trigger those scripts from my wrist, but something prevents me from using them beyond a few initial days of excitement.
Obsidian’s companion app is perhaps the least usable for data entry. It’s also the slowest of them all. However, I often use it as a visual prop when I need a knowledge graph to convey a specific message. I have noticed that people instantly understand something complex when presented in this form. As I constantly state, humans think in graphs, so this is, by far, one of the most eloquent ways to communicate that I have found thus far.
For example, when talking to Chinese speakers, I often pull out my Mandarin learning Obsidian vault, where words are interconnected and show them the graph. Then I pompously say: “This… is Chinese.” The instant eyebrow-raising with a “wow” is worth every minute of tedious effort invested in building that vault.
In mobile note-taking or management, the goal is to make the path between the spark of an idea and its recording in the knowledge system’s inbox as instantaneous as possible. So far, the closest I’ve come is to press the physical smartwatch crown to activate Siri and say, “Create a new note,” followed by what I wish to convey.
That’s it for this week, knowledge engineers. I hope you’re enjoying the journey into Forever ✱ Notes and perhaps even adopting it as we go.
Speaking of adoption, the next (and last) part of this lengthy review is dedicated to answering the ultimate question: Is this system for you, and if so, how should you adopt it?
So, see you all at the next instalment.