Number of tags per note

LeonardoSousa

Hey everyone, I've explored various methods to streamline my life, and I find the simplicity of Apple Notes and Forever Notes framework particularly appealing.

This brings to mind a meme I saw recently. With that said, do you limit the number of tags for each note? Do you maintain a master note for your tags?

Personally, I'm thinking about implementing a three-tiered tagging system to replicate a folder structure while ensuring I keep track of all my tags and prevent unnecessary duplicates.

Level one tags will represent the primary subjects, such as "Life Admin." Level two tags will delve deeper into these topics, like "Finances," while level three tags will only be used when absolutely necessary, for instance, "Tax Return." I might be overthinking this, which is why I'm sharing my thoughts.

How do you manage your tags?

tr4jan

LeonardoSousa With that said, do you limit the number of tags for each note?

Yes, to zero. Because I need things to be simple and lean.

LeonardoSousa Do you maintain a master note for your tags?

Based on the above: no. You can see which tags you have in the folder overview in Notes. What purpose would an extra overview serve? Redundancy?

LeonardoSousa Personally, I'm thinking about implementing a three-tiered tagging system to replicate a folder structure while ensuring I keep track of all my tags and prevent unnecessary duplicates.

….

Sounded quite enticing to me at first glance. But as you proceed describing your idea I feel like this would just add further complexity. For me, a functioning folder structure (which almost no one has) is more effective and efficient -especially more lean- than any system with just links, tags, smart folders aso. A question of the respective use case, I assume. Thx for sharing though. I'm sure that other Foristi will be able to answer your questions in a more encouraging way as they use the F*N system more extensively than I do.🖖🏼

As for the picture: You see this kind of meme every now and then. I haven't seen one yet that is really accurate. It conveys a rudimentary message, but is incorrect in terms of scope and depth. A notes app... replaces next to none dedicated apps in terms of depth (including, for example One-Note, Drive, Adobe, Notion aso. shown in the meme). But sure, the more superficial and less complex the demand, the more likely I am to write things down on a piece of paper – that's correct.

LeonardoSousa

tr4jan

Hey, thank you for getting back 🙂 Your message is not discouraging at all. I want to learn how people handle the knowledge they accumulate over their lives, especially in knowledge-based professions like mine.

As for the meme, personally, I take it more as a representation of a journey. When we really get into a topic, we tend to look for fancy tools and end up building complicated setups. Sometimes, we focus so much on the system that we forget the actual information is what really matters. That was my case, I'm getting back to the basics.

Regarding the 3-tag system, once I implement it, I'll share some insights about it; maybe it can help some. You mentioned that you utilize folders. How do you organize them?

tr4jan

LeonardoSousa When we really get into a topic, we tend to look for fancy tools and end up building complicated setups. Sometimes, we focus so much on the system that we forget the actual information is what really matters.

💯

LeonardoSousa You mentioned that you utilize folders. How do you organize them?

For reasons of convenience, I keep (only) most of my knowledge management in Apple Notes. I have a "Notes" and an "Archive" folder. So kinda everything is stored just at the top note level. The reason I don't use tags is because the Notes search function gives me everything I need, as long as I can remember even one word from the note I'm looking for. Thousands of notes, no problem.

When it comes to data levelling, I also prefer a triad (e.g. on my file servers), which only have three folders at the top level.

1/ Work data (stuff worked on at present)
2/ Reference data (data for to lookup sth. at a time)
3/ Archive data (archive)

Yeah, whatever comes out of the "Tag kitchen", be sure to share it 😄 . A forum like this is always a wonderful Petri dish for new ideas…

thomas_h

@LeonardoSousa

You're speaking my mind.

What I find lacking in Apple Notes are parent tags.

I find a simple alphabetical sorting of all tags rather confusing and wish I could group them.

And yes, I could put a number in front of each one, but that doesn't look very nice.

LeonardoSousa

thomas_h Once I get the system up and running, probably over the weekend, I’ll share it here. I’d really love to hear any tips or suggestions you have to make it better!

LeonardoSousa

tr4jan

A forum like this is always a wonderful Petri dish for new ideas…

For sure! As soon as I have something good to share, I'll do it 🙂

DimanaDervisheva

Hey @LeonardoSousa ,
Did you manage to find an answer to your tags question?
I just started the F✱N course (even though I had the system setup previously) and I've been cleaning up things.

The Tags are bothering me A LOT though.

I keep a note called ✱ Tags where I've written them out like so:

Life areas - Active/Inactive tags
Just to keep track of the tags I have in place

The issue comes with my Recipes notes 😃 There I have things like #Mexican #dessert and whatnot which creates unnecessary tag clutter but I keep it because who knows how I'm going to search for a recipe… Although, to be fair, I am not using the tags as a search tool as much. They only really come in handy if I want to create a Smart folder and that's rare..

MikeBrown

I'm new here and to FN, so apologies if this info has been shared before…

The tagging I saw in Matthias' videos at first reminded me of a decade+ old system for Evernote called The Secret Weapon, that was the creator's attempt to implement GTD using tags in Evernote. On https://thesecretweapon.org/the-secret-weapon-manifesto/setting-up-the-secret-weapon/ you can see the rather extensive list of tags he created. In Evernote at the time (not sure about now) tags could be nested hierarchically to create thematic groupings.

Notes' tags cannot be nested or arranged hierarchically, so you'd have to do weird tricks like starting some with a period or @ or suchlike since I think they sort alphabetically in a flat list. I think once you start adopting those kinds of tricks, you either want to simplify your aims or move up to a more complex tool like Omnifocus or Todoist that allows more dimensions for finding/sorting.