In reply to Indexing, filing systems, and the art of finding what you havee by Austin Kleon
What I have started doing last April, following a tip by Wouter Groeneveld during the first Dutch language Obsidian meet-up, is scanning notebooks (I use a camera above the notebook activated with a foot button, so you can quickly flip through it). Those scans are available as a folder in my notes app (obsidian.md), where I work through them to create an index first, and to turn them into notes within my digital system later when it becomes useful / of interest.
A writer has to have a system for going back through old work and finding ideas….
But I have a ton of material that never makes it online, and I need to get it out of my notebooks and into an indexed and fully searchable system. I think this will be easiest if I do it as I go, and keep it simple: the minute I finish a notebook, go back and type the whole thing into a .txt file and save it. (And back it up.)
I suspect that rather than being totally dreary, this transcribing step can also be a creative step, and I will see patterns of thought, generate new ideas…
Austin Kleon
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