As a designer, I don't take much notes, not written notes at least. The times when I do need to take notes though, it needs to be fast, organized, and easy to share - meaning it also needs to be easily understandable by anyone without having to rewrite the whole thing. It doesn't seem like much of a problem, but I slowly came to realise that just like anything else, you can have fast, easy and organized all in one place, one of them had to go.
So over the years, I have checked just about every note taking app I could come across (and trust me, there is a lot of them), and as expected, each one of them had to fall short in some way. There were quite a few that stood out as a fuller experience than others.
Apps like Agenda make organisation very simple and straight forward, to the point that it made me want to take notes, even in situations that I usually wouldn't need it. It has a very well-designed interface, which tingles my designer senses a little bit every time I use it, and for quite some time, it stuck with me as my go to notes app. The problem with Agenda is that it's exclusive to the Apple ecosystem, and sharing notes was a little bit of a struggle, especially when I needed to transfer notes to a non-Apple device.
That's where Evernote comes in, arguably the most popular and most loved note taking app there is. It's also cross platform! There isn't a device that Evernote does not support. Perfect! Or maybe not...?
I could never place what exactly was wrong with Evernote, but I never seemed to be able to organise my notes in a way that felt comfortable. It didn't have much in terms of nesting notes (notebook stacks are not nearly as useful as they could be), and overall, it left a lot behind that can be improved. Also, I hope I'm not the only one that finds that specific shade of green splashed everywhere a little bit too jarring sometimes.
For some time I ditched note taking apps completely, and decided that maybe I could just rely on "to-do" apps for everything. That was when I came across Todoist, which worked like magic for all my to-do list needs. I ended up using todoist for a solid few years, and it remains to this day as my favourite to-do list app that I reccommend to everyone. However, it was still missing something. It was around the time the Apple Pencil came out and everyone started going crazy for taking notes in a handwritten "notebook" when I started to reconsider what I really needed out of a good note taking app.
Apps like Notability and Goodnotes got very popular, but they just did not provide any form of structure, other than what you decided you want to do with your own handwriting. That simply did not cut it for me. Enter: Notion.
I was one of the early adopters of Notion when it first came out. Not for any specific reason other than sheer curiosity, and I was without much expectations. It was a little bit clunky to use at first, due to the array customizability options it gives, but I decided it was worth putting up with if I can truly have a system that I make for myself. (Cue: "Fine, I'll do it myself" GIF). For the first time since paper notebooks, I could have a note taking system that was completely versatile, and didn't just straight up suck. I wasn't 100% sold on the whole idea just yet though. Notion did have potential, but it was still a new app, and there was a lot of issues that needed to be ironed out, one of which was the fact that it took basically forever to load up everytime I opened the app. I continued to stick to Todoist for quite some time, but slowly found myself tending to use Notion when I needed to write longer, more detailed notes.
As time went on, more features were added, and Notion's major issues were solved (it no longer takes 3 business days to load). The flexibility and customizability it provided was unmatched compared to other apps, and the ability to infinitely nest pages made organisation easier than ever. It slowly became the central app to store everything I needed, be it a document, article link for later reference, or even codes and numbers that I needed to remember. It was the only app to check all my boxes for a good note taking app: cross platform, fast, customisable, and allows for easy sharing of notes.
I eventually went so far as to write all my documents in Notion and export them as PDF from there, which makes meticulously neat documents that are just straightforward to read. Link sharing, export options, and the entire team plan just made it even nicer to use. As time went on and I moved more of life onto it, and as it lies today, Notion is a central app in my life to take notes and organise tasks.
I have to admit, it's not without it's flaws, there's still a lot to be fixed and many features that are obviously missing (it's like the devs behind Notion have no clue what the words "offline support" mean). Things like being able to add recurring tasks, or automating data fields still don't exist, but overall, aside from the tiny time investment it takes to set up an account and organize your own workspace, Notion stands as the best note taking app to fulfill most of your needs. I am in no way sponsored by Notion (at least for now, if someone working at Notion is reading this feel free to reach out), but after years of development, I can truly say that it has reached a stage where it covers all the essentials a note taking app needs to have.
Despite Notion having won over my heart for now, the journey for the best note taking app still goes on. Competing apps have began to show up, and I won't stop trying as much of them as I can until I find one that truly fits all my needs. Perhaps one day I'll be able to have truly everything I need in one place.
