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Looking for feedback on an ADHD-friendly notetaking software idea, long :boost_requested:​ 

None of the note-taking software I've seen has worked for me despite a ton of research (please don't recommend me existing things, I've probably already evaluated them!), so I've been thinking about building my own note-taking software.

And I'd like to ask y'all neurodiverse folks for your feedback of the ideas I have - particularly if you are also otherwise marginalized, and/or experience your neurodiversity as (partly) a disability. I'm curious whether this would also work for you.

(Feel free to reply also if you're not sure whether you fit into that category; if your instance isn't fediblocked here, chances are your feedback would be welcome)

Upfront disclaimers, before I get to the actual idea:
- I will be literally dependent on this software for my personal ability to function and I have very limited spoons, and so I won't run this as a community project, but instead make decisions by myself. I will however make it as easy to fork as I can, and make as many pieces as possible independently reusable. Community-run forks would be very much welcome.
- I may not reply to all feedback due to lack of available spoons, but I promise that I'll *read* all of it and take it into consideration.
- For all the same reasons, I don't even have a rough estimate of when this will be publicly usable, "it's done when it's done"

Alright, so, to get the boring-but-important bits out of the way first: it'll be FOSS (no open-core bullshit), perpetually non-commercial, and designed to run locally on desktop systems, primarily (but not exclusively) Linux. No magical cloud services.

So here's the idea:
- By default, adding a note involves nothing more than hitting a key combo, entering some text, hitting enter, and the window disappears again. Fire and forget, it's saved.
- All metadata (tagging etc., more detail below) will be handled through /slash commands; they can be placed anywhere in the note. Your input is entirely linear, no need to leave the keyboard or navigate UIs, and it works in the "fire and forget" process.
- Importantly, your input is live-interpreted and shown below the input box in a more 'graphical' format, so that you have immediate visual confirmation of what you've entered, without needing to mentally parse your own input commands.

Example inputs:
"feed cat /todo /time 18:00"
"/todo /project game // convert sprites"

- There's (fuzzy) full-text search through all notes, even the completely untagged ones, so that you can find them later even if you weren't in a good headspace at the moment of writing them. Likewise, /slash commands for search parameters exist.
- Notes can be tagged (eg. "project" or "todo"), have attributes added (eg. "deadline date" or "reference number" or whatever else), and they can have attachments.
- Attachments are not limited to files; they can be URLs (a local copy of the page will be made for HTTP URLs), references to e-mails, geo coordinates, whatever external thing is being referenced. This will be handled through plugins.
- Rich/formatted text will also be a (searchable) attachment, the main note text would then serve as a subject line of sorts.
- When adding an attachment, entering text yourself is optional. So you totally could just schedule a referenced e-mail for a deadline of 21:00 tomorrow without further input.
- Conversely, there will be plugins for several applications (browser, e-mail client, calendar application, etc.) that are basically "send to note pile", and that'll spawn the note-adding window with whatever you sent there prefilled as an attachment (and then you can add text or tags or whatever).
- Notes can also be attached to other notes, for cases where you need a hierarchical or wiki-like organization of notes.
- There will be some kind of not-yet-defined way to have alarms/lists based on deadlines/times/tags etc. that you've entered, to get an immediate idea of what needs to be done when.

Thoughts?

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re: Looking for feedback on an ADHD-friendly notetaking software idea, long :boost_requested:​ 

I was not kidding about this being long, I had like 70 characters left of the rather generous character limit on here

re: Looking for feedback on an ADHD-friendly notetaking software idea, long :boost_requested:​ 

@joepie91 lol, i guess we can go to 8192 or something, nice round numbers

re: Looking for feedback on an ADHD-friendly notetaking software idea, long :boost_requested:​ 

@f0x Isn't there some limit above which it breaks federation?

re: Looking for feedback on an ADHD-friendly notetaking software idea, long :boost_requested:​ 

@joepie91 at some point you run into max body request size i guess, but thats multiple MBs

re: ADHD-friendly notetaking software idea 

@joepie91 this very closely resembles the default emacs org-mode workflow with a couple of org-capture templates and org-agenda. Due to the hackability of emacs, the few differences in workflow should be easily resolvable.
If you want, we can chat about my personal workflow

re: ADHD-friendly notetaking software idea 

@joepie91 oh and regardless of whether you want to adopt emacs, you might find some interesting ideas by searching for org-roam, org gtd, org capture, etc

re: ADHD-friendly notetaking software idea 

@pinoaffe I specifically don't want to look at existing things, because it will take me entirely too many spoons to untangle all the stuff I *don't* care about

re: ADHD-friendly notetaking software idea 

@joepie91 ok, while I'm not sure what sort of thoughts you were looking for, I'll just recommend you add some easy way to define and modify note templates (and ofc to add notes using said templates)

Furthermore, if you use any kind of digital calendar or track your time with some sort of clocking system, it may be worthwhile to integrate those into your note-reporting-system too

Looking for feedback on an ADHD-friendly notetaking software idea, long :boost_requested:​ 

@joepie91 I think I suffer from the same issues as you, and just like you I have failed with every single existing solution.

Your idea sounds nice. At least there is a chance it'll work for me which puts it right up there among the very few that doesn't outright fail right away.

The main thing I would personally need is synchronisation with mobile. And inputting anything on mobile is horrible on the best of days, so making that workflow seamless is not easy. Based on your description it sounds like you're focused on desktop, and if that's the case, I'm tempted to take a stab at making a mobile application for this, assuming you're looking at building some kind of integration interfaces.

Looking for feedback on an ADHD-friendly notetaking software idea, long :boost_requested:​ 

@joepie91 These features look great to me!

For whatever it's worth, many but not all of these are possible with Dendron ( dendron.so/ ), which is an extension for VS Code that also works in VS Codium.

I'm mentioning Dendron not so much to say "hey! try this!" but more to say "yes, those are features I'd want as someone with ADHD," and slightly to say "in case you haven't seen Dendron and think it will suit you, maybe it'll be faster to build those features along with other people already working on this thing?"

In any case, I'd love to follow what you develop, in case I'll want to start using your thing myself!

Looking for feedback on an ADHD-friendly notetaking software idea, long :boost_requested:​ 

@joepie91 this sounds awesome! Tiny feedback, I use todoist and I think having different 'trigger charicters' for different stuff is very useful. Stuff like "@tag" or "#project" makes it easier for me to remember how to Metadata stuff.

re: Looking for feedback on an ADHD-friendly notetaking software idea, long :boost_requested:​ 

@joepie91 how are you going to edit existing notes with the small window? showing all the recent stuff seems spoon-eating.
one idea if you can make search good: "/done ?feed cat"
(maybe it'd pop up a little thing showing the matches for "feed…" as you type it)

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