Organizing Notes and Notebooks

I have had a list of "categories" or "topics" that I categorize everything with. In Logos, I make a Note Notebook for a "category" (i.e. Angels), each Notebook has it's own colorized icon and Notebook name. 

Then when I create a note... which I do as I study...  I put the Note in the Notebook for that category.  The Note will also have the Notebook name and Icon. 

I don't attach a reference to the verse number itself, I attach a reference to the first word of the verse... that way all my Icons show up between the verse number and the first word of the verse... which I like.  I wish I had a choice to put all the icons at the end of the verse, but I don't. [:S]

One of the reasons I like Notes is.... I can put add a Note and be able to see it on Desktop or Mobile as the case is. It's like my Notes go with me... and if I'm in a verse and don't remember about it... the Note helps me ... which I need... [8-|]

The reason I write this is not only to skin the cat but also to clear my mind and try to put my way of thinking into words.

I think holistic and recursively. Therefore my description of the Notes Tool will include other kinds of documents. Everything including Notes are part of a bigger picture feeding itself. This big picture is the network inside my mind. The idea is to think of all my documents including notes as small projects. Projects are building blocks of other larger Projects. The System need to feed itself as I work allowing me to think small about big things.

A Notebook on "Love" for instance can feed a Notebook on "Love of God" that can feed a Notebook on "Love of God in 2024" where "2024" is in it's own Notebook.

All my documents including notebooks and notes are structured per project. To me, a Project can be any collection of documents I want as result or feedinga result. Project Titles have a number or other unique identifier in front. This allows me to have the same title for notebooks and documents, but with a different number to distinguish projects.

A Project or Notebook for a Sunday (Sermon) is in the format "yyyy Week (n) | Title (Reference)"

A Project on a weekday is in the format "### | Title | Reference. The number in this case is a sequential number of the sermon's location in the Series.

A Project has a Layout in the Format "yyyy.mm.dd › Title | Reference"

This way I can find all projects related by title, year, Sundays or weekdays without tagging them as such. I wrote a small script, not necessary, that just generates a link to run a custom search. The searches can find the previous week, the next week, the next 7 days, all Sundays for the current year, all documents related to a specific project, all documents of a kind etc. I link everything to the related sermon document. This way I just need to open a Sermon Document to be on full speed. Knowing the name of any notebook I can find any directly related documents very easily. Projects tend to bubble up or drill down into other projects. This is where tags come into play, they help my to skip levels to go directly deep into the network.

In my case, Sermon Titles serve as Projects. I write a lot of small sermon documents every year, like in almost  260 of them. At first I thought I failed. But don't give up. After three years everything started to boost my productivity. I almost gave up, but still going for year 7 now.

In Notes, Tags are used to group notes in other categories and topics or themes across notebooks. I have notes that have just a question in it, it's tagged as question and linked to the source that sparked the question. This way I can easily generate Bible Study Questions in Sermon Documents. When I slightly change the information in a question I'll most likely rather make a duplicate and tag it with a nuance of the change. I follow the same principle for other types of notes. Note Types in my case are whatever I use the information inside the note for. I even duplicate my Bibliography and Clippings at the moment of finalizing a Project as a Note for easy use in other documents. This allows me to have a time stamped backup if I accidently edit Bibliographies or Clippings. I actually edit them on purpose to build larger and larger Projects keeping the note as backup.

My Layouts have the same name as the corresponding Sermon Document and/or Notebook, but with a date in front. I use a special format to be able to automate some other interesting things on my laptop. All documents related also have the same name and the document kind in brackets. This way all related documents and Notebooks are linked by name and easily accessible in searches. I only link Notes in these notebooks to a primary reference for the sermon. All Secondary references are in Passage Lists, Clippings, or other documents. This way my most relevant search hits are easily found as a hit in a note. When a Clipping or Passage List pops up in a search I know it contains the secondary info. When taking a note on secondary literature I like to distinguish between Clippings and notes. Clippings are used to collect similar literary notes that can be compared or summarised as a unit. Notes are used to make a comment or summary on literature that I want or could use as a single unit in another Document. It can also contain the final summary of a Clippings document. All other related notes are kept in a clippings or passage list document linked from the note.

In most cases, I put a short description of the note as a heading at the top of the note or word the note in such a way that I can read it in a compact view. Descriptions are short enough to be visible and comprehensible in search hits and in the compact or default view for notes. I don't like to think too much when looking at search hits or notes, everything just needs to flow and not slow me down.

This is what works for me at this stage of my personal development in Logos Bible Study Application. I tried and tested several other methods of organizing everything but failed each time to match my own mind. I lost thousands of notes over the years and wasted a lot of time to try and figure this out for myself. There are a lot smaller things going on inside and beyond my holistic view of everything, that I struggle to explain to others. 

The lesson to be taken from this is maybe just this: Struggle and don't give up. The system will flow from production, don’t put work aside to try and design. The system will succeed when the work start to streamline. To try to develop a system is a timeconsuming recipe. You will sooner or later understand yourself enough through doing tasks to organize Notes  in a way that works for you. My biggest lesson was to not think of Logos or Notebooks in isolation but to think of my computer as a tool to serve a purpose. I regularly see people asking for solutions native to Logos, then I think to myself: "I view the question as native to my OS".

Note: My productivity actually got boosted five times the moment I accepted this.

How would one yield notes related on abstract ideas not captured in anchors, notes or facets? Maybe “Tags”.