Capturing spur of the moment notes

Sometimes a thought comes to you and you want to capture it quickly but it is not always obvious what is the best way to do that.

In the past this would have involved a pen and paper, if you had one to hand. Nowadays the most obvious way is to use a mobile phone.

Most people have their phone with them all the time. This means they have a tool immediately to hand that should allow them to capture their thoughts as they have them. However it may not be as easy as that.

To capture that thought you have to take out your phone, potentially unlock it, find the application (or widget) to enter the note and then actually enter the note. This takes time and there are multiple distractions, such as notifications, on the way.

The longer it takes you the more time that idea has to fly away and escape.

I’ve tried various approaches.

I have a WhatsApp chat with just me in it and pinned it to the top of the application. This works relatively well and I use it fairly regularly for quick one word or one line notes.

I purchased a cheap voice recorder for when I am driving and this also worked relatively well … when I remember to bring it and keep it charged.

When I am listening to podcasts I use an application called Snipd that allows me to press a button to capture a “snip” at that point, whicah includes a transcript and an AI summary. In theory you can also add notes at that point but it is not easy when you are still listening. I use this a lot and have thousands of snips but very few notes.

For Christmas I was given a new smartwatch, the Amazfit Active 2. So far I am really impressed with it. It also has an application on it for capturing voice notes and transferring them using a mobile phone app. I have set it up as a short cut on one of the physical buttons and plan to experiment with that over the coming months.

This post was prompted by an article about a new device that is aimed at capturing voice notes and takes the form of a ring you wear. The demo video on the site is a bit too arty for my liking but some of the use cases are quite nice.

I like the idea of it being really easy to capture thoughts but I think it will succeed or fail by the handling of the notes after that.

The podcast app I mentioned is great but they don’t have an easy way to get those snips off the phone yet. The voice recorder requires me to either listen to it and take notes or to attach a cable to download the recording. The smartwatch has an application I can use on the phone to transfer the recordings but there seems to be no easy way to get them off there.

If the creators of the ring can crack that second step of how the notes can be used productively then not only could they be on to something in terms of note capture but also in terms of notes usage.