Chronological notetaking with problems

 The easiest way to make notes is to append new information at the end. There is no need to use a ring binder or note cards but a normal notebook works fine. A possible entry would be “date: March 10, headline, body of text”. The note is written down on paper and can be read again forever.

There is a large problem available with such a note taking technique. Chronological notetaking will mess up the notes on the long run. Notes about mathematics will follow notes about history and language. The only sorting order available is the date. This makes it hard to read the notes again. Let me give an example.

Suppose the user has written down over a horizon of 2 weeks multiple notes from different subjects. Now he likes to retrieve all the notes about math. The problem is, that the math notes are distributed over different sections in the notebook. Some math notes are written down on march 10, while other are from march 16 and the notes in between have nothing to do with prime numbers but are from different subjects.

Even if the notes are technically well written its impossible to retrieve them because they aren't sorted by topic but only by date. To sort notes by topic, there is need to use a different principle than only adding notes at the end. Some sort of ring binder or Zettelkasten is needed. With such a tool its possible to add new math notes after the old math notes.

The main advantage is, that its much easier to read the notes again. All the math notes are collected together. The user doesn't has to read the entire notebook, but only the math section. This makes it likely that the notes are consulted multiple times. The disadvantage of ring binders and card catalogs is, that its more demanding to create the notes. Before new notes can be added to the system the correct position has to be located. Which slows down the writing process.