The Forever Notes system

This week’s video explores Matthias' "Forever Notes" system for Apple Notes. Is it worth implementing?

"Forever ✱ Notes is a simple, lightweight digital note-taking and knowledge management method for Apple Notes. It's robust, versatile, and scalable to grow with you. Best of all, Forever ✱ Notes is completely free and designed to last—well, forever." -Matthias Hilse

It's not designed to replace dedicated tools like Obsidian, Roam Research, or Logseq. Instead, it adds functionality and structure to Apple Notes that gives you better performance and closes the gap to those more complex tools.

For me personally, I still bounce between Apple Notes and Obsidian. The writing and linking experience for certain types of documents is just better in Obsidian, especially for longer essays with many section headers where navigating between sections and moving them around is easier.

The core of the Forever Notes system is a "Home Note" that acts as your central hub. This might look familiar to those who've used Maps of Content (MOCs) in other systems.

My home note is set up with Projects, Areas, and Resources sections, mirroring my folder structure in Apple Notes. It contains all my important links in one place. I've set up a shortcut to access this home note with the action button on my iPhone and placed a shortcut icon next to Apple Notes in my Mac's dock.

The home note functions as the central agent to this whole system, which is actually my biggest point of contention as someone who heavily uses folders in Apple Notes.

Here's where things get interesting. Forever Notes suggests using a hub page with sections and tags rather than a traditional folder structure.

I can see the appeal from both angles. I often lose things inside nested folders and rarely go digging through them to browse notes. If I were starting from scratch, this would be a no-brainer—I'd try the tagging system instead of folders. You can always make smart folders that pull all relevant tags into one place.

But for someone with over 1,200 notes and no robust tagging system already in place, this seems like a big lift with potentially little payoff. It's a reminder that just because you can do something doesn't mean you should.

Since I've chosen to continue using folders, when I click a link in the home note, it takes me to the note in the default "All iCloud" folder view. This is disappointing because I often want to stay within a specific context—like my YouTube channel folder where I keep my idea hub and specific video notes.

I separate my YouTube channels (The Bill McLean Channel vs. Not Another Pair), podcast (For Perspective), and newsletter into different folders. This organization helps me stay focused on one project at a time.

One thing I appreciate is that Matthias has created Apple Shortcuts to help set up this system. There's no better way to get me to try something than to provide a ready-made shortcut!

He shares:

- A home note setup shortcut

- A shortcut that opens the home note (the one I've tied to my action button)

- A shortcut for setting up the Journal

The journal setup is impressive but could be daunting to create yourself. Fortunately, the shortcut will generate 366 daily notes, 12 monthly notes, and 4 quarterly notes.

Unfortunately, shortcuts and notes don't currently support automatic note linking. This has been my biggest pain point after trying the journal for a few months. Having to manually link the home note, add forward and backward navigation buttons, and link individual days in the monthly note is tedious.

I've tried to do this as I go, but knowing there's this baseline of manual work required to make the system function properly has often led me to skip journaling altogether.

Something like DayOne is fully set up and gives you "on this day" notifications to see what you wrote in the past. I was trying to avoid fragmentation across apps, but I had created my own simpler journaling system in Apple Notes that required less setup.

DayOne remains the king of journaling, but if you're starting from scratch, Forever Notes is a great free option that keeps everything in one place. Remember: search is powerful, especially when starting a new project.

Much of this system is enabled by recent additions to Apple Notes:

- Note linking and backlinks

- Highlighting

- Collapsible sections

- Readwise integration (thanks to Harley Stagner)

I've created a few shortcuts of my own to enhance the system:

1. Today Link shortcut: Copies the link to "today's note" to the clipboard to make journal note linking slightly easier

https://www.icloud.com/shortcuts/8b4f61495590403d8dbdb33e450adcae

2. Today's Note with Weather: Adds time, weather, and location when journaling, then opens "today's note"

https://www.icloud.com/shortcuts/16fef0d98a8d4941975566e159b50c0d

I've added the Today Link shortcut to the "tl" alias in Raycast and Today's Note Weather to "tnw" for easy triggering on Mac. It's slightly more difficult on the phone, but Spotlight does an okay job of finding shortcuts, or you can use a shortcuts widget.

Forever Notes is a well-thought-out system that could be amazing for someone starting fresh with Apple Notes. For those with established systems, you'll need to weigh the effort of migration against the potential benefits.

I'm hesitant to blow up a structure that has mostly worked for me. I have to be careful of scope creep and focus on doing actual work rather than endlessly refining my system. For those who don't yet have a system, I think this or the PARA method are top options.

Forever Notes effectively uses PARA principles but with a better interface, solving some of the things I dislike about using Apple Notes alone.

What do you think? Are you an Apple Notes user? Have you tried systems like this before? Reply to this email and let me know and check out the video here!

A ton of AI news and new releases this week including:

Anthropic’s Claude plays Pokémon

Claude 3.7 Sonnet came out this week and the Anthropic team should be studied for a lesson in viral marketing.

I first heard about this side project while watching a podcast on the anthropic channel. One of their engineers was trying to get Claude to play Pokémon.

It turns out they had moderate success. The older models were clearly not great, there was a small step change with the post trained 3.5 Sonnet and now with 3.7 Sonnet there is a another massive step change in how far the model got in the game.

In addition to posting this graph they actually had Claude stream on Twitch. This part is genius! Not only making a reference that normal people can understand for how capable a model is, but also making Claude a bit of a celebrity for a short period, at least within internet circles, this hit trending on twitter and the buzz was real.

Claude is still my favorite model to interface with and fits my use case for writing and creative work, but ChatGPT and Perplexity are things I turn to from time to time.

I am coming to the realization that I am doing too much.

As a solo creator my time is limited. I often get home from my 9-5 with limited energy both physically and mentally.

Two YouTube channels, a Newsletter and a Podcast, plus the social media presence required to promote the things I work hard on can sometimes just be too much.

Of course as I am feeling this way I get a great heartfelt comment on my Not Another Pair channel this week.

Positive feedback like this will help keep me going, but the reality is that I don’t run enough to be testing shoes all the time and with the main tech related channel I already have enough things to talk about and research each week.

I probably will keep Not Another Pair around on the back burner, maybe one video a month is realistic, because it helps keep me sharp for a different style of video in a different niche.

Often times I am inspired between niches, but I have to make sure all of this is manageable now and in the future as my responsibility builds and these businesses grow.

The only training shoe you will ever need. The Strike MVMNT Haze Trainer.

Remember those versatile CrossFit shoes from the early 2010s? Strike Movement's Haze trainer brings back that pure functionality while improving on every aspect. Here's why this under-the-radar trainer deserves your attention:

The Quick Take: The Haze is a lightweight, grippy, and stable trainer that excels at everything from HIIT workouts to casual wear. Think of it as the spiritual successor to the beloved Reebok Nano 2.0, but with major upgrades.

The Bottom Line: If you're tired of specialized shoes cluttering your gym bag, the Haze might be your solution. It's a genuine all-rounder that performs surprisingly well across different activities. While it won't replace your marathon shoes, it handles everything else with impressive competence.