Migrating Existing Bear Notes

[Grberk]

I’ve been a user of many different note-taking/productivity/organization platforms and systems. I’ve had a combination of systems like Evernote, Apple Note, Upvote and others, along with a local iCloud folder archive for stuff that I’ve never wanted to put in the cloud for security reasons.

I’ve been using Bear pretty much full-on for the last year and a half. I really don’t do much note taking, as much as I tend to use it as a file cabinet to copy receipts, invoices, statements and important contracts/documents.

How exactly does using Johnny Decimal work with a ton of notes that have existing PDFs and other content in them? How should I do this? Move the content from the notes into iCloud folders and point to them in Bear? I’m totally lost in how I would make this work. No matter what I do, I’m either going to have to export and re-link, or rename/re-tag my existing notes. I have a ton of tags and subtags that take the place of Bear’s lack of folder structure. I just don’t see how I can make this all work with the new LAS structure. If I sort by note name, that makes the LAS note structure look great, but it wreaks havoc in all of my other existing notes, because I typically have them sorted by creation date with the newest notes at the top.

[johnnydecimal (Johnny Noble)]

Hi there.

What sort of stuff are we talking about? A “note with existing PDFs and content in them” sounds like way more than just a note – sounds like the sort of thing I’d assign to its own ID.

Let’s say one of these things is some research you did into … I don’t know, plant care. So you have PDFs of plant types and watering tips and what types of food indoor plants like and so on. In this case that fits neatly into LAS 12.41 Indoor plants, so I’d drop a note in Bear to say that this is where this stuff is, then the PDFs and so on would go in my filesystem.

As a rule, I don’t store PDFs and so on in Bear. I keep it pretty light – it’s the JDex, not the main content. Use your filesystem for content.

It’d help if you could share a couple of examples, I don’t feel like I’ve got a proper mental picture of the sort of thing you’re trying to manage.

[Grberk]

I just typically haven’t really taken many notes. I started off using Evernote as a filing cabinet of sorts - keeping receipts, reference articles, and orders. When I left Evernote, I went to Bear. I still use it the same way. Stuff that comes in email from orders, website content I archive, I save into Bear with the clipper or print to a PDF and attach. Invoices, bills and corresponding receipts go into their own notes so I can keep track of keeping them together to track the lifecycle of paying what I owe. Yes I can track financial stuff in a money manager (and I do) but it’s just muscle memory for me to track it all and keep it together in a note to keep it all together. It’s just easier for me to search and find this way. I guess I could just move that stuff from notes to a folder. I was just lost in how I would LAS to manage it and reference it. Or would I not use it for that? I’m sure I use Bear in an unorthodox way and not for its intended purpose, but I’ve managed to make it work for me this way.

[johnnydecimal (Johnny Noble)]

So the stuff that fits in LAS it really doesn’t actually matter how you store it. If you’re used to clipping into something like Bear, there’s no reason to stop doing that.

Let’s look at a concrete example: receipts. Because there’s another split to consider: there’s how do I store this stuff (clipped to Bear vs. filesystem) and there’s also does it fit in LAS? Because it’s important to remember that the Life Admin System is called that and not the Literally All Of The Things You Could Possibly Store system. We’ll get to that later.

For now, LAS does have 13.31 Purchase receipts and that’s where this stuff should go. So how should it be organised? You’ve got a bunch of options – and some of these are Bear-specific, i.e. it would look different if you did it in Obsidian, say.

One Bear note with attachments

I don’t see why you couldn’t store all of your receipts in one Bear note. Use headings for each thing, add a bit of searchable text, drop in the PDF.

– but I wouldn’t do this. It just feels clunky.

One Bear note with references

Alternatively, use a single Bear note but reference the receipt, which is in your filesystem.

This is what I naturally did, without thinking too much about it. (I only keep personal receipts for items that I might need e.g. for warranty, return; if you keep every receipt, this story gets more complicated). Here’s my actual note.

You can see how this allows me to tell myself that receipts are in different places – an app, my email, in the filesystem, etc. Here’s my 13.31 Purchase receipts folder.

Obviously, this is what I do. It’s easy, it’s low-friction. The PDF receipt in the filesystem is the canonical thing: if I forget to make a note in my JDex, meh, I’ll still find it.

Other than grouping receipts by year-folder, don’t try to organise this folder. The date is enough. Spotlight will find a specific receipt if you can’t.

One receipt per Bear note

Your confusion might be coming from this idea? You might like to create one Bear note per receipt. Clipping software probably defaults to this behaviour. Which is a perfectly fine thing to want.

The problem is that Bear has this unique way of organising stuff by tag. So in order to ‘file’ these receipts neatly, you need to assign them a tag. I’d just extend the existing tag like #10-19 Life admin/13 💰 Money earned, spent, saved, & owed/13.31# and with that you end up with:

There isn’t a ‘correct’ answer

This is obviously a matter of choice. How often do you need to reference these receipts? If often, having a flat list of PDFs in a folder is simplest. If infrequent, the Bear way might work.

Some stuff isn’t LAS

That was very receipt-specific, because we had 13.31 Purchase receipts already.

It’s important to realise that LAS was not designed to contain everything in your life. We can’t possibly know what hobbies or clubs or jobs or other extracurricular things you do.

My favourite example is that I used to be a marriage celebrant. So where in LAS would I put the paperwork to do with the fact that I’m marrying a couple this weekend?

A: not in LAS. This isn’t ‘life admin’. This is ‘Johnny being a wedding celebrant’. This needs its own area with its own categories, which is what I had.

So then the question of ‘how to file notes’ becomes very context-dependent, but basically you’ll need an ID for the thing you’re filing, and then the notes above should still be broadly relevant.

Does that help?

[Grberk]

That does indeed help. Thank you very much for that insight and your tips. I just need to decide how I want to move forward with this. Much appreciated!