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AI has given us several valuable tools that make note taking more frictionless and pleasant. These new tools don't change the fundamentals of how we take notes. They simply remove friction.
A lot of effective note-taking comes down to how frictionless you can make the process. This could be instantly capturing a thought or idea, or being able to quickly pull up a vague piece of information you captured years ago.
There are two major technologies that we can apply to AI note-taking: LLMs, like GPT and Claude, and transcribers like Whisper.
Using LLMs for AI note-taking
Most people have used LLMs through a chatbot such as ChatGPT or clod. If you've played around with these tools, it's probably fairly obvious what the benefit of using them in your notes is.
Having an LLM integrated into your notes feels like having an AI assistant at your fingertips. It works fantastic for everything from summarizing and formatting information to improving your writing and ideas.
AI Note-taking examples using LLMs:
- Chat with your notes
- Save your own custom prompts
- Condense and summarize text
- Extract key takeaways and action items
- Write articles and outlines
- Automatically add backlinks
- Generate analogies and counter arguments
- Add evidence and research to your writing
- Edit and spellcheck your writing
- Find similar notes
Reflect has a built in AI note-taking assistant that uses either GPT or Claude, depending on which you select. Simply highlight text and as the AI assistant anything, or run a saved prompt. Reflect comes with a handful of built-in system prompts, but you can also save your own custom prompts.
You can also chat with your notes using AI in Reflect. This feels similar to using a chatbot, but uses your notes as context for the chat results.
Using transcribers for AI note-taking
Transcribing a voice note using AI is currently the fastest way to capture a thought or idea.
We've had voice transcribers in some form for quite a while now. Most of us have used Alexa, Google Home, or Siri. Most of us have also stopped using these three tools. It's because they are simply not accurate enough.
It turns out the value in a voice transcriber is being able to rely on it being nearly 100% accurate. This is what OpenAI’s Whisper has done for us. You can now transcribe the human voice and be extremely confident in its accuracy.
AI voice transcribers are great for:
- Writing notes using only your voice
- Transcribing calls and meetings
- Recording reflections and streams of consciousness
- Writing (both ideation and writing long form posts)
- Taking video and podcast notes
A transcribed voice note will appear as a giant chunk of text in your daily note. You can then run an AI prompt on it to organize into something useful.
AI note-taking workflows
- Chat with your notes using AI
Reflex Advanced Search lets you chat with your notes using AI. Search or filter your notes and then click on the chat with notes button you can then ask the chat anything and the AI will use your notes as context
For example, if you filter the search to see all of your books, you can effectively chat with your digital library.
- AI note-taking for meetings
It's useful to have a word for word transcription of your calls and meetings. AI transcriptions are perfect for this. If you use the reflect Mac app and have labs turned on in preferences, the transcriber will even pick up your system audio so that you can transcribe the other person on the line as well.
After the meeting has been transcribed, you can run an AI prompt that organizes the meeting notes for you based off the transcription.
- Turn your thoughts into articles
You likely have many interesting thoughts and ideas swimming around your head at any given moment in time. Converting these thoughts into a well polished article seems daunting and so usually we don't sit down and do the work.
Having AI in our notes makes this process very easy. Transcribe your thoughts while walking around the neighborhood or making your coffee. They don’t have to be organized or in order. Just regurgitate everything you know on the topic.
After it’s been transcribed, run an AI prompt that turns the transcription into an article outline. Make any changes you’d like before starting writing it yourself, or have AI take a stab at that part for you as well.
- Transcribe a stream of consciousness or brain dump
Starting your day with a stream of consciousness is likely the most productive and calming thing you can do to set yourself up for success. The process is simple: record everything happening in your brain until it feels finished. Thoughts, ideas, things you need to do, things you’re worried about… everything!
Simply exporting all of these things from your brain has a calming effect. It eliminates that feeling in the back of your mind that you're forgetting something, or missing something that needs to be done. It's also quite functional. you can likely extract the key things you need to get done in a day from the stream of consciousness.. you can likely extract the key things you need to get done in a day from the stream of consciousness.
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