A couple folks have emailed me recently asking about how I handle the split between work notes and personal notes with my notes system, particularly as I have described using it for writing down what I do at work, so I thought I’d share it here as well.

The answer is really simple: I keep a firm separation between work and personal notes, and have done so for years. That includes even the paper notebooks¹ that I use heavily for journaling and for “thinking with the hand” — one of my primary ways of solving problems. In some real sense, my work notes belong to my employer, and if in the outside chance they were somehow required for legal reasons, it is important that they be separate from my personal notes.

So: separate accounts for things like Bear or Obsidian, and separate paper notebooks for personal and work notes.