The Greased-Groove Note System
Capture every scrap into a three-layer digital filing system from day one.
- Difficulty
- Easy
- Time to result
- ~ongoing to results
- Steps
- 5
- Confidence
- 76%
The system treats note-taking like greasing the groove: build the habit in first year so it runs on autopilot when the workload spikes later. Pick one tool and file everything the moment you get it — lecture slides, scraps, anything — rather than leaving 'sort it later' piles that compound into a bug in the system. The structure is three layers: stacks (groups of notebooks, e.g. a year), notebooks (e.g. a module), and notes, plus a tag layer that cuts across all of them, so a topic like cardiology surfaces every relevant note regardless of which year it lives in. Everything sits in the cloud, so the familiar horror story of a crashed computer eating thousands of words simply can't happen. For high-stakes work like a dissertation, keep three redundant copies.
Origin
Youssef, the self-described 'paperless' half of Propane Fitness, lays out his Evernote stack/notebook/note-plus-tags system on Modern Wisdom as the antidote to lost-work horror stories.
Core principles
- 01Be systematic from the start; let nothing get away from you.
- 02Immediate filing beats 'I'll sort it later' piles.
- 03Two axes (structure plus tags) beat one.
- 04Cloud storage means computer crashes never cost you work.
- 05Grease the groove early so the system is automatic when it matters.
How to run it
- 1
Commit to one capture tool
Choose Evernote, phone Notes or Google Docs and use it exclusively. Handwriting is fine for learning, but the store of record must be one consistent system.
Pro tip Google Docs plus Drive is free; Evernote's paid tier is a few pounds a month.
- 2
Build the three-layer structure
Set up notebook stacks (like a year), notebooks inside them (like a module), and notes inside those. This mirrors a physical filing cabinet but digitised and cloud-held.
- 3
File immediately, never later
The moment you get any slide or scrap of paper, put it into the system. Don't defer, or you create sub-piles that become a compounding bug.
Watch out Every 'I'll print it off later' becomes an unindexed pile you must clear during revision.
- 4
Add a cross-cutting tag layer
Tag notes by topic on top of the folder structure so the same note is categorised two ways. A topic tag pulls together every relevant note across all years at once.
Pro tip In third year, one tag surfaces everything you ever captured on that topic instantly.
- 5
Keep redundant copies for high-stakes work
For a dissertation or major project, hold three copies: physical, cloud and local. Never rely on incremental saves to a single local file.
In the wild
Youssef describes filing a module note under a year-one stack and also tagging it 'cardiology'. Years later, as a third-year needing cardiology material, one tag pulls every relevant note from every year at once — no hunting through portals, downloads or scattered folders during precious revision time.
→ Instant cross-year retrieval instead of days lost collecting notes.
Common mistakes
Deferring filing to 'later'
Telling yourself you'll sort a slide or scrap later creates sub-piles that compound like a bug in the system, until collecting notes eats half your revision window.
Saving only to one local file
Incremental saves to a single Microsoft Word file on one machine is how people lose thousands of words to a crash. Cloud plus redundancy removes the risk entirely.
Is it for you?
Best for
Any multi-year course where notes compound and must be retrievable across modules and years.
Not ideal for
One-off short courses where a lightweight single folder would do and a full system is overkill.
From the transcript
“you have to be systematic from the start and you can't let any single thing get away from you”
“if you start using Evernote in your first year then you're in the rhythm of it when it really matters”
“I had the three backups of my dissertation like physical cloud and”
From the episode
How To Survive University - #034