My current preferred notetaking application is org-mode in Emacs. My method of organizing my notes is having a few large files that encompass a portion of my life. These files could contain tens of thousands of lines of content. Since these files are just textfiles with UTF-8 or ASCII, the files are very lean and potentially future-proof.
I was thinking of a way to backup my org files. In my previous note-taking app (Joplin), the app was linked to dropbox and was routinely synced with the service. This ensured that my notes were available everywhere, including mobile clients. A method to emulate such a behavior is to create a folder in my Nextcloud directory and edit the org files from there. However, I remembered a few times where I made heavy edits to my markdown notes and wished I could see the files in a past version. And since I was learning Git, I decided to use Git to version control my ~/org directory.
But why Git? Git is made for the very purpose of tracking changes in primarily
text files. And with some utilities like git diff, I could track the changes I
made across all my notes since the last commit. With Git, I could go into any
particular commit at a certain time period of my choice, and view the content of
my notes from then. Thus Git itself is the journal. This allows me to be more
aware of the progress of life between commits. Furthermore, I have a self-hosted
remote Git server accessible by ssh with a public key. This ensures total
privacy with my backup solution.
Should you take notes with Git and Emacs Org-mode? I won’t recommend it since the learning curve might be steep. I just happen to be learning both separately and put them together to synergize my learning experience. But I must say, there is nothing quite like it.