How Apple Notes is secretly sabotaging your best ideas

Search fails because it can’t think like you do.

If you rely solely on search, you’ll miss out on insights from seemingly unrelated notes.

Most search tools only find exact word matches, but they rarely understand context or synonyms. That’ll slow down your creative work.

Take Apple Notes. I love it and use it daily. But it’s got real limitations.

Check out this example.

If I search for “doorbell” in Apple Notes, it’ll find notes with this word. And if I search for “door”, it’ll do the same thing.

But if I search for “Bell”?

Nothing.

You and I know “door” and “bell” are related, but not Apple Notes.

The same problem happens for compound words like lightbulb, sunflower, starfish, or rainbow.

They rely on exact matches for words and phrases. But, they can’t always identify semantic relationships between different terms. And they can’t break words up into their linguistic components. These types of relationships stump search tools.

This limitation isn't an issue if you’ve got a few dozen notes. You can navigate up and down through your library. But if you spend time writing or creating content, I’d wager you’re hundreds of ideas. These search limitations will reduce your output.

I’ve built a massive library of notes from books, podcasts, courses, videos, and insights. Some of my notes are a single sentence long. Some run for a few thousand words and contain pictures.

I use my notes to write my newsletter, articles, and book chapters. I also use them to create social media content and develop client offers. In short, I’ve a huge library of notes for seemingly unrelated projects.

Sometimes, I’ll capture a note and forget about it for a few months because I don’t need it. Then, I’ll write an article draft and think about some random idea I stumbled across and stuffed into my library months ago. I’ll remember the context but not the exact wording because I’m not a robot!

Usually, that’d complicate retrieving and using my older notes. And repeatedly typing word variations into the search bar is frustrating as hell.

I prefer organizing my notes by theme and category using a simple system. It doesn’t take long either, and I can always find what I need. That helps me go from idea to published much faster.

Note-taking should be like planting an orchard, not filing papers. Search-based systems require you to remember exactly what you planted and where. Thematic organization lets your ideas cross-pollinate naturally, producing hybrid fruits.

That’s one of the principles I show you inside the Zettelkästen Method for Creators. My system shows you how to organize notes so they become a creativity engine rather than a digital filing cabinet. You’ll spend less time searching and more time creating. Read more about it here.