I’m inclined to disagree here. 
I think Tinderbox is great for taking notes, even in a quick and dirty fashion—just don’t get caught up in all of what Tb can do, and instead take what it can do to prepare for yourself a place which does not require an excessive amount of fiddling—this is possible.
The most basic thing you can do is to designate an entire Tb file for quick notes. The nice thing about this option is that it can grow with you as you learn more about the interface. It can start out as a simple flat list of notes, and eventually become something more complex if it needs to (and it might never). Further advantages are that Tb notes drag easily from file to file. This file is a great candidate for hooking up Simplenote, as that gives you access to both Notational Velocity (which is by far the most efficient note taker in my opinion) and Simplenote’s inherent mobility if you use mobile devices to take notes. Before Simplenote came along, I would hook this file up to a dedicate e-mail address. I could then send myself notes to this e-mail address all day, and the next time I was around a computer the file would intake the new notes and clean up the mailbox.
The second thing you can do is create an inbox in your existing documents. I use this method for quite a few of mine. This simple mechanism alleviates the “now where do I put this” problem that you face when creating a new note. You don’t have to think about that yet because there is only one place to put it, Inbox. Of course, if you know where it needs to go then that is another matter, you might as well put it directly where it belongs if that spot is easily accessible. An inbox container can be quite useful as it is easy to set it up so that all new notes created within it have a specific prototype.
The next thing to do is visit the Text tab in the document preferences ([b]Cmd-8[/b]). I think it’s important to set this up in a way which reduces effort and makes things as aesthetically pleasing as possible. For example, the simple setting for initial window size can mean the difference between having to constantly change the size of notes as you run out of space (or shrink it to make it more space efficient, if your notes tend toward the short).
At a minimum, all you need to do to jot down an idea is select the Inbox container and press Shift-Enter to make a new note; give it a name (even a temporary name), and then hit spacebar to start typing. I like to take it a step further and always have an “Inbox map” open on my screen. The advantage here is that you utilise spatial relationships without giving it much thought. Put down a few Adornments, like “To Do” and “Ideas”, and when you think of something you need to do, just double click in the Adornment area to make a new note. If categories are not important, you can use the spatial map to assign “rough importance” to things. Maybe stuff along the bottom of the map is less urgent, while stuff along the top is very urgent, with a soft gradient in between. No need to worry about picking a Priority drop-down like in many programs, you can be sloppy about it; easily move things around if they change; and most importantly because it isn’t a static scale, the positioning becomes relative. Meanwhile, stuff along the right side of the map could be time based while stuff on the left has no hard deadline.
The map is one of the unique things about Tinderbox. There are many programs, even note based and information management programs, that have diagramme formats, but very few can take what you intuitively design, and turn it into a functional apparatus. Tinderbox doesn’t always need to do that; one could do quite well just using a fuzzy map as described above, but it can do more, if you need it. Later on, you can build automation if you require it, to take stuff found within adornments and move them to a more appropriate location, or have the appearance of notes change depending upon where they are on your Inbox map. You could create a “Items Due” agent that scans this map and sorts by $Xpos. Perhaps anything not on the left side could get a clock badge and acquire a DueDate attribute in the KeyAttributes, which will make it easy to edit by just opening the note. But all of that can be saved for later.
Hopefully these simple examples elaborate how Tinderbox can be an excellent fuzzy note taking device because it can evolve to work the way you work best and it can be designed to display and even function in accordance with the types of information that are important to you.
One of the nice things about Tinderbox’s learning curve and complexity is that it needn’t be implemented immediately to be beneficial. It’s most often advantageous, in fact, to let a document gradually grow into itself, starting out as little more than a basic outliner. Let its features serve that outline as it becomes useful to automate, rather than trying to anticipate what might be useful and waste your time. It’s quite simple to change your mind later and affect radical changes in the structure and automation if necessary. You don’t have to learn all of its agent syntax at once. If you think of something you’d like to do, you can look it up and implement just that piece and be done with it.
