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Ask HN: How to organize personal knowledge?

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151–160 of 228 posts

Re: Ask HN: How to organize personal knowledge?

#151
post #34

This is what I learned from designing data architectures: If your data is variegated in format and form, don't look for a single tool/method solution to organize them. There is no single all-purpose organization method. Don't start with figuring out a method to organize your information. You will end up overengineering your org method. Instead, organize your information per "use-case". Start with a specific use-case/…

Don't start with figuring out a method to organize your information. You will end up overengineering your org method. I think this is an important point. I like to start with a few simple rules: - To retrieve information, I should know where to start: a Schelling point.[0] For me, this is the home page of my wiki. For wenc, it's a Google Doc. - It shouldn't take me more than three clicks to get from my starting point…

What software do you use for your wiki?

Re: Ask HN: How to organize personal knowledge?

#152
post #55

>collected a large amount of ebooks, papers, articles, movies, pictures, etc. (all digital). Since you mentioned those specific examples, I see a commonality and so I'm going to assume you're primarily concerned about organizing files that are not authored/generated by you . (Except possibly pictures/photos since you might be talking about jpgs from your personal iPhone or digital camera.) This distinction is key bec…

> they do have very good "web clipping" functionality.

Are there services for this where you can link in your own backend?

Re: Ask HN: How to organize personal knowledge?

#153
post #61

Notion for everything: my work, personal, and wife+I joint workspace.

Notion's UI is so genius. It's clean, intuitive, flexible. It's like everything I love about Google Docs, Quip, and Workflowy but with Slack-like slash commands, mentions, and integrations.

Re: Ask HN: How to organize personal knowledge?

#154
I copy pasted everything from my blog here. If you want the actual links to things I use, just use the link since I can't dump it in hackernews without it being really unreadable.

http://vincentmtang.com/toolbox/

I only put all the ways I organize my things via software, still a WIP (work in progress) for hardware things I use (pens, notebooks, etc)

------------------------------------------------------------------

## Notetaking / Productivity

Dynalist – Primary notetaking software

Airtable – Google spreadsheet meets microsoft access. A swiss army knife for business. Very useful for making a minimal viable prototype

Pinboard – Bookmarking. I consider this 3rd party chrome extension a must-have, I bind it to my CTRL+D key

Anki – Flashcard software. I use it to speed up learning math, programming languages, and computer science.

------------------------------------------------------------------

## Software Development

Chrome – My everyday browser

Slimjet – A simple chromium based browser that I use for webdevelopment occasionally. Because then I can have a seperate desktop icons

VS Code – My primary IDE

Github – Git + cloud storage for programming projects

Codepen – Isolated frontend environment. Used to A/B test components and explore cool things. Organize codesnippets here like I do in evernote.

Postman – API testing

LucidChart – Making flowchart diagrams and data models. Not free though, for that I prefer draw.io

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## Design Tools – (macOS and windows)

Flux – Makes screen red at night so I can sleep easier

AffinityDesigner – I use all adobe products as well, but I prefer this over illustrator

AffinityPhoto – Same reason, I prefer over adobe photoshop

AdobeIndesign – Catalog & Brochure design

Figma – UX design tool, applesketch is macOS only

AutoCAD – Architectural drafting program, but not free

Fusion360 – 3D modelling program for DIY projects

GooglePhotos – Photo & video backup

Dropbox – Cloud storage for files/folders

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## WINDOWS SPECIFIC

Phraseexpress – Keyboard macro automation. Checkout my 14 phrase-express guide to see use cases

Autohotkey – When I need an advanced macro that phrase express doesn’t work on. It has a high learning curve and ugly syntax language though

DirectoryOpus – Native windows file explorer sucks, this is best file explorer in market. Has a learning curve. Checkout use cases here

7+ Taskbar Tweaker – Smaller icons on my windows desktop screen

Blank Spacer Exes – It gets hard to look at so many icons in windows, so this gives me eye relief by grouping icons together

Greenshot – The best windows quick image editor out there. First thing I install on friends/family PC normally, its that good. MacOS version is not good.

ShareX – ShareX is greenshot image editor that supports gif uploads / custom image-hosting options. Version 11.6 is the best. MacOS has no equivalent.

------------------------------------------------------------------

## MacOS specific – alot of programming apps

Iterm2 – A better terminal environment. I binded it to ⌃⌥[spacebar]

Oh-my-zsh – My preferred bash alternative for development

Penc – Gesture based window snapping/resizing

Spectacle – Keyboard based window snapping/resizing

Keyboard Maestro – Keyboard automation for macOS. Similar to phraseexpress but better

Alfred – Better alternative to macOS’s spotlight for quickly opening files / apps. I binded it to ⌥[spacebar]

Captured – An inferior version to shareX without gif support, but best thing I could find.

Dropzone 3 – For quickly handling common tasks like moving folders around

Cheatsheet – Because I’m a new mac user I need to quickly memorize commands

Unarchiver – So I can one click install things on macOS

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## Chrome Extensions – Productivity

Silverbird – For quickly tweeting things on twitter

Tabsnooze – Set reminders to myself to pay bills at end of month, and to do incremental reading

Pagenotes – When I need to save some specific information on a website. E.G. terminal commands, regular expressions on regex101.com, etc.

TheGreatSuspender – Suspends unused tabs after 30 minutes. Because chrome is a memory hog

Tampermonkey – Injecting javascript on a page to enhance notetaking tools. Its like your own chrome extension. Read about how I use it here

Ankitab – Relatively unknown, but its the opposite of Momentum. I use it to review flashcards thoughout the day

DynalistCompanionClipper – I use this with my notetaking app dynalist, I dump all my ideas here as they happen.

Stylus – Add custom CSS to webpages. Since stylish was tracking user data and got banned

VideoSpeedController – So I can play youtube videos up to 16x speed with captions to speedread. Its how I consume information very quickly

Imagus – Hover over an image to see its full view. Useful for my notetaking app dynalist, as well

GoogleDictionary – Select a word to see its definition.

PowerThesaurus – Select a word to see synonym and antonyms. Thesaurus are my favorite business and coding tool, naming is important

ClipboardHistory2 – SelectAll, CopyAll – you now have a saved copy of whatever your typing on reddit / hackernews / wordpress

Lastpass – Chrome extension for managing passwords. Cross platform

AmazonAssistant – So I can dump all my favorited wishlist items anywhere to amazon, export it out later

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## Chrome Extensions – WebDevelopment

Wappylzer / Builtwith – To check what websites are running these days, accurate 50% of time

Page Ruler – Measure things on screen quickly

Webdeveloper – Powerful swiss army knife for webdevelopment, but I never use it

ViewportResizer – For responsive webdevelopment, I use this daily. Better than chrome’s native tools. Checkout bookmark version here

Gifscrubber – I need to pause gifs especially if I want to make a codepen of it from dribbble, etc. PlaytheGif is a close equivalent.

RefinedGithub – Better looking github made by Sindresorhus

Octotree – Left side file explorer for github repos

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## Android / General

ColorNotes – Every other noteapp I’ve used sucks. I write things here, copy+paste it to dynalist later

GoogleKeep – When I need to quickly sync an image or text from my phone to PC and nothing else works

Meetup – Use the specific link, login, and add URL to homepage. Meetup android app sucks. Shows only the 28 techmeetups I’m subbed to

SolidExplorer – File explorer

Should I answer? – Tells me if phonecaller is a scammer. Not that I pick up phonecalls I don’t recognize anyways, that’s what voicemails for.

Slack – Team communication

OfficeLens – For making PDF’s from documents using your phone camera.

waze – If I know a driving route is slow, I use waze

okgoogle – My favorite commands are: “Play spotify”, “Next Song”, “Navigate Home”, “Exit Navigation”, “Find Parking”

Spotify – Music

Musixmatch – Lyrics for spotify

GoogleCalendar – Calendar

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## Content / News

Youtube – I only put an alert on people that post high quality content infrequently. E.G., SmarterEveryDay, MarkRober, TomScott

ProductHunt – Where I like to see all the new fun tools out there

Hackernews – Lots of smart and interesting people here. Also, where I find out about news in the tech environment

Reddit/subreddits – Copy this multihub, delete ones that aren’t relevant to you, add cool ones like r/welding, r/cableporn, r/engineeringPorn

Re: Ask HN: How to organize personal knowledge?

#155
post #43

I use Dropbox to store everything. There are no files that I care fore that are not managed by Dropbox (or iCloud, for my photos/videos). I use iA Writer to create lists and documents for everything in Dropbox folders. I also have a folder for PDFs/papers (also on Dropbox). There are also folders for my study nodes ( I study codebases ), notes on personal stuff, notes on Programming, on pretty much everything. I use…

Hmm I have a similar setup except I use gitlab private repo... but really there isn't that much of a need for a 'commit history' in notes... I think I'll try the dropbox approach.

How about a private git repo with SparkleShare?

Re: Ask HN: How to organize personal knowledge?

#157

DEVONthink - great for all things bookmarks, data, searchable PDFs etc - can also use it for org-mode files and open in your fav editor. Many sync options. Mobile too.

Seconded. I have databases for household scans of bills, etc.; one for computer science stuff; one for my work; and so on.

Re: Ask HN: How to organize personal knowledge?

#158
post #99
post #35

I use WorkFlowy[1] as my starting place for all notes, info, and tech tips. It's quickly searchable and the mobile client is easy to use. I really like the structure of bulleted lists for just about all types of information. It doesn't really cover your file storage needs, but I think that's a different beast than notes and information. When I need to store stuff like that I dump it on Google Drive which makes search…

Judging by Workflowy's development pace, the entire team is spending the profit on opiates. No features were introduced in the past couple years, aside from the desktop apps—despite users begging for an API at least. Now Workflowy went the way of Evernote: changing the looks and adding bugs. The outline paradigm is great, and Workflowy is a nice influx of fresh blood in that field, but I think I might actually kludge…

https://dynalist.io/compare shared above seems to have more features than workflowy

Re: Ask HN: How to organize personal knowledge?

#159

As this question comes up quite frequently, here are some past discussions: - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17586375 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11945882 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15736102

also, comments in 'the software engineering notebook': https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15473702

Re: Ask HN: How to organize personal knowledge?

#160

Another shameless plug: you might find https://johnnydecimal.com useful. Forgive the design, I’m right this very weekend updating the whole thing. I’m busy writing a little web app which will replace the spreadsheet you’ll currently need to keep track of your numbers.

I had come across johnnydecimal at one point but had a hard time resonating with the idea of having numerical enumerations since I already use tools to help navigate folder hierarchies (e.g. alfred, quicksilver, etc.).

Do you still find value in the enumeration aspect? Is this something where there's more value in it within collaborative environments?

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