My question, what program would one use to start his/her own personal knowledge base? Or do I have to be a software developer and create my own?
I use notion.so
Ask HN: Why do you keep a personal knowledge base?
41–50 of 98 posts
Re: Ask HN: Why do you keep a personal knowledge base?
#42I’ve realized recently that I spend hours and hours a week reading and saving stuff to Evernote. Like I’m always in research mode. I think focused research is good for the career, but unfocused is just a distraction and waste of time. I save sooo much stuff and rarely go back to read it. My one idea for recovering the lost/wasted time reading and saving this information is curating and publishing it online as blog po…
This is exactly my experience too. I almost never go back to my notes. Only value creating notes is actual act of creating notes, it doesn't really matter what you use for it.
You suggest your not going back to your notes. Is that because it's not convenient out because you don't have a good indexing system in place?
Re: Ask HN: Why do you keep a personal knowledge base?
#43My question, what program would one use to start his/her own personal knowledge base? Or do I have to be a software developer and create my own?
I'm a big fan of using vim and asciidoctor and an organized notes directory. I quickly jot down notes about certain projects or ideas using vim, then go back and format the notes at a later date with asciidoc markup. Then I run it through the asciidoctor chain to create personal html pages. https://asciidoctor.org/
Re: Ask HN: Why do you keep a personal knowledge base?
#44If anyone is interested, the term for this field is "personal knowledge management." There are a few basic principles that can help keep the system organized and useful. Personally I use Google Keep and OneNote: every weekend I funnel the unstructured thoughts, ideas and realizations into a structured format organized in OneNote. It takes a bit of time, but I can look back on any of my notes on programming or real es…
Please, for the love of all that is open source, someone create an open alternative to OneNote. It’s easily one of the best Microsoft tools ever, and there doesn’t seem to be a good equivalent. It also seems like the perfect pinboard-style lifestyle business.
Yes, please. Something that can open OneNote documents compatibly, in particular.
Re: Ask HN: Why do you keep a personal knowledge base?
#45My question, what program would one use to start his/her own personal knowledge base? Or do I have to be a software developer and create my own?
First things first: everyone is different, so try various alternatives first. Run some experiments and see what sticks.
That being said, I strongly suggest a personal wiki. I write about Dokuwiki on my blog (https://blog.ivansmirnov.name/how-to-make-a-personal-wiki/).
Key takeaways: - Make sure the underlying storage is as simple as possible. Markdown in text files is as safe as it gets - Friction has to be close to zero, otherwise you won't use it - Put information in a deterministic location. Store any information that you might come back to, so that you don't have to repeat your research.
Re: Ask HN: Why do you keep a personal knowledge base?
#46I have a long term personal project that was well outside my capabilities when I first took it up. I've been using the same knowledge base app (Devon) that I used for my thesis and book. I find that it's much easier to recover stuff that I've "found out about" but didn't "learn".
Re: Ask HN: Why do you keep a personal knowledge base?
#47For haven's sake!
Don't use the online services to store your personal information!
That is stupidest thing that can be.
First, sooner or later, your information may be stolen and distributed online just like apples: https://raidforums.com/Announcement-Database-Index-CLICK-ME
Second, find yourself a computer, device, where you can store your data offline, and not online.
I recommend reading the online article on SASS or Service As Software Substitute: https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/who-does-that-server-really-s...
and using free software, free as in freedom to do what you want with it to keep your personal knowledge.
Recommended software:
Cherrytree: https://www.giuspen.com/cherrytree/ It works just fine for taking notes.
GNU Emacs: http://www.gnu.org/s/emacs It has notes, reminders, calenders, you name it. it has Org mode and note taking features that blow your mind.
Vym mind mapping tool http://www.insilmaril.de/vym/
and plethora of notes and ming mapping tools available that free software is offering. Search for packages: https://www.hyperbola.info/
Re: Ask HN: Why do you keep a personal knowledge base?
#48My notes are the base of my day to day. I use simple txt files synced with my phone, can't stand the lag of opening OneNote and Evernote and the bugs that always deleted my items on Wunderlist. I curate everything weekly at least, try to keep the content easy to read in 10 minutes or so for the main file (tactics and strategies is the name of this file, but I put a lot information on it, more about below). I have a lot of these txt, the main ones being tasks, tactics and strategy, accounting and a lot others for personal projects, hobbies and other subjects.
The task file is the one always opened, there are my pressing issues and there I'll note anything that later I'll pass to the other files. The most important though is the tactics/strategy one, where I write details, thoughts of my life, business strategies and general stuff that I like to read at least every week, the projects I want to do next, hobbies I want to try, advice that I like to read, and even if I have some of this etched on my mind sometimes it's a great north on a confusing day. It's great to read about this idea I had a week ago and now completely forgot about because I was focused at the current issue. Writing is also great to organize the thoughts, I had so many breakthroughs just by reading and writing on these files. It's an extension of my memory and my process.
Re: Ask HN: Why do you keep a personal knowledge base?
#49The main reason is to save time and having an anchoring point to further develop ideas.
Re: Ask HN: Why do you keep a personal knowledge base?
#50I used to keep a tonne of stuff in Evernote, but have since moved to Standard Notes[1]. I generally have everything super organized, but allow the overall collection of knowledge to look messy. A bit like our brains, knowledge dumps can appear messy, but are actually organized.