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Ask HN: How do you manage/organize information and knowledge in your life?

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Re: Ask HN: How do you manage/organize information and knowledge in your life?

#41

Post by icco »

andrey-p wrote: post #15

What I do is: - For meetings, events, social obligations, I carry a small paper-based diary. - For ideas and thoughts, I write them down. The idea is that the act of writing something down aids recall. For example, story and blog ideas go in a A5 notebook that I carry around with me, and I commit them to a digitally backed up document as soon as possible. Note-to-self lifestyle advice goes in my bedside drawer, to ch…

This is pretty close to what I do, but I also try and keep track of what I read. To do this, I just bookmark everything I read in pinboard so if I remember some tendril of a thing, I can search for it. In general my memory is horrible, every little bit helps.

Re: Ask HN: How do you manage/organize information and knowledge in your life?

#43

Post by TannerLD »

thaumaturgy wrote: post #17

1. Live simply. As I've gotten older I've found more and more value in not having too many things going on. Gradually I'm sleeping better, eating better, reducing stress, and getting more exercise, all of which is important for the next thing: 2. Memorize as much as I can. It's an exercise; I memorize phone numbers, schedules, people's names, trivia, all kinds of stuff. I've never found anything that matches the flex…

What system and/or application(s) do you use to help you remember things?

Re: Ask HN: How do you manage/organize information and knowledge in your life?

#44

Post by xj9 »

I have a notebook (moleskine atm, but I've used a lot of other brands/kinds) for sketching out and expressing ideas/insights and I use Evernote for long-term storage, project management, and to store reference material. I also use Safari's reading list to hold on to things I want to read, but don't know if I want to save permanently.

Edit: I seriously keep everything in Evernote, whats up with the down votes?

Re: Ask HN: How do you manage/organize information and knowledge in your life?

#46

Post by bsilvereagle »

ay1n wrote: post #7
bsilvereagle wrote: post #4

I used to use OneNote pretty extensively for nearly everything. Recipes, course notes, thoughts while working on projects, lists of reminders, etc. The main problem with it was that if I wanted to search on something, I'd have to search X number of OneNote notebooks. I've recently started to use fedwiki instead of OneNote, and things are alrightish. Fedwiki has lots of room for improvement as a wiki, and then as a kn…

For me the biggest downside of OneNote is that I can't use it on Linux/Unix (Wine doesn't always work). I didn't know fedwiki, looks interesting and I'll look into this, thanks for that. Do you have categories in which single entries are grouped or you just add new thing and search for it later?

Yeah, that was my issue with OneNote as well.

With fedwiki, I have a bunch of 'Table of Contents' pages grouped around themes, Project 1, Project 2, etc, and some pages then link to other pages, like a normal wiki.

Currently fedwiki just does searching based on page titles, I'm (slowly) working on an elastic search backend for it to get full-text search.

Re: Ask HN: How do you manage/organize information and knowledge in your life?

#47

Post by zo1 »

pyre wrote: post #14
ay1n wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, I think this is a common problem. We collect things, because they seem worth reading/watching but never return to them. One thing is that some effort is required to read/watch those things but other thing is that we forget that we even saw that particular article/video. So, maybe bookmarks should have a reminder mechanism built into them of some sort? Sombining Spaced Repetition with bookmarking seems interestin…

This is further fuelled by recalling something (e.g. an article you read), and not being able to find it again. For example, a while ago I read an article that talked about peanut allergies being less prevalent/severe in Europe than the US, and Europe having more cases of other allergies (like apple allergies). It then went on to talk about different pollens that may react with our bodies to trigger certain allergies…

If I find something remotely worthy, I bookmark it with the nearest button available. Most browsers have one near the address bar somewhere.

Re: Ask HN: How do you manage/organize information and knowledge in your life?

#48

Post by bsilvereagle »

thaumaturgy wrote: post #17

1. Live simply. As I've gotten older I've found more and more value in not having too many things going on. Gradually I'm sleeping better, eating better, reducing stress, and getting more exercise, all of which is important for the next thing: 2. Memorize as much as I can. It's an exercise; I memorize phone numbers, schedules, people's names, trivia, all kinds of stuff. I've never found anything that matches the flex…

> 2. Memorize as much as I can.

I agree that you should rely on your memory. However, when you die, all that information you have is gone to the world. That's why I started writing things down, for when I'm gone.

Take a look at Roy Underhill, if he hadn't started writing books and opened a school, all of the woodworking knowledge he has acquired would be gone forever (or until someone else dedicated a lifetime to finding it all over again).

Re: Ask HN: How do you manage/organize information and knowledge in your life?

#49

Post by ay1n »

thaumaturgy wrote: post #17

1. Live simply. As I've gotten older I've found more and more value in not having too many things going on. Gradually I'm sleeping better, eating better, reducing stress, and getting more exercise, all of which is important for the next thing: 2. Memorize as much as I can. It's an exercise; I memorize phone numbers, schedules, people's names, trivia, all kinds of stuff. I've never found anything that matches the flex…

I agree on living simply, everyday I'm trying to do this better.

I also try to use my memory as often as possible and I think it's pretty good (I'm learning mnemonic techniques which are really fun to implement in everyday life). Yes, mind itself is reaaaallly good system, but (at least for me) not all my insights, ideas, notes etc. about particular topic are available on demand, but only some part of them. And if I don't think about one thing very often it can be lost forever. Nevertheless, thank you for taking time to write about your system and giving different perspective.

Re: Ask HN: How do you manage/organize information and knowledge in your life?

#50

Post by Ixiaus »

Org-mode with mobile app, and a grimoire file. It holds all snippets, captured thoughts, bookmarks, to-read, etc...

It's also responsible for my spaced repetition system, my work agenda, my personal agenda, blog post ideas, project ideas, grocery lists, todo lists, etc...

It's extremely powerful and my life is forever changed because of that software.

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