I don't know about others but I actually don't. I found that I am wired to remember search terms exactly as is (not saying photographically) or at least sequences of searches and I let Google do the rest. I have been able to go back to topics I had researched years ago and almost retrace my search and find what I found earlier after many years. Must be why I am a "breadth" kind of person.
Ask HN: Why do you keep a personal knowledge base?
51–60 of 98 posts
Re: Ask HN: Why do you keep a personal knowledge base?
#52http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/personality.html Although high general intelligence is common among hackers, it is not the sine qua non one might expect. Another trait is probably even more important: the ability to mentally absorb, retain, and reference large amounts of ‘meaningless’ detail, trusting to later experience to give it context and meaning. A person of merely average analytical intelligence who has this t…
How exactly do you "retain"? Do you memorize or do you have a way of going back to notes efficiently?
Re: Ask HN: Why do you keep a personal knowledge base?
#53http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/personality.html Although high general intelligence is common among hackers, it is not the sine qua non one might expect. Another trait is probably even more important: the ability to mentally absorb, retain, and reference large amounts of ‘meaningless’ detail, trusting to later experience to give it context and meaning. A person of merely average analytical intelligence who has this t…
How exactly do you "retain"? Do you memorize or do you have a way of going back to notes efficiently?
I remember the breadcrumbs. like "big picture idea, roughly where to go to find it".
i cache data in a lab notebook, a mendeley collection of papers, and pinboard.
Re: Ask HN: Why do you keep a personal knowledge base?
#54If 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.
The problem is that thiy type of tool needs mobile apps for both iOS and Android before people will use it.
Doable, but much more effort than a first attempt on bookmarking.
Re: Ask HN: Why do you keep a personal knowledge base?
#55My 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 l…
How do you go back to your tactics/strategy notes? For me, I never stumble across old ideas when they would actually be relevant, but systemic review of these ideas seems like a big hassle.
Re: Ask HN: Why do you keep a personal knowledge base?
#56Uses of a personal knowledge base: - Recording and crystallizing ideas: most deep thoughts and informed opinions about things often don't materialize on first try. They are the result of many iterations, pivots and revisions. Writing them down helps one regain context quickly after leaving them for a while, which allows one to make incremental progress without being susceptible to the fallibility of memory searches.…
How do you retain/go back to those ideas? Or do you at all?
Re: Ask HN: Why do you keep a personal knowledge base?
#57I don't know about others but I actually don't. I found that I am wired to remember search terms exactly as is (not saying photographically) or at least sequences of searches and I let Google do the rest. I have been able to go back to topics I had researched years ago and almost retrace my search and find what I found earlier after many years. Must be why I am a "breadth" kind of person.
Very interesting... what about more tacit knowledge (ideas, advice, etc)?
Re: Ask HN: Why do you keep a personal knowledge base?
#58I’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 the problem that I seem to have. I'm looking for a way to turn that unfocused research into something productive, and it's a tough problem to solve.
Re: Ask HN: Why do you keep a personal knowledge base?
#59Uses of a personal knowledge base: - Recording and crystallizing ideas: most deep thoughts and informed opinions about things often don't materialize on first try. They are the result of many iterations, pivots and revisions. Writing them down helps one regain context quickly after leaving them for a while, which allows one to make incremental progress without being susceptible to the fallibility of memory searches.…
How do you retain/go back to those ideas? Or do you at all?
Yes I do. I keep everything in a single Google Docs document and re-read it from time to time. Maybe it's just me, but I always find it a rewarding experience. (ymmv)
Re: Ask HN: Why do you keep a personal knowledge base?
#60I don't really have a KB, I store information in gmail, google docs, bookmarks, code repos, and txt files. I keep that information because it's useful for work and personal info I keep needing to come back to or could be useful in the future.
I have been saving most of mine as browser bookmarks, if I see something interesting or a solution on stack overflow I bookmark it. Then I export those bookmarks occasionally for safe keeping.
I usually just re-search google for a solution or item I'm looking for. But sometimes I search my bookmarks just to find exactly what I used before.
I also have a few snippets text file where I add interesting code related snippets. And some google docs files that are super easy to search too. Gmail is also a great tool, with boomerang so I can have something fly back in my inbox someday or a certain time of year.
All in all I rarely have a hard time finding anything I'm looking for by using google, bookmarks, code repos and snippets.