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Ask HN: How do you organize your knowledge?

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Re: Ask HN: How do you organize your knowledge?

#51

Post by schappim »

I use a custom Rails app inspirted by Stephen Wolfram's Post: "Seeking the Productive Life: Some Details of My Personal Infrastructure" [1].

It looks like this [2] (#000000 black interface for mobile due to OLED display).

It changes context depending on time of day and device used. Eg. before working showing me the info I need about the kids [3].

[1] https://writings.stephenwolfram.com/2019/02/seeking-the-prod...

[2] https://files.littlebird.com.au/Shared-Image-2021-04-26-07-5...

[3] https://files.littlebird.com.au/Shared-Image-2021-04-26-08-0...

Re: Ask HN: How do you organize your knowledge?

#52

Post by bitcoinmoney »

schappim wrote: post #51

I use a custom Rails app inspirted by Stephen Wolfram's Post: "Seeking the Productive Life: Some Details of My Personal Infrastructure" [1]. It looks like this [2] (#000000 black interface for mobile due to OLED display). It changes context depending on time of day and device used. Eg. before working showing me the info I need about the kids [3]. [1] https://writings.stephenwolfram.com/2019/02/seeking-the-prod... [2]…

How can I use this?

Re: Ask HN: How do you organize your knowledge?

#53

Post by schappim »

bitcoinmoney wrote: post #52
schappim wrote: post #51

I use a custom Rails app inspirted by Stephen Wolfram's Post: "Seeking the Productive Life: Some Details of My Personal Infrastructure" [1]. It looks like this [2] (#000000 black interface for mobile due to OLED display). It changes context depending on time of day and device used. Eg. before working showing me the info I need about the kids [3]. [1] https://writings.stephenwolfram.com/2019/02/seeking-the-prod... [2]…

How can I use this?

Hit me up on the email address in my HN profile

Re: Ask HN: How do you organize your knowledge?

#54

Post by adverbly »

I keep a git repository with mostly markdown files. Its secure, searchable, free, updatable and retrievable anywhere. I can edit it easily with my favorite text editor of the day. I can also include other file types.

Knowledge itself I keep written in markdown files. I keep folders, multiple files, and headings within files to organize and group things by topic. Everything is in unordered bullet points. The bullet points can be nested as well.

Indentation from nested bullets, plus the syntax highlighting for headers gives visual indication of where related material is located.

Re: Ask HN: How do you organize your knowledge?

#55

Post by rasulkireev »

lolive wrote: post #21

Obsidian was the mind opener for me. Simple to use. Backuped on Dropbox on my various machines, it is my ubiquitous personal knowledge base. The fact that you can copy/paste HTML from web pages into it makes me rebuild knowledge I get from the internet into my own version. Really really a fundamental tool for me. The Vi of knowledge. PS: I don't know the other tools (notion, roam,...) PPS: a big downside in Obsidian,…

The is the Obsidian Publish service exactly for that usecase. (https://obsidian.md/publish), although it is paid. I'm sure there will be soon, if not already, an open source extension that allows you to do that.

Re: Ask HN: How do you organize your knowledge?

#56

Post by ammar_x »

I have folders (and sub-folders for different categories I'm interested in. Inside each folder, there are text files, markdown files, PDFs, etc. about that category. I mostly use text files to write my notes from books, lectures, articles, etc.

For memorizing things, I use Anki which looks old but it's great. Every day, I spend a few minutes on it reviewing things I learned before and wanted to engrave it in my memory.

I'd suggest an interesting related interview (not mine): How to Make Yourself Into a Learning Machine (https://every.to/superorganizers/how-to-build-a-learning-mac...)

Re: Ask HN: How do you organize your knowledge?

#58

Post by juancn »

I draw stupid diagrams and rough notes that I never read again, they just help while I'm making sense of stuff. It's the mechanistic motion of using a pencil (or an Apple Pencil) that helps more than anything.

I used to take notes at school, but hardly ever read them again, it was the act of taking notes that helped me make sense of stuff and remember it.

Re: Ask HN: How do you organize your knowledge?

#59

Post by bhouston »

jonsen wrote: post #47
great_reversal wrote: post #33

For overall memory, I generally just remember things instead of using all these fancy apps. Sometimes I'll make some notes in Typora (clean .md editor), but more often than not, I'll never revisit the file. I'm a visual learner, so its really easy for me to recall past snapshots (static, not like a video) from my life, or how certain things looked at a point in time. It's not quite an identical memory, but it's not t…

Beware you young men with fresh brains. Brains can and do get worn. I could say almost exactly your words about my younger self, but not anymore. Now I suffer badly from never having learned and trained a good note system. Get your external memory configured and operational in due time.

What age did you notice it change?

Re: Ask HN: How do you organize your knowledge?

#60

Post by unicodepepper »

lolive wrote: post #21

Obsidian was the mind opener for me. Simple to use. Backuped on Dropbox on my various machines, it is my ubiquitous personal knowledge base. The fact that you can copy/paste HTML from web pages into it makes me rebuild knowledge I get from the internet into my own version. Really really a fundamental tool for me. The Vi of knowledge. PS: I don't know the other tools (notion, roam,...) PPS: a big downside in Obsidian,…

I have not tried this with Obsidian yet, but I know that Markdeep allows you to render .md files on the fly as HTML by appending some javascript to the unmodified markdown.

https://casual-effects.com/markdeep/

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