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Ask HN: Why do you keep a personal knowledge base?

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Re: Ask HN: Why do you keep a personal knowledge base?

#61

Post by robertAngst »

josephjrobison wrote: post #16

I’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…

What exactly are you researching and saving?

I feel like I read, remember what I need to google later, and I'm onto more.

Tbh, I pick topics and have goals in mind, even hobbyist goals are more fun than surfing the web.

Re: Ask HN: Why do you keep a personal knowledge base?

#62

Post by WhatIsDukkha »

sumnole wrote: post #19
WhatIsDukkha wrote: post #11

Refreshing the context when I resume some project. I get my mind back in the groove from sometimes years ago by just opening my orgmode section or file. The brain finds the connections again and the thought train picks up and off I go. As a side note, I use orgmode and I wouldn't consider any other program (that I know of) for a specific reason - What other setup could I be GUARANTEED of being able to pickup in 5, 10…

You bring up a good point about longevity. I currently use OneNote which was easy to be effective immediately taking notes with rich content, but I know there's always the risk of it shutting down forcing me to deal with the process of recovering my notes onto a different platform.

I've been impressed that microsoft has actually managed to keep pushing on onenote without abandoning it.

It's taken a while but it seems to have built some community and happy users.

But, yeah, I don't think open standards or longevity probably factored too much into the storage implementation or features.

I would think something built on top of annontated pdfs would get some of the features and flavor of onenote but I haven't seen anything attempt it.

Re: Ask HN: Why do you keep a personal knowledge base?

#63

Post by codeprimate »

hprotagonist wrote: post #27

http://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…

Spend half your time learning many things shallowly and half your time learning a few things deeply -- your resourcefulness will know no bound.

Re: Ask HN: Why do you keep a personal knowledge base?

#65

Post by cocacola1 »

steveeq1 wrote: post #25

As a side note, there is an online course called "Building a Second Brain" that shows how to create an effective personal knowledge base: https://www.buildingasecondbrain.com/ It's kinda pricey, and I'm taking the course right now. But I find it's pretty effective overall. It uses evernote as the default platform for your PKM.

Wow, that is pricey. $399 is pretty steep, it seems. How has it helped you? And do you think the price was worth it?

Re: Ask HN: Why do you keep a personal knowledge base?

#66

Post by Asafp »

I like knowledge and learning, so I just used to bookmark articles that were interesting with the intention to read them in the future. I found that I have too much to read and not enough time. now I am working on a chrome extension bookmark that save a summarization of the article to a google drive and remind me to read it.

Re: Ask HN: Why do you keep a personal knowledge base?

#67

Post by hprotagonist »

codeprimate wrote: post #63
hprotagonist wrote: post #27

http://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…

Spend half your time learning many things shallowly and half your time learning a few things deeply -- your resourcefulness will know no bound.

i sure hope so!

Re: Ask HN: Why do you keep a personal knowledge base?

#68

Post by scarface74 »

I have three modes when it comes to my career and skill development.

- learning what I need to know about my specific job (institutional knowledge). Even if my title is “Senior Developer”, in reality I usually have a fair amount of architectural level responsibilities and meetings with C level of people working at small companies. For that, I ask a lot of questions and take notes with Evernote or if I take notes on paper, I take a picture. Evernote is surprisingly good translating my writing to text for searching.

I keep a personal knowledge base so I can prepare for a meeting and be ready to answer questions.

- If I am introducing a new to the company technology, process or framework, I have a list of links that fellow developers or my manager (who is technical) to review.

- getting “interview ready”. About three months before I start seriously looking for a job,I freshen up on architectural subjects and make sure I can talk the talk. I keep a list of bookmarks and PDFs. Again, I am at a point in my career where no one asks me to do a whiteboard coding session but they do want to talk architecture. As an in the weeds developer, I know sound architecture but I don’t talk about it every day.

- I have a list of topic areas that I need to study to feel in the gaps to really consider myself a “full stack developer/architect”. But I’m usually only focused on one thing at the time. But if I find an interesting “getting started” walk through about another topic that’s on my radar, I bookmark under a folder “Things to Learn”. Right now, that’s getting deeper into AWS, Docker, NodeJS, and React.

Re: Ask HN: Why do you keep a personal knowledge base?

#69

Post by flashgordon »

dynamic99 wrote: post #57
flashgordon wrote: post #51

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.

Very interesting... what about more tacit knowledge (ideas, advice, etc)?

Same. Especially with ideas I have a mental map. For instance I find myself revisiting the topic of type systems every 3-4 years (don't me ask me why - I just am a sucker that way) and each time I find it a lot easier to revisit my last mental breadcrumbs rather falling back on books or notes I may have taken. I think laziness has honed me this way.

Re: Ask HN: Why do you keep a personal knowledge base?

#70

Post by tarboreus »

I keep a personal knowledge base with notes on people (SOs, colleges they're from, etc.), a todo list with notes for improvements to my process and workflows, passwords and logins, one liners and snippets (though the only one I use frequently these days are SQL snippets), notes on specific projects, ideas for blog posts in progress, various writing drafts, and old bios, CVs, and copy for personal promotion. It's al orgmode, so not much of a distinction between planning and creating, which I enjoy. You can as easily do literate coding in orgmode as write a blog post or keep notes.
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