surprised that no one has mentioned TiddlyWiki (https://tiddlywiki.com) yet, its fairly popular for this sort of thing and very easy to get started.
Ask HN: Why do you keep a personal knowledge base?
71–80 of 98 posts
Re: Ask HN: Why do you keep a personal knowledge base?
#72Just keep something my brain can't store because it's not useful everyday.
Re: Ask HN: Why do you keep a personal knowledge base?
#73As 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?
He's coming out with a book so you might want to wait on it. A proper notetaking system is important to me, so it was worth it for me, but I'd wait on the book because he tends to ramble on the podcast.
It's basically an organization system that serves as an adjunct to "getting things done". GTD's system relies on "filing non-actionable items", but it doesn't really explain how to do that. Traditionally, people would rely on filing cabinets or whatever. BASB relies on evernote to keep basically anything information in there that can quickly be retrieved (becuase you're going to forget years later). And when you later need to the information, you can criss-cross the data for more creative output.
If you are a fan of emacs org-mode (as I am), here's an article that shows how to use it with BASB: https://medium.com/@mwfogleman/implementing-a-second-brain-i...
it goes into the process a little bit, so it can help you decide if the course is worth it for you or not.
Re: Ask HN: Why do you keep a personal knowledge base?
#74> Ask HN: Why do you keep a personal knowledge base?
Why assume everyone here keeps a knowledge base? I personally don't.
Re: Ask HN: Why do you keep a personal knowledge base?
#7580% of stuff is junk.
I save content so I'll be able to re-find the good stuff I've found.
Re: Ask HN: Why do you keep a personal knowledge base?
#76My 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.
This is where you would add in other techniques to aid you.
I don't know how well it works but the zettelkasten method is a way to organise your notes contextually, with only a little manual overhead. You can also add in what they call "structural notes" (i.e. tables of content) to let you quickly find your way. This would aid you in building up a mental map if you will of what notes you have, and to let you quickly find whatever you can't remember.
Then you can do things like SRS flashcards to continually refresh your memory about topics. They're originally meant for just learning things in the first place but they could easily be adapted to keep throwing back your ideas at you at irregular intervals. That keeps the ideas floating around in your mind without you having to manually go and read them.
Re: Ask HN: Why do you keep a personal knowledge base?
#77Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
For early adopters it would be enough to have a great import functionality. There are lots of mobile note taking apps that support cloud saves or exports/saves in open formats, so people could use one of them and save to a folder on Dropbox or Gdrive and have the main app source content from there.
Re: Ask HN: Why do you keep a personal knowledge base?
#78My 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.
I read this specific file weekly (or when lost) and as I read it I’ll often erase stuff that aren’t too useful anymore (or move to other file). It’s important to keep this file in a size small enough for me to enjoy reading it often, and so I force myself to only keep the winners there.
I read the other 20 or so files monthly or when looking for something specific.
Re: Ask HN: Why do you keep a personal knowledge base?
#79http://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.
This. I take notes of concepts that I don’t clearly understand/agree but have a gut feeling that is interesting, and as I read it repeteadly overtime I often get surprised by how the concept evolves on my mind.
Re: Ask HN: Why do you keep a personal knowledge base?
#80There's this weird/ intersting program that was recommended to in a thread similar to this that maybe you should take a look at:
https://github.com/synchrony/smsn
The explenation and thought process behind it seems a bit esoteric though.