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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?

#81

Post by stockkid »

My reason for keeping a knowledge base is to forget less of what I learn every day.

I used to use Evernote for this but it wasn't quite working because of constant context switching and lack of spaced repetition.

So I wrote open source program called Dnote [0] and have been use it every day for the last year to store my learning. To minimize distraction, it works as browser extensions, cli, and IDE plugin. And I automated the spaced repetition by writing a cron job to send me digests every Friday.

[0] - https://github.com/dnote-io/cli

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

#82

Post by naveen99 »

pepicon wrote: post #48

My 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 sync your text files with your phone ?

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

#84

Post by jonnydubowsky »

steveeq1 wrote: post #73
cocacola1 wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Just saw this intro to Emacs org mode. Thanks! I asked for some recommendations on getting started in a different section of thread. I appreciate the tip!

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

#85

Post by uberstuber »

cocacola1 wrote: post #65
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?

It's worth it.

Previously I would save notes and never use them. Now my notes are set up in a way that I get more projects done. Having reference material progressively summarized makes collecting ideas and shaping it into a deliverable way easier. Loading context for a project is way easier with a system like this, it makes an interruption much less painful.

The other benefit of taking the course is the forum, plenty of smart people to meet, discuss pkm and other ideas.

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

#86

Post by carusooneliner »

I'm really into taking notes -- both written and typed. The tactile part of taking notes helps me register things better and the notes themselves greatly help with recall. For written notes, I use Peter Pauper notebooks (https://www.peterpauper.com/) and Staedtler pens (https://www.staedtler.com/intl/en/products/products-for-colo...). I'm a sucker for good stationery. For typed notes, I use Google Keep on my phone and the Notes app on my Mac.

Lately I've been using screen recording to create video notes. I developed an app called Outclip (https://checkoutclip.com) with my buddy. Although the app is meant for a different purpose (bug reporting) I use it to screen record as I'm doing things (like configuring an AWS service for instance) in case I have to repeat the steps later.

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

#87

Post by mark_l_watson »

Most of the suggestions here involve organized, and perhaps structured, note taking. This is good and makes sense for personal knowledge/research.

That said when I saw ‘personal knowledge base’ my first thought was ‘personal knowledge graph.’ An advantage of knowledge graphs is the ability to start with public data sources and combine in your own information. Like, customizing DBPedia with your own scheme and data.

For organizations, ontology development, defined vocabularies, etc. make sense, but not for most individuals.

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

#89

Post by jamietanna »

To quote https://www.jvt.me/posts/2017/06/25/blogumentation/ I use blog posts as a way to write easily consumable howtos which I can refer back to when I have issues. I've also found it hugely popular with people finding my site via search engines as well as colleagues facing similar issues

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

#90

Post by pepicon »

naveen99 wrote: post #82
pepicon wrote: post #48

My 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 sync your text files with your phone ?

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