Writing is one of the best ways to learn. A knowledge base provides me with the material that I can use to produce my own thoughts. Unless you write fiction or you have already acquired some kind of deep knowledge about a subject, the process of research and collecting is essential for good writing.
Ask HN: Why do you keep a personal knowledge base?
91–98 of 98 posts
Re: Ask HN: Why do you keep a personal knowledge base?
#92Earlier 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…
I wrote that post, the post you linked is the second part of a two-part series. The first part is here: https://praxis.fortelabs.co/building-a-second-brain-in-emacs...
Re: Ask HN: Why do you keep a personal knowledge base?
#93I’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.
Me too, especially with books. I kept getting the feeling it was a waste to read all this great stuff and not use it. Even when I took notes, I never went back to them.
So I started doing this:
- Create 1 file per book (I keep it all in Google Drive)
- The problem is my notes are huge, so at the top of the file I include a TL;DR
- Include in the TL;DR a list of actions: things I can put to use straight away. I copy stuff onto a personal Trello too, so I don't forget
- Also when I'm working on something relevant I can go back to the TL;DR (instead of searching through all the notes)
On top of this, I try to read books that are relevant to what I'm currently working on. I have a huge backlog of books I'd like to read on all sorts of things, but I'll hold back if I think it'll make more sense to read them later on.
Re: Ask HN: Why do you keep a personal knowledge base?
#94Re: Ask HN: Why do you keep a personal knowledge base?
#95http://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…
Being able to let go of data is similarly just as important, being able to have control over an internally oriented structure that allows for this process of accepting, selecting, absorbing, checking, retaining, and rejecting information, this is important for survival period.
Re: Ask HN: Why do you keep a personal knowledge base?
#96http://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?
Our ideas of memory come from our previous ideas of memory. It's much more malleable than you may have grown to understand.
It really is like bread crumbs when you have deal with things like information overload. There's that whole idea of a 'memory palace' that I like to think about before I go to sleep, because it gives me a structure to meditate on at the end of the day, the thoughts I want to retain and arrange in the ways I'm curious about retaining and arranging them.
A lot of the information we collect can appear ordered, but unless it's a rigorous order proven mathematically, there's no real way to prove anything about the efficiency of our memory. Some thoughts may be useful tomorrow and others may be useful 10 years from now.
So I think it's fun to give it a structure I remember and can travel into, because I chose how to organize it over a very long period of time.
But ultimately I think it depends on ways you are most comfortable thinking about information. My imagination tends to be very visual.
Re: Ask HN: Why do you keep a personal knowledge base?
#97Quite simply so I can remember the stuff I need to. Or to be more clear, I know I'm going to forget so want to be able to find out what I've forgotten in a convenient way.
Re: Ask HN: Why do you keep a personal knowledge base?
#98http://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.
Is this a quote from somewhere or something you just made up? Either way, I like it.