Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ask HN: How to organize personal knowledge?

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 228 posts

Re: Ask HN: How to organize personal knowledge?

#91

Post by zubspace »

jasode wrote: post #55

>collected a large amount of ebooks, papers, articles, movies, pictures, etc. (all digital). Since you mentioned those specific examples, I see a commonality and so I'm going to assume you're primarily concerned about organizing files that are not authored/generated by you . (Except possibly pictures/photos since you might be talking about jpgs from your personal iPhone or digital camera.) This distinction is key bec…

> However, they have one exception to the "being bad at managing collections of the world's data that I didn't write" -- they do have very good "web clipping" functionality. Instead of saving url bookmarks that might suffer digital rot, you can use the web clip tool.

Let me warn you: I tried to use OneNote this way. The web clipper is really nice and I used it heavily to clip everything interesting on the web from my desktop and my phone until my OneNote file reached 8GB. Syncing just completely gave up and there is no way to export everything in a usable format.

Since then I use a separate Firefox 52.5.0 instance with the old ScrapBook plugin. I can send sites to it from a current Firefox instance and from mobile. It works ok and, in case this setup should stop working at some point in the future, I still have all sites sitting on my local drive.

Unfortunately the browser makers don't give a damn about saving and organizing Websites locally, although I'd believe that this would be far superior to Bookmarks. I love scraping my local library for useful stuff and I've been bitten by link rot far too often.

For personal notes and todo lists I prefer simple text files with a few categories. Lately I'm also giving Boostnote [1] a try, which simply looks a bit better and allows me to add checkboxes and proper headings/separators.

[1] https://boostnote.io/

Re: Ask HN: How to organize personal knowledge?

#92

Post by joanofarf »

xbryanx wrote: post #35

I use WorkFlowy[1] as my starting place for all notes, info, and tech tips. It's quickly searchable and the mobile client is easy to use. I really like the structure of bulleted lists for just about all types of information. It doesn't really cover your file storage needs, but I think that's a different beast than notes and information. When I need to store stuff like that I dump it on Google Drive which makes search…

I've been using Workflowy for several years and recommend it very highly.

The ability to expand/collapse, zoom in/out, and do everything via keyboard shortcuts makes it very pleasant to work with.

Re: Ask HN: How to organize personal knowledge?

#93

Post by jorijori »

Hjugo wrote: post #60

Someone knows a good software to search a large amount of text pdfs locally? Something like mendeley & zotero?

For MacOS, foxtrot pro is fantastic: http://www.ctmdev.com/foxtrot/

It gives you just enough context preview around your search term to judge if the PDF is useful or not. Currently using with 10k+ research papers and very happy with it.

Re: Ask HN: How to organize personal knowledge?

#96

Post by MapleWalnut »

markpapadakis wrote: post #38

I use Dropbox to store everything. There are no files that I care fore that are not managed by Dropbox (or iCloud, for my photos/videos). I use iA Writer to create lists and documents for everything in Dropbox folders. I also have a folder for PDFs/papers (also on Dropbox). There are also folders for my study nodes ( I study codebases ), notes on personal stuff, notes on Programming, on pretty much everything. I use…

I do the same with plain text files. The only problem I have is searching. I wish there was a Google for searching local files (i.e. concept search).

Re: Ask HN: How to organize personal knowledge?

#97

Post by [deleted] »

jasode wrote: post #55

>collected a large amount of ebooks, papers, articles, movies, pictures, etc. (all digital). Since you mentioned those specific examples, I see a commonality and so I'm going to assume you're primarily concerned about organizing files that are not authored/generated by you . (Except possibly pictures/photos since you might be talking about jpgs from your personal iPhone or digital camera.) This distinction is key bec…

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: How to organize personal knowledge?

#98

Post by edwintorok »

Some of these have been mentioned at various points:

https://zettelkasten.de/posts/three-layers-structure-zettelk... https://github.com/renerocksai/sublimeless_zk https://tiddlywiki.com/ http://journal.mcmorgan.org/view/incremental-paragraphs/ward... http://fedwiki.org/hack.platform.earth/fedwiki-for-notetakin... https://github.com/burtonator/polar-bookshelf

Perhaps a single system is not the answer, but a combination, e.g. for taking notes I'd pick fedwiki/sublimeless_zk/Zim/org-mode.

For organizing PDFs with full-text search Zotero is quite good, and you can link to your PDFs from your notes, but I wouldn't store my notes about PDFs inside Zotero (because then it'd be separated from my notes about non-PDF articles).

For keeping track of articles Firefox bookmarks (with Firefox Sync on Android acting as a 'read me later' bag).

Re: Ask HN: How to organize personal knowledge?

#99

Post by aasasd »

xbryanx wrote: post #35

I use WorkFlowy[1] as my starting place for all notes, info, and tech tips. It's quickly searchable and the mobile client is easy to use. I really like the structure of bulleted lists for just about all types of information. It doesn't really cover your file storage needs, but I think that's a different beast than notes and information. When I need to store stuff like that I dump it on Google Drive which makes search…

Judging by Workflowy's development pace, the entire team is spending the profit on opiates. No features were introduced in the past couple years, aside from the desktop apps—despite users begging for an API at least. Now Workflowy went the way of Evernote: changing the looks and adding bugs.

The outline paradigm is great, and Workflowy is a nice influx of fresh blood in that field, but I think I might actually kludge Org-mode into proper form with good mobile synchronization (and bonus privacy and customizability) before Workflowy makes any progress.

Re: Ask HN: How to organize personal knowledge?

#100

Post by jpeloquin »

wenc wrote: post #34

This is what I learned from designing data architectures: If your data is variegated in format and form, don't look for a single tool/method solution to organize them. There is no single all-purpose organization method. Don't start with figuring out a method to organize your information. You will end up overengineering your org method. Instead, organize your information per "use-case". Start with a specific use-case/…

I endorse the idea that over-engineering is counterproductive. Focusing on principles over tools is good; tools come and go. My list of lessons learned (which has some overlap with yours) is:

1. Make sure your files and their organizational scheme can be transferred between tools. Your files need to be searchable, and at some point you will need portability. Text-based notes are easiest, but formats that have ubiquitous support (like docx or html) are ok too. Similarly, a collection of files is more reliable and flexible than a database tied to a subscription-based service.

2. Don't bother with elaborate tag or folder based taxonomies. Search is more efficient. I, at least, cannot accurately predict what taxonomy I'll need 5 years in the future, nor can I consistently tag every file correctly. There is some empirical support in favor of search over tagging [1].

3. Keep your notes organized; store your other files all over the place, wherever it is convenient. Use your notes to record context and thoughts relevant to a project/task/other activity, and use hyperlinks to connect those notes to the relevant files (wherever they are). Being able to embed or preview images in your notes is also very useful.

4. Organization is worthwhile for files that you have read/watched and thought about. The purpose of organization is to help you revisit and develop your thoughts on a topic. Organizing files you haven't read is not progress and does not improve your capabilities; you have to actually read and think about them to get any benefit.

5. Organization is also worthwhile for files that you know you will need for a specific project/task. Add a link to the relevant item in your notes for that project/task. Include a note why you thought it would be useful to future-you.

6. Files that you have not thought about / critiqued, and which do not fit a specific project/task, are not worth organizing. Dump them in an unorganized "to read later" list or just forget about them. The idea that you actually will get back to these files is mostly fictitious, and you can easily re-find them, or a superior equivalent, via search engines, browser history, or library logs.

7. Switch tools as needed based on circumstance. For example, my personal work notes are in org-mode, academic papers are in Zotero, personal work data is in a git + git-annex repo, and shared work notes and data are spread between Google Drive, Dropbox, and a private file server, depending on the requirements of the other people involved. I also have personal life notes in org-mode, Simplenote, and some ancient notes still to be migrated from Evernote. Hyperlinks tie files together as needed.

[1] https://people.ucsc.edu/~swhittak/papers/chi2011_refinding_e...

Post reply on HN