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25+ years of personal knowledge management

dsebastien.net

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Re: 25+ years of personal knowledge management

#51

Post by dangoor »

glenstein wrote: post #41
drej wrote: post #32

There are several principles that have helped me: - Do NOT migrate to new tools, even if they are really shiny and popular - this may end up being a big hurdle you'll regret down the line (looking at you, Notion, Todoist, Google Keep, the list goes on). Just stick to your tools for at least a couple of years before exploring alternatives. - Try search instead of organisation. I used to have elaborate folder structure…

>Do NOT migrate to new tools Completely agree here. For better or worse (well, definitely worse), I've noticed that some part of my brain that loves list-making and re-organizing. This leads me to an impulse to be in a never-ending process of migrating from one tool to another, wind at my back with a new motivated epiphany about how to re-organize everything. Of course, when I say it out loud, it's nonsense, but mome…

If you want to stick with text, I can wholeheartedly recommend Obsidian. It's a bunch of Markdown files on disk and Obsidian does a great job of layering organization features on top of that. (I personally also pay for their Sync service, but you can sync to other devices using other cloud services — they're just Markdown files on disk, after all!)

Re: 25+ years of personal knowledge management

#52

Post by anon2020dot00 »

JustLurking2022 wrote: post #45
drej wrote: post #32

There are several principles that have helped me: - Do NOT migrate to new tools, even if they are really shiny and popular - this may end up being a big hurdle you'll regret down the line (looking at you, Notion, Todoist, Google Keep, the list goes on). Just stick to your tools for at least a couple of years before exploring alternatives. - Try search instead of organisation. I used to have elaborate folder structure…

Maybe leave your friends and family alone - sure, it's fine to mention a product if the topic comes up but I find one of the things humans tend to want help with the least it's organization - everyone has their own system.

Hard agree. I've never bothered to even read about PARA, Zettelkasten, Johnny Decimal, etc.. I just prefer to come-up with my own system

Re: 25+ years of personal knowledge management

#53

Post by d-gearloose »

raelmiu wrote: post #46
scambier wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

+1 for "use search instead of organization". I've been taking notes for 2 years, zettelkasten-style, and 90% of them are just dumped in the same directory, without links or tags. If I'm looking for something and remember that I might have that in my notes, I just search for it. That also implies that, when writing a note, I sometimes add a line with a few related keywords and synonyms.

How though? People say this like search is simple, but how do you search for things? I'm using Roam and I still have this issue.

If you're on a Linux system and the notes are just text files a grep -rn . -e 'search term' is probably sufficient. Use -rnw If you're looking for whole words.

Re: 25+ years of personal knowledge management

#54

Post by leephillips »

d-gearloose wrote: post #53
raelmiu wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How though? People say this like search is simple, but how do you search for things? I'm using Roam and I still have this issue.

If you're on a Linux system and the notes are just text files a grep -rn . -e 'search term' is probably sufficient. Use -rnw If you're looking for whole words.

Absolutely. And if you do this a lot it might be worth substituting ripgrep for grep.

Re: 25+ years of personal knowledge management

#55

Post by bachmeier »

dSebastien wrote: post #31
bachmeier wrote: post #23

If the author is reading this, please remove the fixed menu at the top. Eats a ton of space on a small screen and makes reading unpleasant. This is more about data management than knowledge management. I'm the opposite of the author. I have little interest in archiving all my data. Not that there's anything wrong with it if that's your thing.

OP here. Weird; the top menu shouldn't be fixed. Which browser are you using?

Chrome on a Chromebook

Re: 25+ years of personal knowledge management

#56

Post by seltzered_ »

> "Between 1997 and 2000, I continued burning tons of CDs."

> "Over time, disks became larger and larger. Prices also dropped. The limits and constraints I had before slowly vanished. I stored even more data."

> "And again, I collected the data. I kept the movies, the TV shows, the documentaries. Everything. It was tough for me to just "let go"."

How does one approach composting knowledge, things that no longer serve, or weren't theirs in the first place?

Saying this as someone who's in love with the latest 'second-brain' tools and such yet goes through some old bookmarks and find myself sitting if one really needs it. Similarly just went through digitizing a chunk family history and while there's some important bits, there was plenty to either let go of or not try to organize.

The author later in the article...

> "I feel like I've come to terms with the idea that it's time for me to let go of the past. I don't pressure myself, but I'm getting rid of more and more things. I do this slowly. Thoughtfully. Not so much because I fear losing something important, but rather because I have fond memories, and I realize that it takes me time to accept deleting some things, even if I know I'll never need those again. While discussing with my friend André he mentioned emotional attachment to things and gently letting go of those, as Marie Kondo recommends. I gave it some thought, and while it's true that I'm not attached to many actual things in my life, I'm actually attached to many digital ones."

Re: 25+ years of personal knowledge management

#57

Post by btrettel »

I can't agree with a heavy emphasis on text search and having a minimal or even no organizational structure, as several folks here have suggested. Text search and an organizational structure each have their own advantages and disadvantages, and they complement each other. This because extremely clear to me when I worked as a patent examiner. If an examiner did only text searches (or only patent classification searches, the equivalent of an organizational structure), their search would not be considered complete because it almost certainly would miss relevant documents.

In my own files I have an organizational structure. It's not perfect, but I usually can quickly find what I'm looking for with it by simply browsing. Finding what I'm looking for quickly is what matters. And I can find things that would be quite difficult to find with a text search, like documents that use inconsistent terminology. Yes, I have to put those files in an appropriate location, but that's not a lot of work in my experience when "onboarding" a file. Even when I add a bunch of symlinks to the file in other locations, it's still worthwhile in my experience.

Sometimes, however, I can't remember where something was filed, and I turn to text search (usually via grep or pdfgrep, though I'll be trying Recoll in the near future). In that case it's not uncommon at all to be unable to find what I'm looking for, even for my own notes where I'm trying to be more careful about using consistent terminology! I frequently don't remember the terminology I used, just like I might not remember where something was filed.

Text search is convenient as it often doesn't require any additional effort like organizing files does, but it has limitations that a good organizational structure would try to compensate for. However, text search should have additional effort to apply SEO techniques to help you find a file again. I will often add keywords to my own notes to help me later.

My organizational structure is not arbitrary, for instance, putting files into folders for each letter of the alphabet. Even if automated, that's fairly pointless because anyone can jump to a particular letter anyway. I organizing things based on actual scenarios.

Re: 25+ years of personal knowledge management

#58

Post by dmje »

A tiny bit of me - just a tiny bit - thinks: what's the point?

Or - maybe it's more like: what percentage of this activity is actually about organisation, and what percentage is about having a fun time using the organisational tools?

I'm not belittling it, at all. My knowledge organisation journey has gone through similar (not quite so well-thought out) paths: Evernote, docs, Keep, finally now on Obsidian with the knowledge that MD is just ...MD...

But - if I'm honest the "what's your PKM suite" conversation is such a well-oiled meme on HN that I can't help but wonder how much of this journey is actually about the journey, the fun of setting up a new set of tools, the enjoyment us nerds get out of coming up with new structures, new ways of approaching things, groovy metadata schemas, tagging, search....

Ultimately, does it make us quicker at finding or using or remembering stuff? I'm not sure. I know plenty of people who put literally no thought into any of this and can still lay their hands on that bill from 1986, or pluck a fact out of thin air.

As I say, this question shouldn't stop us from trying, but it's interesting to reflect on the little frisson of pleasure I know I get (and I suspect everyone else does, too) when they implement The Next New Thing and realise THIS IS IT.... for the next 6 months... :-)

Re: 25+ years of personal knowledge management

#59

Post by horsawlarway »

dmje wrote: post #58

A tiny bit of me - just a tiny bit - thinks: what's the point? Or - maybe it's more like: what percentage of this activity is actually about organisation, and what percentage is about having a fun time using the organisational tools? I'm not belittling it, at all. My knowledge organisation journey has gone through similar (not quite so well-thought out) paths: Evernote, docs, Keep, finally now on Obsidian with the kn…

I sort of agree.

I've been down the route of "save all the things" and I mostly veered away from it - The vast majority of that content is never revisited again, at least for me, and the comfort of having it is outweighed by the time/energy it takes to save.

I rely on my memory, and on my email search. I keep an occasional note in Bookstack, and some photos/videos in Seafile & Jellyfin.

Everything else gets deleted, at least once a year, when I wipe and install a fresh OS. My total storage requirements are under 100Gb (under 10 if we don't count photos/videos), and I can fit it all on a usb drive easily.

I don't really feel like I'm missing out.

No judgement for the data-hoarders. I've played that game and it's fun (and a great learning experience most of the time), but eventually I had kids and it just felt like a complete waste of time vs actually spending time with the people in my life.

Re: 25+ years of personal knowledge management

#60

Post by asadkn »

drej wrote: post #32

There are several principles that have helped me: - Do NOT migrate to new tools, even if they are really shiny and popular - this may end up being a big hurdle you'll regret down the line (looking at you, Notion, Todoist, Google Keep, the list goes on). Just stick to your tools for at least a couple of years before exploring alternatives. - Try search instead of organisation. I used to have elaborate folder structure…

I agree. I rarely ever use new tools, but I switched to Notion a few years ago and even recommended it to many friends and colleagues.

Big mistake. Lessons learned. It's been slow and buggy all this time but I still kept using it. The final nail in the coffin was it started using 15-20% of a CPU core on IDLE, and has been doing so for 5+ months. Tried everything and gave up. Going back to simple text files.

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