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

25+ years of personal knowledge management

dsebastien.net

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 72 posts

Re: 25+ years of personal knowledge management

#61

Post by scambier »

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.

I spent some time to build my own web-based markdown editor, and was using minisearch[0] to index and do fuzzy search on my notes. I've recently switched to Obsidian and plan to make a similar extension in the next weeks.

[0]: https://www.npmjs.com/package/minisearch

Re: 25+ years of personal knowledge management

#62

Post by tmslnz »

ggrrhh_ta wrote: post #37
tmslnz wrote: post #36

On the one hand, I find myself aligned with many ideas exposed here. On the other hand I fight myself constantly to avoid keeping too much around, or to prevent the archiving process from becoming more important than the archived material itself. Unlike others I ended up consolidating everything into a big dumb set of folders on my NAS just because it’s cognitively easier to keep track of than a smattering of online…

The value is not in how often one revisits the past, but on how important (and I mean from a personal point of view mostly) a billionth of that stored past might become in the future. If you can, why not?

True, a for a good part it is that "maybe" that makes me (and others) do it, but I can see how it's akin to choosing not to make a choice. There's a tangible cost to this however… which is manifested quite clearly in this very comment thread.

All I am saying — to myself mostly — is that to learn to be OK with skipping a few beats when it comes to archiving digital artefacts is just as important as the archival strategy.

Re: 25+ years of personal knowledge management

#64

Post by MilStdJunkie »

Knowledge Management will always be idiosyncratic to the organization and individuals inside of it. I used to think differently early career, but twenty years in content systems has changed my mind fundamentally.

Over the decades, there have been so many attempts to augur "inherent" underlying "types" of natural language, and all of them are, at best, moribund. Outside of those that have gotten regulatory buy-in, of course, but those too shall pass as the enabling technology (and its users) age and depart..

Re: 25+ years of personal knowledge management

#65

Post by daveed »

I definitely agree with "letting go of the past". Notes and memories are important, but so is managing what you keep. Otherwise it becomse untenable.

Anyway, I made a show HN today, but it's kind of relevant (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30917504). I made a notes extension for taking notes quickly and in the moment, before you decide to keep it or that you're done with it.

Re: 25+ years of personal knowledge management

#66

Post by ggrrhh_ta »

tmslnz wrote: post #62
ggrrhh_ta wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The value is not in how often one revisits the past, but on how important (and I mean from a personal point of view mostly) a billionth of that stored past might become in the future. If you can, why not?

True, a for a good part it is that " maybe " that makes me (and others) do it, but I can see how it's akin to choosing not to make a choice. There's a tangible cost to this however… which is manifested quite clearly in this very comment thread. All I am saying — to myself mostly — is that to learn to be OK with skipping a few beats when it comes to archiving digital artefacts is just as important as the archival stra…

I get your point, in fact, I don't put a lot of effort in getting things organized to any degree of "good". I "invest" in archiving (I almost never wipe a memory card, a floppy disk, or a hard disk, I just store it. I do copy CDs into hard disks though). If I had, let's say, two months just to organize the data, I would, and to me, it would more than compensate the time doing it. Every time that I had to look for something I had done 10, 15, 20 years ago I find, in the process of searching for that specific thing so much gold, so much joy, that it paid off. But of course, I do not obsess with categorization. I have two axis: the "technological age" (dictated by the kind of storage device) and the way I categorized it then within that device. I think I have been more or less consistent with how I name folders, where I put things, etc. over a long time.

Re: 25+ years of personal knowledge management

#67

Post by mxuribe »

btrettel wrote: post #57

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 searche…

> ...I will often add keywords to my own notes to help me later...

I do this too! I learned it from my web dev days (back in early 2000s), where adding keywords helped search engines, etc. Half the time i just list out some synonyms in a "reference" area of any document/text file that i am drafting...the other 50% of the time i actually try and use synyonms inline, in the context of my writing...this helps for SEO sure, but also for my own writing it keeps things fresh, and (though small gain) helps me improve the extent of my writing vocabulary. The result being that it helps generally with searchability for my own material later on, even years later.

Re: 25+ years of personal knowledge management

#68

Post by webtv-user »

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…

Your last point is a big one for me. Although I did not personally code the tools I use for 'PKM', they don't depend on any service provider remaining in existence in order to function. Not even my ISP.

> ... even if they are not the best tools for the job

But they are though. ;-)

Re: 25+ years of personal knowledge management

#69

Post by m463 »

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…

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

I remember the saying: "You can't organize clutter"

Re: 25+ years of personal knowledge management

#70

Post by Infernal »

seltzered_ wrote: post #56

> "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…

Composting knowledge, I like this. I find that with papers, books, audio CDs, video game cartridges, etc., it is easier to filter, to know what you have, and to get rid of what you don't use as you go.

In some ways, the default of a physical medium is loss, and you have to put in some non-zero, repeat effort to retain it. In contrast, the default of digital media is retention, sometimes even in spite of efforts against (think trying to remove data from social media). Every Apple Note, iCloud Photo, browsing history, bookmark, etc. will continue to persist unless you make an effort to get rid of it. So, the challenge for me, is not so much how do I retain all this digital data, but how do I ONLY retain the bits that are relevant, and how do I cull those bits occasionally?

Post reply on HN