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Personal Knowledge Management Is Bullshit

otherlife.co

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Re: Personal Knowledge Management Is Bullshit

#61

Post by civilized »

kopkako wrote: post #46

Wow, does this ring true for me. I had been using Evernote for at least 7 years, then switched to Notion a few years ago, completely "reinventing my digital life" and creating my "Second Brain" with the P.A.R.A method by Tiago Forte. I loved that for the first few months, then slowly but surely the sheer amount of interconnected nodes became... oberwhelming, to the point of me almost completely stopping to enter in n…

A lot of technical people think to themselves "if I master this tool, something wonderful will happen," when in reality you usually have to figure out the wonderful thing you want to happen, not just trust a tool to manifest it for you.

Re: Personal Knowledge Management Is Bullshit

#62

Post by luis8 »

ineedasername wrote: post #50
brightball wrote: post #8

I take notes relentlessly with Obsidian and I'll honestly never go back. I would have been more stubborn about this earlier on in my career. Now I realize that I've probably forgotten more over time than I ever would have imagined so I realized having good notes is critical for me. I end up looking up answers on stack overlflow and then realize I wrote them. To each their own.

Obsidian is new to me, thanks for the recommendation. I see the files are local, does the app need to phone home for anything? I'd like something that will still work even if the company goes away at some point.

have you heard about logseq? It seems to me that it is what you are looking for

Re: Personal Knowledge Management Is Bullshit

#63

Post by larodi »

The best system for PKM is called sub-consciousness. When one learns to facilitate it right and all there is is at a thoughts distance. Writing stuff down is a way to reinforce the subconscious stress of memory, also sleeping well, walking and taking time to be with oneself.

Re: Personal Knowledge Management Is Bullshit

#64

Post by wintermutestwin »

This rant ignores the fact that our technology has failed to provide the average user with a common, ubiquitous, low-effort way to recall all the useful information that we can now dig up.

These billion dollar tech cos either think that I'll just be able to search google again when I really need it (what a joke!) or that I'll spend more time using tags to be able to find it again, but that requires a list of tags way to long to be easily fluent with and way too much librarian work on my part.

I have endless lists of bookmarks organized into ~50 categories that are still too broad to be useful (mostly because folder in folder bookmarks are a bad UX in Firefox).

I started using Notion because I like to see URL previews, but that list gets unwieldy fast and it is more of a pain to populate than saving a bookmark.

And now, I am down to a system where I keep 10 browser windows open with up to 40 tabs in each and if a tab gets too stale, I dump it in a bookmark folder and hope I'll find it when I need it. Each window is given a name based on its topic with the Window Titler add-on and uses non-treed ('cause trees are a stupid waste of space) side tabs ('cause top tabs are unreadable and STUPID) with the Sidebery Add-On. Each window with up to 16 pinned tabs that are major sources for that window's topical links. This system actually works for me and requires a low-effort flow to manage information for someone with a huge variety of work, interests and pursuits. I have to use the Total Suspender Add-On to keep Firefox from grinding my machine to a halt due to up to 400 tabs open at once.

What I really want is a browser that has all that out of the box so that it works seamlessly (e.g. Sidebery doesn't recognize Window Titler titles so moving tabs between windows is a huge pain), isn't a pain to setup on a new machine (I hate Mozilla for making it so hard to get rid of the top tabs!!!) and doesn't require me to trust several nearly anonymous Add-On makers.

Re: Personal Knowledge Management Is Bullshit

#65

Post by smoldesu »

greenice wrote: post #59
smoldesu wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I started up a job a few months ago and threw myself into Obsidian, and it has definitely been paying off. Here's how I work, ymmv of course: - I create a "Work" folder. Inside it are folders for Weekly Notes, Tasks and Information. - At the beginning of each week I make a new Weekly Notes page. I have a subheading for each day, and a subheading in each day for a todo list. After the todo list, I put down a heading f…

When sharing/saving links to Obsidian, can it automatically add the title of the linked page (and date)? It just saves the URL for me.

I'm not sure, I normally link it with Ctrl+K and then fill in the fields manually.

Re: Personal Knowledge Management Is Bullshit

#66

Post by _aavaa_ »

rvzx wrote: post #51

This is mostly a set of surface-level arguments about superficial aspects of personal knowledge management. Yes, influencers pitching specific methodologies are often full of shit. Yes, network graphs are often boring and gratuitous. Yes, being overly focused on the tools used to complete tasks often gets in the way of completing tasks. None of that is super interesting. Particularly disappointing are the references…

Can you elaborate on the last point? From what I can tell it seems to be a private community, not a tool for knowledge management.

Re: Personal Knowledge Management Is Bullshit

#67

Post by lolcat_cowsay »

Hates_ wrote: post #57
ineedasername wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Obsidian is new to me, thanks for the recommendation. I see the files are local, does the app need to phone home for anything? I'd like something that will still work even if the company goes away at some point.

Obsidian being _just_ a UI on top of Markdown files is one of it's selling points.

That sounds exactly like Org-Mode inside Emacs.

Re: Personal Knowledge Management Is Bullshit

#68

Post by creakingstairs »

greenice wrote: post #59
smoldesu wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I started up a job a few months ago and threw myself into Obsidian, and it has definitely been paying off. Here's how I work, ymmv of course: - I create a "Work" folder. Inside it are folders for Weekly Notes, Tasks and Information. - At the beginning of each week I make a new Weekly Notes page. I have a subheading for each day, and a subheading in each day for a todo list. After the todo list, I put down a heading f…

When sharing/saving links to Obsidian, can it automatically add the title of the linked page (and date)? It just saves the URL for me.

There seem to be a plug-in https://github.com/zolrath/obsidian-auto-link-title

But I wrote a raycast script that automatically appends the current page with the title and time into my scratch page

Re: Personal Knowledge Management Is Bullshit

#69

Post by brightball »

testingwaters4 wrote: post #10
brightball wrote: post #8

I take notes relentlessly with Obsidian and I'll honestly never go back. I would have been more stubborn about this earlier on in my career. Now I realize that I've probably forgotten more over time than I ever would have imagined so I realized having good notes is critical for me. I end up looking up answers on stack overlflow and then realize I wrote them. To each their own.

Can you recommend a workflow for obsidian? Or some pointers for resources. I am struggling to "get" how to take notes with it and I am feeling a lot of friction

I don’t overcomplicate it. Just create a new note and write. Often times I’ll create something for each day and just jot whatever down throughout the day. A lot of developers keep a random text file open all the time anyway for that type of thing, so just think of it that way.

I’ll add a ## header if needed to separate a topic here and there too.

If I remember an earlier note that was similar I’ll [[ to create an internal link.

Copying and pasting PDFs, images or other reference material is easy since by Obsidian can just copy those files into a local attachments folder.

If there’s a good reference video on YouTube or something, you can just embed it.

If my sidebar of notes gets longer than the screen I’ll take a few minutes and sort them into folders.

Honestly, there’s no fancy or organized workflow here. I just keep it open and write as it makes sense, then clean up every now and then when needed. Whatever is most comfortable for you is the right way. It’s your notes.

Re: Personal Knowledge Management Is Bullshit

#70

Post by brightball »

ineedasername wrote: post #50
brightball wrote: post #8

I take notes relentlessly with Obsidian and I'll honestly never go back. I would have been more stubborn about this earlier on in my career. Now I realize that I've probably forgotten more over time than I ever would have imagined so I realized having good notes is critical for me. I end up looking up answers on stack overlflow and then realize I wrote them. To each their own.

Obsidian is new to me, thanks for the recommendation. I see the files are local, does the app need to phone home for anything? I'd like something that will still work even if the company goes away at some point.

Nope. Works on local files. Open source.

It’s one of the main reasons I went with it.

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