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You don't technically need anything more complicated than this.
The important thing is you take notes and actually use them.
I even blog and journal on GitHub.
If you don’t remember a topic well enough to google the details when you need them, have you really learned it?
It seems like there is a lack of good quality highly specialized information that flies under the radar or just isn't indexed properly. I have now turned to hn.algolia.com [1] for certain specific searches, as well as in the process of downloading entire archives of books (PDFs and ePUBs) that I will be running OCRmyPDF [2] on just to ensure search-ability.
This way, I know for a fact I can search for almost any topic of relevance and it will be indexed/cached on my local machine.
Google has gotten terrible at displaying information that is very niche and or highly specialized and I want to take that control back into my own hands.
Anything I finish gets deleted or delegated, anything I can’t use gets posted or integrated into future writings.
My notes are essentially books in markdown format, which I can open with the editor/IDE I use when working on any project.
My opinions are:
- the vast majority of the effort is spent on cataloguing knowledge when adding new notes (that is, keeping each book consistently structured); this is something that no tool can do, and as a consequence, any tool will probably do equal.
- a consequence of the cataloguing effort is that the brain better remembers the topics stored.
- searching is where the other effort goes; I've found that as long as the books are consistently structured, and one puts a bit of effort to make concepts easily findable, a textual search does well. probably, a tool to do fulltext search may help in some cases, but I rarely find the need
- there are interesting differences between doing a google search and searching a stored concept: 1. the stored concept is processed 2. the search follows my brain organization, not a search engine's
- I do only very basic cross-referencing; my method will probably be inadequate if this is a requirement
For things that require rote memorization (say, System-V x64 calling conventions), I use Anki.
I take notes almost only for computer/science related stuff. If I had to catalogue diverse topics, I'd probably just use subdirectories.
(1) https://github.com/64kramsystem/personal_notes/tree/master/t...
I also use OneNote as a temporary place for holding relevant information (screenshots, text or pdf printouts) about a bug or a feature I'm developing.
1. Capture: every interesting idea that I think up or read is immediately stored in Google Keep (on mobile or laptop). It can be very rough at this point, the goal is simply to not forget.
2. Transcribe & Organize: every weekend, I go through the notes I accumulated during the week. It tends to be between 10 and 30 notes. Sometimes the note is "read this article" or "catch up on all newsletters", so understanding a single note can take over an hour. On some tough weekends the process takes an entire day, but that is invariably a day where I feel like I learned a ton. Once the note is cleaned up (transcribed), I feel like I understand it. At this point I rarely forget it - it has been absorbed into my brain. The final step here is "categorizing" the note. I classify it using OneNote with tabs like "Clinical psychology" (nested under "Psychology") or "Investment management" (nested under "Finance") or "Math" or "Physics". This way, in the future, I don't have a million notes scattered around, but one clear place I know where to look. On average, this process takes 2-4 hours per weekend. I never accumulate bookmarks, Google Keep notes or unread emails more than a week to prevent existential dread.
3. Revisit: generally, people recommend you revisit your notes from time to time. I almost never do this. But if I ever am thinking about "Marketing" or "Sociology", I have an immense, high SNR repository of everything I've ever found valuable on the topic. I've done this for software interviews and it's been incredibly helpful.
Overall, I attribute this system to making me much smarter. It has been an invaluable investment.
Also, you activate more of your capabilities as a thinking creature that way. Why just approach a problem with your fingertips on a keyboard when you can activate your visual, spatial, and temporal processing capabilities?
Personally, I’ve recently fallen in love with Leuchtturm notebooks. I bought the great big 83+ one, a nice Japanese mechanical pencil, and I’ve been going to town on problems ever since.
More generally, this topic has come to be referred to as PKM (Personal Knowledge Management) and TFT (Tools For Thought). IME Obsidian.md stands out for its power and flexibility and community, though Roam Research (and Athens, its OSS counterpart), logseq, and Notion have their merits.
HTH!