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Ask HN: Do you also "hoard" notes/links but struggle to turn them into actions?

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Re: Ask HN: Do you also "hoard" notes/links but struggle to turn them into actions?

#31
I always thought my problem was my notes being scattered and disorganized. But reading this post made me realize something. I don't need better organization for the random links or braindumps I collect over time. Because I rarely actively revisit them. Usually That happens thanks to reminders, or when I need references for something I can't find anywhere else. So I think your action engine idea is sound.

To answer your questions:

1. Retrieval. 90% of my notes never get touched the second time, and I can't remember them at the right time.

2. On my head + a simple task list I made.

3. Hallucinations and pricing.

Re: Ask HN: Do you also "hoard" notes/links but struggle to turn them into actions?

#32
There was a post "recently" on HN, which made me re-think my habit of collecting and sorting. I now have a Kanban-Board for ToDos (which I check daily), and a Journal file where I note down stuff from the day. The file keeps filling up continuously. That’s basically it.

Re: Ask HN: Do you also "hoard" notes/links but struggle to turn them into actions?

#34
frankly all I have is a TODO.org file and I delete everything that's older than a month because I wasn't going to deal with it anyway. I also keep a bunch of notes in org files. Once a year I delete everything if I can't remember why I took it, most of what survives seem to be book reviews. I don't use any AI stuff, just grep. All the second brain stuff just sounds like digital hoarding

Re: Ask HN: Do you also "hoard" notes/links but struggle to turn them into actions?

#35
Notes are options. Sometimes options for taking action later, sometimes as reference for related action. The bet when writing a note is that its risk adjusted return for those avenues is higher than the opportunity cost.

I also have similar thoughts on turning writing into action and re-entrance, would be interested to hear your thoughts:

https://blog.sao.dev/2025-threads/

This has proven to work well for me, but I’m chafing with git and agentic coding abstractions and looking for a unifying concept. Agent of empires doesn’t feel quite right, but is in the right direction.

Re: Ask HN: Do you also "hoard" notes/links but struggle to turn them into actions?

#37
yes and no;

I "hoard" ideas and articles because it's a good way for me to offload them from my brain

As a designer, I absolutely DO scroll through my swipe files once in a while to get inspiration; sometimes I'll also go through saved github repos to borrow an implementation

E.g. that's how I ended up using a lot of libraries like Immer, Svelte, ended up loving Observable / d3js, etc.

Idk about all y'all, but notes are absolutely useful for me.

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