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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?

#181

Post by item007 »

koakuma-chan wrote: post #179
item007 wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AI summaries are useful, but I agree: summaries only reduce the “reading/organizing” effort — they don’t solve “what should I do next” or “why does this matter to my current goals”. What I’m exploring is the step after summarization: take the summary and explicitly link it to an active goal/project, then force a small decision: 1. ignore it 2. save as reference for Project X 3. extract 1 concrete next action (with a…

What is it that you read that can yield an "action" and what kind of "action"?

In Concerns the “action” isn’t generic, it’s anchored to a target/project you set first.

The flow I’m exploring is: you define a small number of active targets (e.g. “ship feature X”, “prepare for interview Y”). Then when you save/read something, the system searches your existing library (notes/links/email/posts/etc.) against that target and suggests a few candidate next steps or plans that are specifically useful for that target. You pick one (or dismiss them), so it’s more “menu of options” than “AI tells you what to do”.

Example 1 (technical): target = “build a small Kotlin app”. From a Kotlin article + your saved repos, it might suggest: “start with template A”, “try library B for state management”, or “do a 30-min spike to validate architecture C”.

Example 2 (research/learning): target = “write a short brief on topic Z”. From your saved posts, it might propose: “3 key claims + 2 counterpoints”, plus a short outline you can accept/edit.

So “action” = a target-linked next step or plan proposal, chosen by you — not turning every summary into a task.

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

#182

Post by mncharity »

I don't think I'm your survey target, as cost/benefit fails all along that "second brain" pipeline have so far prevented my non-trivially adopting one into my extended mind. But thank you for surfacing a "now with LLMs and speech-to-text, I should revisit". Like a git docs dir, a "second brain"-ish pkm fragment might be a fruitful setting for LLM communication/collaboration/RAG.

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

#183

Post by koakuma-chan »

item007 wrote: post #181
koakuma-chan wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is it that you read that can yield an "action" and what kind of "action"?

In Concerns the “action” isn’t generic, it’s anchored to a target/project you set first. The flow I’m exploring is: you define a small number of active targets (e.g. “ship feature X”, “prepare for interview Y”). Then when you save/read something, the system searches your existing library (notes/links/email/posts/etc.) against that target and suggests a few candidate next steps or plans that are specifically useful fo…

I feel like you could just use AI for that without managing your own library (plus it got pretty good at web searches). At the very least, I probably don't collect enough articles for that to work. Maybe if there is like a shared managed collection.

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

#184

Post by Neywiny »

item007 wrote: post #173
Neywiny wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think options 1 and 4. I like the idea of 4. I was trying out one of these projects and indexes a codebase with AI to make asking questions about it easier. I ran the numbers and it was going to take 24 hours of crunching on my 7900xtx. I just gave up instead. Zero setup should include not needing to do that. 3 would be the hardest but most useful thing. The problem is that it's scattered around different computers…

That’s a really important definition of “zero setup”: no long-running indexing jobs, and no “crunch for 24 hours on my laptop” just to make search usable. And I hear you on cross-network fragmentation — in a lot of real environments the hardest part isn’t search quality, it’s that data lives on different machines, different networks, and you only have partial visibility at any given time. If you had to pick, would yo…

To be very clear, there are networks that exist that do not share anything across the boundary. I'm maybe not your prime customer, but some people get very hung up on such things and we go in circles about feasibility. So in that 2 is an impossibility at times, I'd prefer 1.

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

#185

Post by item007 »

mncharity wrote: post #182

I don't think I'm your survey target, as cost/benefit fails all along that "second brain" pipeline have so far prevented my non-trivially adopting one into my extended mind. But thank you for surfacing a "now with LLMs and speech-to-text, I should revisit". Like a git docs dir, a "second brain"-ish pkm fragment might be a fruitful setting for LLM communication/collaboration/RAG.

I appreciate the framing. I think a lot of “second brain” attempts fail the cost/benefit test unless there’s a very specific, narrow use case.

The “git docs dir / pkm fragment” idea is exactly the kind of wedge that feels realistic to me: a small, scoped corpus with clear boundaries, where an LLM can be useful as a collaborator (RAG, summarizing, filling gaps) without you committing your whole life to a system.

If you were to try a small fragment, what would you pick as the smallest useful scope: a single project docs folder, meeting notes for one team, or a personal “decisions log”?

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

#186

Post by tonymet »

item007 wrote: post #132
tonymet wrote: post #24

habits and rituals outweigh tools. setting time every few days to review your notes and convert them into real actions & content is the important part

Totally agree — tools don’t beat rituals. A review cadence is what turns notes from “storage” into outcomes. What I’m exploring is designing the tool around that ritual: make the review session the first-class UX, and keep everything else quiet. For example, during a scheduled review it can help you: identify the few notes worth acting on, extract 1–3 next actions, and link them to a small set of active projects—then…

weekly is better since it takes a few days to solidify various efforts into something worth developing.

I encourage new tool development, I’m more calling attention to Tool optimizers who are continuously migrating task systems and obsessing over “productivity”.

A daily pen and paper journal with weekly check in would suffice.

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

#187

Post by exe34 »

item007 wrote: post #136
exe34 wrote: post #115

I use grep on org files.

That’s honestly a great baseline: org files + grep is fast, local, durable, and zero “system overhead”. If you could improve just one thing without abandoning grep, would it be: 1. fuzzy/semantic search when you don’t remember the exact term, or 2. better resurfacing (a lightweight way to recall relevant notes when a project becomes active)?

Probably 1.

All my notes for a project are usually under one or two org files.

An idea I've had though, which I hope somebody steals, is for a search engine that follows up all the links in my notes (and one or two degrees of separation from there), and allows me to end up in those places again next time I search for something.

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

#188

Post by inetknght »

item007 wrote: post #80
inetknght wrote: post #9

> What I’m asking from you: > 1.Where does your “second brain” break down the most? First and foremost, remembering to write notes or to review them. What do I want? Is there a timeline that requires things to be done before it becomes invalid or increases liability? Secondly, remembering to do actions instead of sitting down and doing something that gives some dopamine. I decide I want to work on a project on my com…

Thank you for your free comments. That makes sense. Local-first seems like the only viable starting point for “important” notes. On pricing: would you prefer a one-time purchase, or “bring your own model” (Ollama etc.) so the ongoing cost is basically compute you already own? Also: what would be an acceptable failure mode — missing suggestions vs occasional wrong suggestions?

One-time purchase for an existing model (eg, works right out of the box) OR bring-your-own-model would be great.

As far as failure mode -- missing suggestions is rather unavoidable, isn't it? So occasional wrong suggestions would be fun as long as they're clearly shown. Something like "I'm not sure, but there might be a solution with..." would be ideal; it lets me explore knowing that it might be a wrong direction.

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

#189

Post by phippsytech »

item007 wrote: post #142
phippsytech wrote: post #137

I hoard information that I find interesting but cannot act on right now, mostly because engaging with it immediately would derail me. The problem is that I almost never come back to what I have saved. A simple example is YouTube. I save videos to watch later because I am not in the right headspace at the time. Then I avoid them completely. I think part of the resistance is that I know watching them properly will dema…

This resonates a lot. “Save now so I don’t derail myself” is rational in the moment, but it creates a pile that later feels like a commitment (attention + follow-up work), so you avoid it. I think you’re pointing at two separate problems that get tangled: 1. Re-entry: how to resurface the right item when you’re actually in the right mode 2. Filtering: deciding what’s worth keeping so the backlog doesn’t become guilt…

I am mostly imagining using the radio while driving, so I would not be able to actually act on anything in the moment. For me, “listen later” or “read later” only really works when I am in a curious or exploratory headspace.

That headspace is not always there. A good example is when I sit down to watch something on a streaming service and end up browsing for ages instead of committing to anything. In theory, that would be a perfect moment to actively review things I have saved, but in practice I am not convinced my neurodiverse brain would reliably cooperate.

So to your question, I think I would lean much more toward a context-based mode than a time-based one. A fixed daily slot would quickly turn into another obligation. A lightweight “I am in curiosity mode right now” switch feels closer to how my brain actually works, especially if the radio-style playback keeps the cost of re-entry low.

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

#190

Post by fathermarz »

item007 wrote: post #94
fathermarz wrote: post #25

I hoard links, research papers, blog posts as a reference. My human brain can make connections of the smallest detail of things I have read or seen before but I don’t always remember what. So if I am working on something I think, oh I have seen something like this before, I search in my tagged links. It rarely comes in handy, but when it does, it is a great feeling.

Thanks for sharing—it seems you have an extraordinary brain! I'm also very curious, what makes a retrieval moment “great” and how often it happens.If someone could help you increase the likelihood of it happening, would you find that valuable?

The greatness happens when:

1. I actually saved it in the one place I should save links

2. The thing that I remember seeing actually fits with my current train of thought or understanding

3. I tagged the link meaningfully.

I have tried a lot of twin brain, second mind, etc etc. but I find myself doing the same thing no matter what layer is on top of the link fetching.

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