Note-Taking and Personal Knowledge Management • Hacker News Board

Re: Note-Taking and Personal Knowledge Management

#61

Post by sfn42 » Mon, Aug 03, 2026, 8:46 AM UTC

udbhavs wrote: post #25

jokellum wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know your specifics, so I'm going to reply with what I've learned about learning: I found reading a textbook, and typing notes into a dumb markdown file with the textbooks name is good enough. Typically: definitions, quotes, and personal thoughts while reading. Did this for stats/comp sci/etc. Obsidian + markdown worked for that, even without plugins. Being able to text search is useful, which is why I don't…

Great advice, thanks! > Usually homeworks get very easy which is a good sign I agree, but having homeworks in itself is a big advantage! It means you're in a structured learning environment where someone has taken the care to create a learning path and added checkpoints with carefully designed problems designed to refresh + assess what you've absorbed until that point. When you're learning outside the classroom (for…

This is why I always recommend an education over self learning programming. I can absolutely see the argument in places like the US where it costs an arm and a leg, but in Europe and other places with free education it's pretty much a no-brainer to me.

Not only does it help you learn in a structured way with predetermined goals etc, but you end up with fairly solid evidence of what you've learned.

I think the self learning path is much more difficult, both figuring out what to learn and then proving what you know to a potential employer. I tried that first and did learn some things, then I tried calling a potential employer who asked me a few questions, quickly assessed that I wasn't up to their standard and recommended a formal education. I took his advice and my career was pretty much on rails from then on.

A common argument is that they teach a lot of "useless" stuff and you can tailor your learning better on your own. I think it's really hard to figure out what to learn when you have no idea what the options are, and I think you won't know what's useful until you end up using it. Many people go through their whole careers doing things the wrong way because they don't know they need to learn something that would help them do better. There's also nothing stopping you from learning extra things beyond the curriculum, in fact I would recommend that.

Another common one is "I didn't learn anything in university" and all I can say about that is if you spent 3 years where your job was learning, and you didn't learn anything, then that's on you.

Re: Note-Taking and Personal Knowledge Management

#62

Post by tonyedgecombe » Mon, Aug 03, 2026, 9:06 AM UTC

sfn42 wrote: post #61

udbhavs wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Great advice, thanks! > Usually homeworks get very easy which is a good sign I agree, but having homeworks in itself is a big advantage! It means you're in a structured learning environment where someone has taken the care to create a learning path and added checkpoints with carefully designed problems designed to refresh + assess what you've absorbed until that point. When you're learning outside the classroom (for…

This is why I always recommend an education over self learning programming. I can absolutely see the argument in places like the US where it costs an arm and a leg, but in Europe and other places with free education it's pretty much a no-brainer to me. Not only does it help you learn in a structured way with predetermined goals etc, but you end up with fairly solid evidence of what you've learned. I think the self le…

>Another common one is "I didn't learn anything in university" and all I can say about that is if you spent 3 years where your job was learning, and you didn't learn anything, then that's on you.

I don't think that's what people mean when they say that. They followed the curriculum and then when they started working they found they needed little of what they had studied and had a lot of gaps in their knowledge that needed to be filled.

Re: Note-Taking and Personal Knowledge Management

#63

Post by 0x4e » Mon, Aug 03, 2026, 9:21 AM UTC

I’d been a user of Obsidian, Notion, ClickUp and tried a myriad of other tools until I realized that Apple Notes and Reminders did the job just fine and worked perfectly across devices. Opening obsidian in my phone never felt natural, and most of the time I just want to write a quick note or add a quick task which didn’t feel as intuitive on my phone using third party apps. Also, the voice recording and transcription options in Notes are the best one I’ve used so far.

Notes can be organized in folders just like in obsidian and Reminders are clean and simple to use. No infinite options to customize, no moving blocks and no infinite properties. Simplicity feels good —- for me —- when it comes to these kind of tools.

These also work great with Codex and Claude Code, and with the hopes of Apple getting their act together with an AI integration, I think it might be the better option to manage one’s writing and tasks.

—-

I see some Apple haters’ cortisol levels rising on this comment. Please, this is not me saying that Apple is better. I’m just saying that it’s a solution I’ve found to work for me, and it may work for others too. Just like your super customized Obsidian vault in your cute Linux machine works for you and others.

Re: Note-Taking and Personal Knowledge Management

#64

Post by the6threplicant » Mon, Aug 03, 2026, 9:59 AM UTC

I really thought Evernote would scratch this itch nearly a decade ago (or so it feels). But it ended up being a WORN service (Write-Once, Read-Never).

Would love something better than markup but not as CPU intensive as Evernote.

Re: Note-Taking and Personal Knowledge Management

#65

Post by voiper1 » Mon, Aug 03, 2026, 10:04 AM UTC

kepano wrote: post #26

Asking "what have note-taking apps accomplished?" is like asking "what have spreadsheets accomplished?" or "what have cameras accomplished?". A tool doesn't accomplish anything on its own. A tool is a means to an end. A few days ago, someone jokingly asked if Henry Ford had a personal knowledge base in Obsidian... Well, sort of! He had something he called "jot books", where he journaled, kept notes, grocery lists, et…

>Asking "what have note-taking apps accomplished?" is like asking "what have spreadsheets accomplished?" or "what have cameras accomplished?". A tool doesn't accomplish anything on its own. A tool is a means to an end.

Yes, but, the _shape_ of something does offer affordances of what it makes easier or harder to do. So "obsidian" vs "saving files on my computer" does seem to be a legitimate question.

Re: Note-Taking and Personal Knowledge Management

#66

Post by PaulRobinson » Mon, Aug 03, 2026, 10:11 AM UTC

There is a pedagogical theory that states a student only really learns something when they apply it.

Not read it, not highlight it, not copy it out: apply it.

The only way to build personal knowledge, in my experience, is to do things.

And I only want to learn things in the context of doing something.

I read and favourite and bookmark stuff all the time to dig into for inspiration.

But then I choose to build something, and I assemble knowledge on a JIT basis and apply it. LLMs make this easier than ever before.

Everything else is theatre at best, procrastination at worst.

Re: Note-Taking and Personal Knowledge Management

#67

Post by melicerte » Mon, Aug 03, 2026, 10:14 AM UTC

bauerd wrote: post #5

I returned to hand-written notebooks. None of these knowledge management frameworks ever worked for me. Sure my agents have their own semantic memory system but I’m not an agent.

I've both a handwritten notebook and an obsidian PKM. When in a meeting, I always have the notebook in front of me. I write plenty of stuff I believe I've to remember. It is really important for my understanding of what is at stake in the meeting. I can't skip it. This live brain dump is required for me. That being said, I almost never come back to what I manually wrote and when I do, I've hard time understanding the logic of my writing... How strange the brain works. It is like I'm using the handwritting to organize the information in my brain. But is done in such a way than I can't no longer understand myself like 24h after the meeting :)

Any thing else goes to the PKM in a structured and often actionable way. It is my notebook, my business development system, my todo list, my brain dump, my list of contacts, etc. What I particularly value is the easy ability to enrich a document with cross-links. This is for me the strongest point of PKM as the one I have in Obsidian.

Re: Note-Taking and Personal Knowledge Management

#68

Post by adamzenith » Mon, Aug 03, 2026, 10:25 AM UTC

jolmg wrote: post #42

Ferret7446 wrote: post #23

These discussions always conflate the different types of "notes". Broadly, there are two very different kind of notes. First, there are notes whose purpose is to be easy to find when you need to recall some bit of information. Then, there is note taking in service of learning. These two are very different in goals and thus very different in terms of optimal strategy. Also, there is note taking in service of creation,…

> First, there are notes whose purpose is to be easy to find when you need to recall some bit of information. Then, there is note taking in service of learning. I would think the latter is the former. Do you mean the idea that hand movements of writing help retention?

I think more the idea that wrestling with new ideas and distilling them down can you help you to understand something, even if that note is then immediately thrown out. The purpose of the notetaking in this case is not for future reference.

Re: Note-Taking and Personal Knowledge Management

#69

Post by dotancohen » Mon, Aug 03, 2026, 10:33 AM UTC

voiper1 wrote: post #65

kepano wrote: post #26

Asking "what have note-taking apps accomplished?" is like asking "what have spreadsheets accomplished?" or "what have cameras accomplished?". A tool doesn't accomplish anything on its own. A tool is a means to an end. A few days ago, someone jokingly asked if Henry Ford had a personal knowledge base in Obsidian... Well, sort of! He had something he called "jot books", where he journaled, kept notes, grocery lists, et…

>Asking "what have note-taking apps accomplished?" is like asking "what have spreadsheets accomplished?" or "what have cameras accomplished?". A tool doesn't accomplish anything on its own. A tool is a means to an end. Yes, but, the _shape_ of something does offer affordances of what it makes easier or harder to do. So "obsidian" vs "saving files on my computer" does seem to be a legitimate question.

From that perspective Org mode offers everything every other note taking app does.

Except a nice interface. Except syncing between devices. Except cloud backups. Except third party data breaches. Except paid support contracts.

Re: Note-Taking and Personal Knowledge Management

#70

Post by Gareth321 » Mon, Aug 03, 2026, 10:49 AM UTC

0x4e wrote: post #63

I’d been a user of Obsidian, Notion, ClickUp and tried a myriad of other tools until I realized that Apple Notes and Reminders did the job just fine and worked perfectly across devices. Opening obsidian in my phone never felt natural, and most of the time I just want to write a quick note or add a quick task which didn’t feel as intuitive on my phone using third party apps. Also, the voice recording and transcription…

Your comment resonates, but one issue with Apple Notes is that functionality is very limited on Windows and Linux. Apple doesn't expose any APIs for Notes so it cannot be integrated with ChatGPT/Codex/Claud. At best there are community plugins which scan the local DB running on a Mac. This would not work on iPhone.

I would love an open, cross-platform Apple Notes.