i feel better about having dozens of sticky notes all over my desk now
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Stop Taking Regular Notes; Use a Zettelkasten Instead
271–280 of 309 posts
Re: Stop Taking Regular Notes; Use a Zettelkasten Instead
#272I searched for hours for a viable Zettelkasten method: org-mode, vim-org, TiddlyWiki, Roam, Notion, Joplin, Notable, Obsidian, Zettlr. All of them were too complex, and not lightweight, cross-compatible, private/secure, or futureproof enough. I decided to settle on the default MacOS editor using a mix of .txt/.rtf files, with extensive folder organization and the built-in tagging system. I plan on consolidating journ…
I'm confused as to why you find Obsidian not matching most those criteria. I heard about it here last week, and just installed it finally tonight, but as I understand it. It's just a bunch of markdown files in a folder on the local disk. That seems.pretty easy to access/convert, is private, is lightweight, and is future proof (I could write something in Perl to generate the graph in a night most likely). I don't know…
there have been reports of Obsidian breaking and deleting notes when removing bidirectional links. I’m not interested in something that isn’t 100% failsafe when my notes are on the line.
Re: Stop Taking Regular Notes; Use a Zettelkasten Instead
#273Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm confused as to why you find Obsidian not matching most those criteria. I heard about it here last week, and just installed it finally tonight, but as I understand it. It's just a bunch of markdown files in a folder on the local disk. That seems.pretty easy to access/convert, is private, is lightweight, and is future proof (I could write something in Perl to generate the graph in a night most likely). I don't know…
there have been reports of Obsidian breaking and deleting notes when removing bidirectional links. I’m not interested in something that isn’t 100% failsafe when my notes are on the line.
That's worrying if true, but something hopefully they'll fix. I imagine deleting notes should be a fairly rare occurrence, so putting safeguards around it (such as a confirm, maybe moving note file to a trash location for later cleanup) is warranted.
Given what it is, it's probably safe and a good idea to make the vault on top of a versioned file system, even if that's a dropbox, google drive stream folder, or backblaze folder. It's probably not too hard to get a solution that's encrypted so it's more private as well.
Re: Stop Taking Regular Notes; Use a Zettelkasten Instead
#274I started using the Zettelkasten approach for a side project (using The Archive) and it has a lot going for it, but one big minus: It felt like work rather than something fun.
I've reverted just to a combination of handwritten notes and notes files written in vim (which I find enjoyable).
Re: Stop Taking Regular Notes; Use a Zettelkasten Instead
#275Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah, agreed about vimwiki. I've been using it as a knowledge base for years, for quick snippets, ideas, article/book synopsis and notes etc. And the fact that you can interlink them conveniently is a big upside. A question about vimwikigraph while I'm at it - does it work with the markdown syntax? For instance, VimwikiCheckLinks doesn't work for me at all. And the HTML export isn't supported, although that's a minor…
So far it does not support markdown syntax yet. I made it over the weekend, and as my vimwiki uses the vimwiki syntax, I started out with that. I will add an issue to support markdown as well, I will probably get to it this week.
Added basic markdown syntax style support to vimwikigraph.
Re: Stop Taking Regular Notes; Use a Zettelkasten Instead
#276I searched for hours for a viable Zettelkasten method: org-mode, vim-org, TiddlyWiki, Roam, Notion, Joplin, Notable, Obsidian, Zettlr. All of them were too complex, and not lightweight, cross-compatible, private/secure, or futureproof enough. I decided to settle on the default MacOS editor using a mix of .txt/.rtf files, with extensive folder organization and the built-in tagging system. I plan on consolidating journ…
Creating a hierarchy of notes using folders can be counterproductive. It will be easy to classify the majority of notes, but some of them will match multiple categories, or even none of them. Unfortunately, those notes are usually the most interesting. Case in point: I have some notes regarding good technical writing, and some notes concerning good Git usage. If I had a hierarchy, the first notes would go under "writ…
that’s why I have tags, I summarize info in multiple places, and I add aliases for sources
Re: Stop Taking Regular Notes; Use a Zettelkasten Instead
#277Earlier quoted context omitted.
there have been reports of Obsidian breaking and deleting notes when removing bidirectional links. I’m not interested in something that isn’t 100% failsafe when my notes are on the line.
That's worrying if true, but something hopefully they'll fix. I imagine deleting notes should be a fairly rare occurrence, so putting safeguards around it (such as a confirm, maybe moving note file to a trash location for later cleanup) is warranted. Given what it is, it's probably safe and a good idea to make the vault on top of a versioned file system, even if that's a dropbox, google drive stream folder, or backbl…
now you see why it quickly becomes complex, and I use the built-in editor which is as light as nano
Re: Stop Taking Regular Notes; Use a Zettelkasten Instead
#278I searched for hours for a viable Zettelkasten method: org-mode, vim-org, TiddlyWiki, Roam, Notion, Joplin, Notable, Obsidian, Zettlr. All of them were too complex, and not lightweight, cross-compatible, private/secure, or futureproof enough. I decided to settle on the default MacOS editor using a mix of .txt/.rtf files, with extensive folder organization and the built-in tagging system. I plan on consolidating journ…
> I searched for hours for a viable Zettelkasten method: org-mode, vim-org, TiddlyWiki, Roam, Notion, Joplin, Notable, Obsidian, Zettlr. Org mode works well, but honestly what works the absolute best in my experience are actual slips of paper in a slipcase — or 'index cards,' to use the colloquial term. I find that physically writing words with a pen aids memory, and the little notebooks that I form over time (I punc…
yes, but how would you link notes, then?
Re: Stop Taking Regular Notes; Use a Zettelkasten Instead
#279Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's worrying if true, but something hopefully they'll fix. I imagine deleting notes should be a fairly rare occurrence, so putting safeguards around it (such as a confirm, maybe moving note file to a trash location for later cleanup) is warranted. Given what it is, it's probably safe and a good idea to make the vault on top of a versioned file system, even if that's a dropbox, google drive stream folder, or backbl…
now you see why it quickly becomes complex, and I use the built-in editor which is as light as nano
I still think replacing the document creation markdown handling with Obsidian, which also shows back-links and lets you easily follow links, is probably much more useful and efficient than to use a regular text editor and manually curate the folders and tagging.
You probably want versioning in all cases (your manual method or Obsidian), and it doesn't negate the benefit of a system that scans and builds a graph of your knowledge provides.
Re: Stop Taking Regular Notes; Use a Zettelkasten Instead
#280Earlier quoted context omitted.
I tried Zettelkasten a few months ago and I found a lot of what you said to be true. It also has a serious upfront labor overhead that really makes it hard to stick with. Then I discovered Building a Second Brain and it's P.A.R.A. method which was like Just-in-Time Zettelkasten and it's suddenly become a cornerstone of my productivity routine. I compare the two approaches in this blog post: I recently studied both Ze…
Great write up, thanks!
My pleasure!