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Personal Knowledge Management Is Bullshit

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Re: Personal Knowledge Management Is Bullshit

#51

Post by rvzx »

This is mostly a set of surface-level arguments about superficial aspects of personal knowledge management.

Yes, influencers pitching specific methodologies are often full of shit. Yes, network graphs are often boring and gratuitous. Yes, being overly focused on the tools used to complete tasks often gets in the way of completing tasks.

None of that is super interesting.

Particularly disappointing are the references to obesity and hoarding. Taking notes isn't hoarding. Storing notes isn't obesity. Physical and mental health issues should not be fodder for bad analogies. The act of writing notes and being able to search and read notes is useful for anyone, and is essential for those with memory issues.

The idea that ought to be central to this post, cutting a line through the knowledge graph, could have been really useful and compelling if not surrounded by trivial complaints. It would be fascinating to explore how knowledge management tools can help people do the job of cutting a line through a graph, though that's not really explored in this post.

Maybe with this post the author got a little lost in the knowledge graph in his head rather than cutting a line.

His business Indie Thinkers seems to share a market with many personal knowledge management tools. Of course it does.

Re: Personal Knowledge Management Is Bullshit

#52

Post by divan »

xmprt wrote: post #48
divan wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Second this. I even have a bookmarklet in the browser that adds text selection or a page automatically to Obsidian. And yet, when it comes to saving something I feel is important, the maximum I can do is just create another note and put the text/link and forget. I feel like I need to find proper place for this note in the folder hierarchy or think how to categorize it ("should it go to the Economics->Behavioral or So…

The best workflow is to consciously underthink it. If you find yourself spending more than 10 seconds thinking of where to put something then you're doing it wrong. Force yourself to go with the first place you were thinking. You'll most likely find it later using search tools. Sometimes you don't even need to take notes. Just the act of pasting in a link or a snippet from an article you read is enough to reference i…

Right, agree with <10 sec rule. But, again, the main promise of second brain tools is to keep your "second memory" layer organized. Apple Notes are good enough for copypasting links and excerpts you want to make searchable later, right? So I assumed that Obsidian's markdown/hyperlink system should bring some benefits into organization.

Re: Personal Knowledge Management Is Bullshit

#53

Post by lolcat_cowsay »

tronicdude wrote: post #47

PKM is not bullshit; it is extremely helpful to a lot of people. This article seems a bit pointless. Yes, the graph is used to advertise a lot of these systems, but the point of the graph isn't the graph itself; it's just showing the power of backlinks. I use Obsidian and haven't looked at my graph since I started. But I use backlinks regularly. The graph is merely advertising the power of backlinks.

And it is extremely unhelpful to a lot of people aswell. It doesn't work for everyone.

Re: Personal Knowledge Management Is Bullshit

#54

Post by Melatonic »

kopkako wrote: post #46

Wow, does this ring true for me. I had been using Evernote for at least 7 years, then switched to Notion a few years ago, completely "reinventing my digital life" and creating my "Second Brain" with the P.A.R.A method by Tiago Forte. I loved that for the first few months, then slowly but surely the sheer amount of interconnected nodes became... oberwhelming, to the point of me almost completely stopping to enter in n…

Some stuff must be digital of course but I always find paper notebooks superior in the end. Something about physically writing it down makes me remember it better. And even though they can become disorganized I like occasionally flipping through an old one - it often triggers memories associated with the time I wrote the note or people I worked with that I would not get with digital files.

I think the other thing is it forces you to be more space conscious - you do not have unlimited real estate. Large notebook for some things, smaller handbook for portable, and notes that are compressed or adjusted for each.

Re: Personal Knowledge Management Is Bullshit

#55

Post by sfink »

I want this article to be correct because it would validate my failed attempts at knowledge management. But I can't say that it isn't just some random person stridently arguing against the positions of a bunch of other random people. (And the author has the disadvantage that they totally misused the "bull in a china shop" metaphor...)

I certainly find it believable that people will fetishize knowledge graphing, because it's something I would do: spend lots of time to produce something sophisticated and fancy and utterly useless for real-world impact. But the abuses of people like me don't disprove the value. And the argument that it won't magically do some things, like derive the importance of specific bits of data, doesn't prove that it won't do other things.

Anything we produce or decide is based on a substrate of information, sort of a soil in which ideas and conclusions can grow. It doesn't seem ridiculous that it could be beneficial to take some intentional action to enrich that soil. Just don't expect that it's going to produce amazing results all by itself; I agree with the author that willful linearization and filtering is critical when you're trying to make something out of it.

Re: Personal Knowledge Management Is Bullshit

#56

Post by moosey »

It's great to have a note system where you can get general information about a subject. However, such a system will not encourage you to read and recollect the information on a regular basis.

It seems to me that the only good personal knowledge management system is a self-testing tool, like Anki. When going through your daily tests, completed questions can have links to the source of the information. If you find yourself interested in studying the material again, you can follow the link, or retest using decks that you can build on the fly based on the tags of the question that caught your interest.

Personally, I just link to the original material that I found, instead of a personal note system. When I write notes, I write them by hand and regularly throw away binders of material. The handwriting was the important part, fully reinforced by constant self-testing.

The reason that this is so difficult, though, for technology, is the rate of change and how much technological bifurcation exists. Each company that I might go to will have their own stack of similar technologies with the same goals. How many languages do I actually want to know all the details of? Probably one. The ability to think as a programmer (or server administrator, network administrator, container system engineer, etc.) is the important part. Otherwise, I can learn the details of any utility on the fly as needed. It will stick with practice, and doesn't require the same level of personal knowledge management.

Learning a language, or things that don't change much (STEM subjects, for example), can benefit from the use of such a system.

Re: Personal Knowledge Management Is Bullshit

#57

Post by Hates_ »

ineedasername wrote: post #50
brightball wrote: post #8

I take notes relentlessly with Obsidian and I'll honestly never go back. I would have been more stubborn about this earlier on in my career. Now I realize that I've probably forgotten more over time than I ever would have imagined so I realized having good notes is critical for me. I end up looking up answers on stack overlflow and then realize I wrote them. To each their own.

Obsidian is new to me, thanks for the recommendation. I see the files are local, does the app need to phone home for anything? I'd like something that will still work even if the company goes away at some point.

Obsidian being _just_ a UI on top of Markdown files is one of it's selling points.

Re: Personal Knowledge Management Is Bullshit

#58

Post by deckard1 »

lifeisstillgood wrote: post #14

Google knows that search solves pretty much all of these knowledge management issues. But there are deep conflicts of interest, and curious corporate blind spots to solving this individually. So why don't all my web browser keep a complete copy of everything I have viewed (ok maybe not those sites) - so I an do a text search for "that thing about female doctor who was first ever". Partly because if I had that on my l…

I've written pretty much your same comment a few times on HN in the past.

The web browser could be a provider of rich personal context. Firefox is probably in the best position to take advantage of this. But they, too, are dependent on Google (>80% of revenue is Google). Apple doesn't care enough about search or the web to pursue this. Which leaves... open source? Some fringe startup? I'm not hopeful anyone will tackle this problem soon.

We've known bookmarks are not the solution for over two decades now.

> The second biggest search opportunity surely is corporate emails.

This has largely been solved in a roundabout way by Slack. They didn't solve email or search. They just made email completely irrelevant at orgs that use Slack and their search interface, while not perfect, does an okay job. They only succeeded because email is so bad in contrast.

Re: Personal Knowledge Management Is Bullshit

#59

Post by greenice »

smoldesu wrote: post #28
testingwaters4 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you recommend a workflow for obsidian? Or some pointers for resources. I am struggling to "get" how to take notes with it and I am feeling a lot of friction

I started up a job a few months ago and threw myself into Obsidian, and it has definitely been paying off. Here's how I work, ymmv of course: - I create a "Work" folder. Inside it are folders for Weekly Notes, Tasks and Information. - At the beginning of each week I make a new Weekly Notes page. I have a subheading for each day, and a subheading in each day for a todo list. After the todo list, I put down a heading f…

When sharing/saving links to Obsidian, can it automatically add the title of the linked page (and date)?

It just saves the URL for me.

Re: Personal Knowledge Management Is Bullshit

#60

Post by lolcat_cowsay »

rvzx wrote: post #51

This is mostly a set of surface-level arguments about superficial aspects of personal knowledge management. Yes, influencers pitching specific methodologies are often full of shit. Yes, network graphs are often boring and gratuitous. Yes, being overly focused on the tools used to complete tasks often gets in the way of completing tasks. None of that is super interesting. Particularly disappointing are the references…

I agree, this blog post is too long for what he was actually trying to say, he could of gotten his point through in a few paragraphs rather than an entire page, I'm surprised that I had the patience to read all of it today.
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