Obsidian. Total game changer. Obsidian sync is completely worth paying for as well - firstly it helps support the project but also its slick, so well made, and easier than all the hacked together GitHub / s3 / whatever workarounds.
From a content point of view I personally find having structure but not too much structure is the way to go. A bit of yaml if needed but just a gentle “daily notes = meeting notes” (on my work obsidian) and “daily notes = journal” (on my personal one), a few tags but nothing too rigid or cumbersome.
Omnisearch is the dogs nuts plugin too, and a couple of others but again, keeping it quite minimal has really worked for me.
Just so nice knowing that everything is under my control, using just markdown but with this fantastically powerful framework underneath it. Huge fan.
I really wish that Obsidian Sync had like... 5 megs for free or something. I can't justify paying $8/month for a thing I haven't even started using, and without sync I have a hard time saying "OK let's try this" compared to Joplin or Notion.
Was thinking the same thing reading this. I use my daily note as the main launchpad for everything I'm writing each day, I add random thoughts in there and link out to separate notes for bigger tasks/ideas/information.
The daily node is so useful because when I look at an old resource I can see from the back links exactly when I had taken notes on it before and go to that daily note to see any additional context of what I was doing that day.
I use Trello for task management and jotting down things to investigate later.
> A bit of yaml if needed but just a gentle “daily notes = meeting notes” (on my work obsidian) and “daily notes = journal” (on my personal one), a few tags but nothing too rigid or cumbersome.
Can you explain this one? I use it and the daily note thing bugs me since I would rather separate work and personal in the same value, but I did not know I could fix it.
> 1.1221 Sometimes the primary tool is not available. An “always-on” secondary should take its place.
> 1.1222 Sometimes log from different tools or locations need to be “merged”, “persisted”.
These two are the main reasons I've stuck with Google Docs: It's available everywhere, and everything's always in-sync. Google already has all my info of value, so the incremental trust necessary to the threshold of log visibility is minimal.
I'll add one more requirement: I don't want to leave an unencrypted on-disk footprint containing my notes. This means I can access the entirety of my notes on any machine and the only thing I have to worry about is keylogging/screenscraping.
Google Doc is lacking in many respects, though. Linkability is nonexistent. Docs longer than 100 pages really struggle with latency on mobile. Searchability is bad (!) because you have to open the doc first to see the matches from within.
Really wish there was a self-hosted alternative with sync and encrypted storage that didn't result in sync errors. I've tried DEVONthink, Obsidian, LogSeq, Google Keep, Notion, NotesNook, GoodNotes, Samsung Notes, Loop, OneNote, Apple Notes, Org Mode, plain text files, and probably a dozen others... I'd say NotesNook is the best so far, with DEVONthink a close second, but, nothing beats the reliability, omnipresence and privacy of Google Docs.
What about using Visual Studio Code with your notes in multiple Markdown files with automatic syncing to Google Drive via the desktop Google Drive app?
Searching multiple files, editing and organising files is quick and simple on desktop, and you can fallback to Google Doc on mobile when needed (Google Drive app lets you view .md files, there's no way to edit?). You can install extensions as well (like for doing inline maths) and if you already use Visual Studio Code for coding it's one less thing to learn.
I'm not familiar with Obsidian, which gets mention a lot. What does it improve on compared to the above if you don't need a mobile app or complex linking between Markdown files?
Personally I’ve abandoned all of my complex attempts at productivity and knowledge systems and have recently moved to the ever reliable txt file. You can format it however you want, use fun ascii art, or just plain paragraphs.
I’ve got a daily.txt where I prepend a new days section every day and put in whatever I want over the course of the day. I also create other files for courses I’m going through or projects as needed. The nice thing is using my editor I can make a file reference and hit gf and it’ll go right to a referenced file. But this “system” will keep on working regardless of what tools or system I happen to be using.
I have recently started to play around with the lightweight Emacs mode, "HOWM" which was written about 20 years ago by a Japanese author, who still maintains it today.
The howm-mode shows you a summary view, comprised of information (just the title/heading) from the (configurable) last 20 notes you have made. Everything goes under ~/howm/YYYY/MM e.g. ~/howm/2024/01 for notes I am making this month.
It has a simple way to enter schedule, todo, deadline, etc. which it shows just below the header that has single-key commands (s for case-insensitive searching, c to create a new note, etc.) for searching, navigation, new notes.
The genius of howm is that you can write and have very simple back and forward links to any file, URL, or tag, any kind of text etc., and you write "fragments" that is, whatever the smallest unit of text you want - it just needs a title plus anything else you want to add to it.
When you save the file, you hit Ctrl-C plus ",," and are back in the summary view.
So you can have very small sized units/fragments, which are very fast to create and save, but due to the forward and back links and the ease of searching (which will collate in a temporary list, everything found), you can "create fragmentarily but view/search collectively" as the documentation puts it.
My next step is to author HOWM notes in AsciiDoc or Markdown format which can easily be fed (since each note is a separate text file) into a converter for fancier output.
Syncthing easily keeps things in sync between my desktop and laptop.
This year I'm trying a new mechanism based around GitHub Issues (which I've been using for personal knowledge management for a few years already) - I create a new "planner" issue every day, then use that to make notes about what I want to do and what I've got done.
Hitting Command+N in Firefox on my Mac opens up my planner issue for the day, or creates it if one doesn't exist yet. I wrote up how that system works (a tiny bit of GitHub Actions + Pages magic) here: https://til.simonwillison.net/github-actions/daily-planner
I had a revelation that my ideas are worthless and the notes I took are also going to be worthless once I get familiar with X.
So I completely stopped taking notes. A to-do list plus a Google Drive for my son and our stuffs are good enough. The only problem is that we are not comfortable to put sensitive information on GD so probably build a NAS for that.
My experience has been the opposite. I used to envy people with amazing memories like it was a super power. Then I realized if I got into the habit of just writing stuff down, I'd effectively have that same superpower. It's the one thing that I can honestly say has changed my life.
I use obsidian.md for notes, which I have on phone and desktop. Nothing fancy. You just need something that's always with you, has great search, and ideally allows you to link notes together.
Can work in a fast paced environment but if you work on projects or ideas with hard numbers for years its not applicable or your brain capacity is off the charts.
I use notes because my memory is only so good, and they can be useful to me to refer back to. I just use Apple Notes. Good enough for me. That said, I don't think any of my ideas are somehow worthy of being "archived" or the like for others. They are simply helpful to me.
I don't know when ideas without execution become thought of as so valuable. Ideas are a dime a dozen, the hard part is testing those ideas to see if they actually work.
I just create one markdown file per day. I wrote a custom obsidian plugin that displays the "timeline" as if it was one open file and creates the files in year/month/week subfolders.
But I don't use linking and all the other complexity. But if I ever needed it I could.
Then it's synced with next cloud and also available on my phone.
I like this the most because just as explained, the time line is the most accurate representation of reality. And I can very quickly scroll back to see what I did last week or do full text search.
This is the second piece of content I've ever seen using the same numbering system as Wittgenstein's Tractatus, the first of course being the Tractatus itself.
Isn't this what Hypercore[0] is? But distributed? It's a append-only log, and then there's higher order abstractions built on top of this log. Hyperstore is a key value store that uses an append only log, hyperdrive is a filesystem, etc...
My approximate journey (7,500 notes, 13% markdown, remainder .txt)
(pc, circa 2010) notepad > Evernote > notepad > (mac) > vim > Notational Velocity > NVUltra (still in) beta > "The Archive" (Zettelkasten) > (n)vim
- notes synced with Dropbox folder (could just as well use iCloud)
- with vim fzf/telescope plugins for search
What finally flipped me back to vim was using a setup script to give me a useful set of plugins that did nice markdown highlighting out of the box, and then working out how to do things like auto-indenting, opening URLs in browser, renaming files more easily etc.
Slight annoyance: yet to find a way to search both filenames and file contents at the same time
Do systems that link from one note to another help me? Apparently not much. Quite a lot of effort to maintain the links, better to express hierarchy in filenames.
(still using Omnifocus for todo lists, but it can import/export Taskpaper text format)
I like the idea, and I do something similar but this has a lot of rules and feels more complex than potentially necessary. I personally use Obsidian.md as the tool for my Zettelkasten method. It provides back links and the like. I also create engineering journals for projects.
Several comments about personal note taking systems. Here's mine. :)
function note { mg +-1 "/home/user/notes/$(date "+%Y-%m-%d").txt"; }
"mg" is "Micro Emacs clone" and "+-1" opens the file at the bottom for appending, but of course it works equally fine with your choice of $EDITOR.
I like this setup because it's plaintext (or markdown if you prefer), easily sorts on filename, and easily greppable. I have a couple years of notes saved this way and it's fun to explore old notes.
This post probably has some kernels of value, but it suffers from the XY problem: it's a note taking system which provides the solution, but not the problem it's solving. Let's invert that and focus on the problem first. Below are the problems my personal system solves, followed by the solutions. My solutions may not fit your situation, but if you see yourself in the problems, maybe you'll be inspired to find the solution that works for you.
1. Formatting easily becomes a distraction, but a little formatting is vital, so I use markdown to write my plans and notes.
2. Mixing streams from different projects is confusing, so each project has its own workspace - either a folder or a distinct prefix on the file name.
3. Work or ideas often become irrelevant for a while as plans change, but I hate feeling like I might lose work that might be valuable later. So I have a "dump" file or folder where I can dump such things. Entries are typically dated so they can be referenced by other files (see below). I typically use a level 1 or 2 markdown section header to delimit entries.
4. I often have a "log" markdown file where I append descriptions of indisputably important project developments (as opposed to maybe-important-later stuff that goes in the dump file). Entries here are dated and delimited similarly to the dump file.
5. There is a "plan" file that I try to keep clean and concise. This is where I go to remember what I have resolved to do next.
6. A common issue with plan files is that they get bloated with discussion of current or past context, as you try to figure out what to do and how to do it. When this happens, the discussion is moved to the "log" or "dump" files and replaced with a "link" describing how to find it again (e.g. "see log date 2024-01-12 for more on this").
7. There is a master plan file that coordinates all the projects. Bloat in this file is moved down to individual project files and replaced with a link.
To recap: markdown; project workspaces; log and dump with dated entries; concise plan file; move bloat out of plan into log or dump and replace with a link; master plan file with similar bloat management strategy.
I have used this system for five years. It has developed over time, but all elements have been in use for at least two years.
I am a staff data scientist leading a team of a half dozen people that is overhauling the core analytics pipelines and models at a Fortune 100, and 80% of my day is IC work. I have this job not because anyone asked me to do it, but because I proved I could do it on my own time. I work normal hours, parent of two kids, working spouse. I don't have time to putter around. This system is a big part of how I make it work.
Every time I see that other people are contemplating these subjects, I notice that they hit on many of my own considerations and miss many of the big picture things I consider essential.
I think this will evolve into tribalism of mental models for organizing information. More vi vs emacs energy to go around in the decades to come.
Whenever I try one of these apps I'm always impressed by the features but my entire life is in iCloud.
Not only that but all the people I connect with for notes/calendars/reminders are also in the Apple ecosystem and they aren't going to switch for me. This means that a lot of the extra features that Notion, Obsidian, etc. offer just aren't valuable for me.
It makes me annoyed that Apple's Notes app is so basic.
Thanks for posting this. Currently building out something that is consolidating events from numerous sources and then automatically processing of those.
This post helped to give me some additional ideas on the processing of those events.
Interesting, and something I’ve been thinking about. What is your architecture? Using any available workflow products for “retrieve/receive event from X, figure out what do, then do that in Y”?
I hope more people share content like this in HN. Note taking is incredibly personal and as a result, I think the best ideas might be lying dormant and unshared.
I was very excited about this when it launched (in alpha). How has the product matured? Also, does it now have an API for easy import/export of data into the database?
dmje|2 years ago
From a content point of view I personally find having structure but not too much structure is the way to go. A bit of yaml if needed but just a gentle “daily notes = meeting notes” (on my work obsidian) and “daily notes = journal” (on my personal one), a few tags but nothing too rigid or cumbersome.
Omnisearch is the dogs nuts plugin too, and a couple of others but again, keeping it quite minimal has really worked for me.
Just so nice knowing that everything is under my control, using just markdown but with this fantastically powerful framework underneath it. Huge fan.
rtpg|2 years ago
There's a bunch of cool looking stuff though
LAC-Tech|2 years ago
I recommend reading the article, it was pretty interseting.
bravura|2 years ago
TimJRobinson|2 years ago
The daily node is so useful because when I look at an old resource I can see from the back links exactly when I had taken notes on it before and go to that daily note to see any additional context of what I was doing that day.
I use Trello for task management and jotting down things to investigate later.
eightysixfour|2 years ago
Can you explain this one? I use it and the daily note thing bugs me since I would rather separate work and personal in the same value, but I did not know I could fix it.
exe34|2 years ago
ukuina|2 years ago
> 1.1222 Sometimes log from different tools or locations need to be “merged”, “persisted”.
These two are the main reasons I've stuck with Google Docs: It's available everywhere, and everything's always in-sync. Google already has all my info of value, so the incremental trust necessary to the threshold of log visibility is minimal.
I'll add one more requirement: I don't want to leave an unencrypted on-disk footprint containing my notes. This means I can access the entirety of my notes on any machine and the only thing I have to worry about is keylogging/screenscraping.
Google Doc is lacking in many respects, though. Linkability is nonexistent. Docs longer than 100 pages really struggle with latency on mobile. Searchability is bad (!) because you have to open the doc first to see the matches from within.
Really wish there was a self-hosted alternative with sync and encrypted storage that didn't result in sync errors. I've tried DEVONthink, Obsidian, LogSeq, Google Keep, Notion, NotesNook, GoodNotes, Samsung Notes, Loop, OneNote, Apple Notes, Org Mode, plain text files, and probably a dozen others... I'd say NotesNook is the best so far, with DEVONthink a close second, but, nothing beats the reliability, omnipresence and privacy of Google Docs.
zilti|2 years ago
seanwilson|2 years ago
Searching multiple files, editing and organising files is quick and simple on desktop, and you can fallback to Google Doc on mobile when needed (Google Drive app lets you view .md files, there's no way to edit?). You can install extensions as well (like for doing inline maths) and if you already use Visual Studio Code for coding it's one less thing to learn.
I'm not familiar with Obsidian, which gets mention a lot. What does it improve on compared to the above if you don't need a mobile app or complex linking between Markdown files?
sebtron|2 years ago
Unless you are offline
ssss11|2 years ago
layer8|2 years ago
inferense|2 years ago
animal_spirits|2 years ago
https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.redd.it%2F2...
rsync|2 years ago
dinkleberg|2 years ago
Personally I’ve abandoned all of my complex attempts at productivity and knowledge systems and have recently moved to the ever reliable txt file. You can format it however you want, use fun ascii art, or just plain paragraphs.
I’ve got a daily.txt where I prepend a new days section every day and put in whatever I want over the course of the day. I also create other files for courses I’m going through or projects as needed. The nice thing is using my editor I can make a file reference and hit gf and it’ll go right to a referenced file. But this “system” will keep on working regardless of what tools or system I happen to be using.
ahmedfromtunis|2 years ago
shrubble|2 years ago
The howm-mode shows you a summary view, comprised of information (just the title/heading) from the (configurable) last 20 notes you have made. Everything goes under ~/howm/YYYY/MM e.g. ~/howm/2024/01 for notes I am making this month.
It has a simple way to enter schedule, todo, deadline, etc. which it shows just below the header that has single-key commands (s for case-insensitive searching, c to create a new note, etc.) for searching, navigation, new notes.
The genius of howm is that you can write and have very simple back and forward links to any file, URL, or tag, any kind of text etc., and you write "fragments" that is, whatever the smallest unit of text you want - it just needs a title plus anything else you want to add to it.
When you save the file, you hit Ctrl-C plus ",," and are back in the summary view.
So you can have very small sized units/fragments, which are very fast to create and save, but due to the forward and back links and the ease of searching (which will collate in a temporary list, everything found), you can "create fragmentarily but view/search collectively" as the documentation puts it.
My next step is to author HOWM notes in AsciiDoc or Markdown format which can easily be fed (since each note is a separate text file) into a converter for fancier output.
Syncthing easily keeps things in sync between my desktop and laptop.
In the very best of FOSS tradition, someone else wrote up a full PDF manual, in English. https://github.com/Emacs101/howm-manual/blob/main/Howm_tutor...
simonw|2 years ago
Hitting Command+N in Firefox on my Mac opens up my planner issue for the day, or creates it if one doesn't exist yet. I wrote up how that system works (a tiny bit of GitHub Actions + Pages magic) here: https://til.simonwillison.net/github-actions/daily-planner
hnthrowaway0328|2 years ago
So I completely stopped taking notes. A to-do list plus a Google Drive for my son and our stuffs are good enough. The only problem is that we are not comfortable to put sensitive information on GD so probably build a NAS for that.
toddmorey|2 years ago
I use obsidian.md for notes, which I have on phone and desktop. Nothing fancy. You just need something that's always with you, has great search, and ideally allows you to link notes together.
Zetobal|2 years ago
skydhash|2 years ago
* Some information that I don't trust myself to remember
* A canvas to refine my own ideas
* Summary of others' works.
Now it's easier for me to connect dots across works, themes and disciplines. That works wonder for compression of knowledge inside my brain.
tensor|2 years ago
I don't know when ideas without execution become thought of as so valuable. Ideas are a dime a dozen, the hard part is testing those ideas to see if they actually work.
sureglymop|2 years ago
But I don't use linking and all the other complexity. But if I ever needed it I could.
Then it's synced with next cloud and also available on my phone.
I like this the most because just as explained, the time line is the most accurate representation of reality. And I can very quickly scroll back to see what I did last week or do full text search.
Simple and useful!
toddmorey|2 years ago
philips|2 years ago
Zetobal|2 years ago
canadiantim|2 years ago
openquery|2 years ago
throwup238|2 years ago
cobertos|2 years ago
[0]: https://github.com/holepunchto/hypercore
wt__|2 years ago
(pc, circa 2010) notepad > Evernote > notepad > (mac) > vim > Notational Velocity > NVUltra (still in) beta > "The Archive" (Zettelkasten) > (n)vim
- notes synced with Dropbox folder (could just as well use iCloud) - with vim fzf/telescope plugins for search
What finally flipped me back to vim was using a setup script to give me a useful set of plugins that did nice markdown highlighting out of the box, and then working out how to do things like auto-indenting, opening URLs in browser, renaming files more easily etc.
Slight annoyance: yet to find a way to search both filenames and file contents at the same time
Do systems that link from one note to another help me? Apparently not much. Quite a lot of effort to maintain the links, better to express hierarchy in filenames.
(still using Omnifocus for todo lists, but it can import/export Taskpaper text format)
fireynis|2 years ago
The only rule I have is to avoid unlinked notes.
accrual|2 years ago
I like this setup because it's plaintext (or markdown if you prefer), easily sorts on filename, and easily greppable. I have a couple years of notes saved this way and it's fun to explore old notes.
fouc|2 years ago
civilized|2 years ago
1. Formatting easily becomes a distraction, but a little formatting is vital, so I use markdown to write my plans and notes.
2. Mixing streams from different projects is confusing, so each project has its own workspace - either a folder or a distinct prefix on the file name.
3. Work or ideas often become irrelevant for a while as plans change, but I hate feeling like I might lose work that might be valuable later. So I have a "dump" file or folder where I can dump such things. Entries are typically dated so they can be referenced by other files (see below). I typically use a level 1 or 2 markdown section header to delimit entries.
4. I often have a "log" markdown file where I append descriptions of indisputably important project developments (as opposed to maybe-important-later stuff that goes in the dump file). Entries here are dated and delimited similarly to the dump file.
5. There is a "plan" file that I try to keep clean and concise. This is where I go to remember what I have resolved to do next.
6. A common issue with plan files is that they get bloated with discussion of current or past context, as you try to figure out what to do and how to do it. When this happens, the discussion is moved to the "log" or "dump" files and replaced with a "link" describing how to find it again (e.g. "see log date 2024-01-12 for more on this").
7. There is a master plan file that coordinates all the projects. Bloat in this file is moved down to individual project files and replaced with a link.
To recap: markdown; project workspaces; log and dump with dated entries; concise plan file; move bloat out of plan into log or dump and replace with a link; master plan file with similar bloat management strategy.
I have used this system for five years. It has developed over time, but all elements have been in use for at least two years.
I am a staff data scientist leading a team of a half dozen people that is overhauling the core analytics pipelines and models at a Fortune 100, and 80% of my day is IC work. I have this job not because anyone asked me to do it, but because I proved I could do it on my own time. I work normal hours, parent of two kids, working spouse. I don't have time to putter around. This system is a big part of how I make it work.
riffic|2 years ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zettelkasten
cfr2023|2 years ago
Every time I see that other people are contemplating these subjects, I notice that they hit on many of my own considerations and miss many of the big picture things I consider essential.
I think this will evolve into tribalism of mental models for organizing information. More vi vs emacs energy to go around in the decades to come.
neighbour|2 years ago
Not only that but all the people I connect with for notes/calendars/reminders are also in the Apple ecosystem and they aren't going to switch for me. This means that a lot of the extra features that Notion, Obsidian, etc. offer just aren't valuable for me.
It makes me annoyed that Apple's Notes app is so basic.
pif_|2 years ago
[0]: https://noteplan.co/
faizmokh|2 years ago
I find the app experience to be terrible tho.
csbartus|2 years ago
It helped to pin down my own approach, which is a very similar workflow, with these differences:
- The log entries are flashcards with ID
- The structure / tree follows the scientific method, aka the glue is not ad-hoc.
- So far I need no lists, because I only learn things and I'm not tracking any activity
_boffin_|2 years ago
This post helped to give me some additional ideas on the processing of those events.
threecheese|2 years ago
IOT_Apprentice|2 years ago
rickcarlino|2 years ago
LAC-Tech|2 years ago
The approach taken here is essentially event sourcing, btw. It's old and it works.
up2isomorphism|2 years ago
devdiary|2 years ago
moonlion_eth|2 years ago
ssivark|2 years ago
unknown|2 years ago
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