[HN Gopher] My Second Brain - Zettelkasten
___________________________________________________________________
My Second Brain - Zettelkasten
Author : spences10
Score : 122 points
Date : 2021-01-16 14:19 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (scottspence.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (scottspence.com)
| michaericalribo wrote:
| I've gone through phases of intense note taking and planning
| around organization.
|
| At the end of the day, I find the overhead of highly structured
| notes gets in my way and distracts me from actually accomplishing
| anything using the notes. Obviously these systems work for some
| people! But I've found detailed engineering of knowledge doesn't
| work for me...
|
| What does work is a stripped down pair of tools: a) an inbox for
| capturing in-the-moment, which can be anything (a dedicated page
| in a notes app, my email inbox, a piece of paper); and b) a
| medium term "filing cabinet" for storing info for later (these
| days I use notion).
|
| These let me not lose an idea, and reference it later. The key is
| having one default place to dump everything.
| shakezula wrote:
| I use a rough zettel method as well. I agree about the place to
| dump everything being the key. Too much structure gets in my
| way too, but the process of condensing and refining my notes
| into my zettel has been where some of my best ideas and
| insights have come when learning and/or creating and designing.
| michaericalribo wrote:
| That's an important point!
|
| I mostly just dump in 'facts'--my frequent flyer number, gift
| ideas, recipes. It's just an external drive for my memory...
|
| But the active process of reflection and editing and
| synthesis based on actual notes...I completely miss out on
| that. It's not a piece of tech, so much as a process.
|
| It reminds me of the Cornell notes system [1]: take raw notes
| in the moment, then condense and summarize them later.
| Reviewing and refining force you to internalize the content,
| not just record it.
|
| [1] http://lsc.cornell.edu/wp-
| content/uploads/2016/10/Cornell-No...
| nullandvoid wrote:
| Is foam not a regression in your flow? You mentioned the cross
| platform being an important feature
|
| I'd love to give it a go,but that's a bit of a necessity for me.
|
| Admittedly perhaps notion for fleeting notes, with a foam setup
| for managing permanent notes wheb at mt desktop may be a good
| compromise
|
| I'm hoping something good is going to come out of notions
| backlinks support. $15/m is pretty steep on roam, and I do prefer
| notion for most things
| spences10 wrote:
| Yeah, foam isn't a great option for cross platform (mobile).
|
| If you use an iPad and have your notes in a GitHub repository
| you can use code spaces which is the vscode editor (I'm not
| sure if the extensions will work though)
| brettwilcox wrote:
| I've been using the Zettelkasten method for a few months now and
| I could never go back to the way I was taking notes before. I
| picked "The Archive" for the app and have a Git repo located on
| OneDrive. It just works and there is no guessing how things get
| organized.
|
| I can keep my notes not only synced, but I also get version
| controlled markdown files. You can setup VSCode to accomplish the
| same tasks through extensions, but it's not 100% perfect.
|
| The Archive is great software, but they also have a fantastic
| community that's researching this subject.
|
| https://forum.zettelkasten.de
| galaxyLogic wrote:
| So what is the organization of your notes?
|
| I would think that to collect knowledge about the world you
| would (ideally) need to have an ontological model of what are
| the categories of things we can talk about, and how those
| categories are connected to each other.
|
| Creating such a model even if only in your head means
| organizing the knowledge we have and collect, and is not a
| trivial thing to accomplish.
|
| Or does it not matter with Zettelkasten?
| [deleted]
| Rockjodd wrote:
| Have you tried Zettlr? https://www.zettlr.com/features
| smetj wrote:
| I've been using it. I believe it's the most promising app of
| them all however it's still being heavily developed though.
| ungamedplayer wrote:
| I've recently had much more luck with https://johnnydecimal.com/
| , mirroring content structure across all my devices and even
| physically.
| codeful wrote:
| i have built my own personal note-taking app based on this
| technique. This strategy just works very well at scale. Its
| fast to categorize input and filter content.
| 1shooner wrote:
| This reminds me of a college summer job I had cataloging a
| design company's photography. I almost immediately ran into the
| limitations of a single taxonomy: "Is this picture of a tree,
| or a landscape?" Of course it could be considered either by a
| user, but the single hierarchy forces an exclusive
| organization.
| dmje wrote:
| I'm about to implement this at home. Any tips?
| abetusk wrote:
| For me, the idea is sound but the implementation always seems so
| cumbersome. I want something that separates the data from the
| display as much as possible, has an easy 'note taking' and has an
| easy install. One problem I always encounter is that if the
| interface to add notes has too much friction, I stop using it
| pretty quickly.
|
| Anyway, so I created something over the weekend called 'notenox'
| [0]. It creates a a JSON file of relevant information, one JSON
| file per note, with keywords and a "special" keyword prefix
| called a 'title' that mimics how I've actually been taking notes
| (email, so the 'title' mimics an email thread). For display, I
| consolidate all JSON files into a single JSON file and then have
| it loaded into the browser with some Javascript to group by title
| or keyword, along with doing all cross referencing and counting
| on the client end.
|
| Creating notes is done through the command line, because that's a
| common way I interact with my computer, with different options to
| create titles, links, keywords, etc. I'm sure there are many
| different Zettelkasten implementations out there but they always
| seem so clunky and cumbersome. It's not hard, so the simple use
| case should be simple, nor should it proprietary or locked behind
| a SaaS.
|
| You can see my personal notes in action, if you like [1] (sorry,
| not mobile friendly!).
|
| [0]
| https://github.com/abetusk/www.mechaelephant.com/tree/releas...
|
| [1] https://mechaelephant.com/notenox
| 5cents wrote:
| Have you heard of Tiddlywiki [0] (also mentioned above [1])?
| Although not command line, it is a single file and supports
| exporting/importing your notes as json, and offers a lot of
| flexibility
|
| [0] https://tiddlywiki.com
|
| [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25804473
| icu wrote:
| I'm looking into making my own software Zettelkasten solution.
| Anyone have feedback on what they like or dislike about the
| software they are already using?
| tziki wrote:
| There are quite a few out there, why are you looking into
| building your own?
| icu wrote:
| I answered this briefly above, but I could flip the question
| by asking, if the other approaches are so great, why haven't
| they found product market fit and mass adoption?
|
| And that lack of mass market adoption really annoys me
| because I believe in the benefits of a Zettelkasten and it
| would really increase creativity and productivity across many
| fields if there was mass market adoption.
| tziki wrote:
| I disagree about the mass market adoption - compared to how
| long Zettelkasten has been trending (less than a year), the
| rise in its tooling and usage is quite phenomenal.
| rayrag wrote:
| Maybe instead of building another one, go help improve existing
| ones.
| icu wrote:
| I appreciate the implied question... why do this? Essentially
| I believe the current approaches fail to be 'mainstream
| friendly'. I've started to discuss this with a neuroscientist
| friend of mine and we are currently exploring why this is the
| case.
| spences10 wrote:
| Do you have any details on this or is it not documented
| anywhere yet?
| slightwinder wrote:
| Notetaking is by definition not "mainstream friendly" and
| probably never will until the rise of true AI. Each
| solution will fail because it's hard work on an
| everchanging battlefield and most peopke gave neither and
| instant reward nor a longterm motivation to play the system
| long enough to maybe get something some day.
| rayrag wrote:
| > I believe the current approaches fail to be 'mainstream
| friendly'
|
| Maybe Zettelkasten won't be ever 'mainstream friendly'?
|
| I use Obsidian and Notion (before that I've used txt files,
| Evernote and Joplin) but I don't use Zettelkasten method.
| And personally I think there is already so many different
| note taking apps that building another one won't do
| anything. And there are some good open source apps that
| would use some extra help. Of course you can do whatever
| you want.
| 1MachineElf wrote:
| I combine Joplin and Zotero for Zettelkasten-like capability.
| One thing I wish is that Joplin's desktop client wasn't based
| on Electron.
| nickthemagicman wrote:
| So the author writes their notes in mark down with a VS code
| extension and stores them on GitHub?
|
| Is there more to this that I'm not getting?
| marcuskaz wrote:
| Data stored in files within a hierarchy of folders. It's the
| hot new thing!
| zikzak wrote:
| I always wonder this as well, and, in my opinion, no there is
| never more to it than that. Interlinking notes with hyperlinks
| is a huge convenience that plays a role in all these "new"
| methods but academics (and others, of course) have always had
| manual systems for this.
|
| What I will say is I am in favor of anything that encourages
| people to write and create versus just consuming content. If
| fiddling with a new system encourages this, that is great.
| violetgarden wrote:
| I hadn't heard of Zettelkasten until today. I want to give it a
| go, but I'll be honest, I feel a bit overwhelmed after reading
| about it. I've never catalogued my notes before or given each one
| a unique id.
| input_sh wrote:
| There's basically just two things you need to know:
|
| 1. Keep your notes short. I do 10 sentences max.
|
| 2. Link them as much as possible. Find a program that does that
| (Obsidian, Roam, Foam, etc).
|
| It truly is a wonderful feeling when you do those two things
| many, _many_ times. Instead of a YouTube rabbit hole, I can
| fall down a rabbit hole of my own thoughts just by clicking on
| a random note, following the links, and re-discovering some of
| my thoughts from months or years ago.
|
| Unique IDs are easy. For example, Unix timestamp or just
| YYYYMMDDHHMMSS. Here's a commonly shared public database to get
| you hooked: https://notes.andymatuschak.org/About_these_notes
| martin-adams wrote:
| For anyone who wants the gist of Zettelkasten, I've just finished
| reading How to Take Smart Notes by Sonke Ahrens.
|
| Here's my rather brief summary of the process:
|
| * You create fleeting notes to capture ideas as they happen. They
| should be short lived notes that don't become the main store of
| your knowledge.
|
| * You create literature notes as your read material. These should
| include your own thoughts on highlighted passages, not just
| quotes and highlights on their own.
|
| * You organise your fleeting notes as permanent notes into your
| 'Slip Box' (taken from the original use index cards). Each note
| should contain a single idea and should be understandable when
| reading in isolation.
|
| * You want to avoid burying knowledge in large notes as it makes
| it hard to glance at and link to other notes in a concise way.
|
| * Notes are linked to other notes which support your ideas. This
| also help the discovery of new ideas.
|
| * You use your slip box to help you do your thinking. You want to
| ask it questions, find the related notes that support/oppose the
| arguments and find gaps or newly related information.
|
| * You can create index notes that help you find your way around.
|
| * Part of the process is to help your understanding by writing.
| With a well maintained slip box, you'll never be starting from a
| blank sheet. You decide what insight/question/knowledge you want
| to explore, and pull together the notes that give you the body of
| research to get you started. You shouldn't need to start a new
| blog post by researching, that happens prior by taking smart
| notes as you naturally read what you're interested in.
|
| Hope that's somewhat helpful. I'm still experimenting with it to
| find out what I understand correctly and what I don't.
| inakarmacoma wrote:
| You can give it a try with obsidian.md
| znpy wrote:
| the publish function is interesting, it'd be cool if there
| was also an "export" publish (i can host the website myself).
| derekja wrote:
| wow, is that web site ever broken on mobile. Thanks for
| mentioning, though, I've been hunting for something like
| that.
| shakezula wrote:
| +1 for Obsidian. It's the best note taking app I've yet
| found, and I've tried almost all of them at this point.
| StavrosK wrote:
| Have you tried Joplin? I tried Obsidian for a bit but I
| found that I liked Joplin better (though I'm not sure I
| could tell you why at this point).
| whimsicalism wrote:
| Definitely the best - I only wish it could sync with my
| ipad!
| anandb143 wrote:
| For your third bullet point, should that be literature notes ?
| doesn't sound like fleeting notes should be a permanent record.
| martin-adams wrote:
| Sorry, I think I poorly explained that. Both fleeting and
| literature notes need to be 'organised' into the slip box as
| permanent notes.
|
| By organised, this means to filter, rewrite, conclude, etc
| into permanent notes. You don't want to put in book extracts,
| or disjointed ideas without putting it in your own words.
| tin7in wrote:
| Thanks for the summary! Does it work in a team / collaborative
| environment?
| sanarothe wrote:
| I've been adapting ZK ideas to my work flow. I am in med
| devices working on CE mark regulatory filings, and so ZK
| kinda fits well with my job, which is essentially to find
| product/process information, know stuff, and communicate it.
|
| I think ZK works very well in team environment. I make "issue
| logs" - when something goes wrong, or there is a particular
| detail to understand, I force myself to write out the issue
| and resolution into ZK. (Force, because it is so much easier
| to just solve and move on without documenting)
|
| If you can maintain some discipline in writing summaries and
| updating for yourself, this solves "we discussed x issue 2
| months ago, but don't remember {some, all} details now"
|
| I keep sublime text open to my Kasten at all times so using
| full text search in a database of curated notes is _so_ much
| quicker than trying to find the right project folder, or
| searching outlook.
|
| I don't worry about one file - one idea, I just break things
| up how they make sense to me. The "rules" for ZK don't
| entirely make sense for engineering work and must be bent to
| your needs.
|
| My only lament with plain text is difficulty in using figures
| / images in discussions with myself.
| martin-adams wrote:
| I think so. I've been using it to document 3 types of things
| for the projects.
|
| 1. Code guidelines, which anyone can contribute to and we can
| discuss/review them via PRs. As each note is a small rule or
| idea, it's easy to reason about. It aids discovery for new
| team members, but early days to test that bit out.
|
| 2. Application implementation patterns. I've added small
| notes in the codebase to outline how concept work, state
| management, styling, types, etc. Relevant to the codebase,
| but not specific to any individual code file.
|
| 3. DevOps playbook. I've been working on this in the past
| week and having it in a Zettelkasten format has been very
| beneficial to fill it out with the most important aspects.
| The set of markdown files covers how to do deployment, how we
| do security, backups, etc. Would love to turn that into a
| blog/video series when I'm done - which probably shows the
| power of having knowledge that is very reusable.
| spences10 wrote:
| This is a great summary, thanks
| Datagenerator wrote:
| Recently started using TiddlyWiki as personal notes archive. The
| automatic indexes of really work well to connect each note to
| others.
| GekkePrutser wrote:
| Why does this keep making HN headlines?
|
| The Zettelkasten thing is really nice but it keeps coming up as a
| 'new discovery' every few weeks.
|
| Personally I don't have the attention to detail for it so I'll
| never do it.
| UncleOxidant wrote:
| I seem to notice these posts every month or so and there's some
| new tool recommended (Foam! Roam! Obsidian! zotero!) and I'll
| download said tool, try it out for a few minutes and think
| "Hmm, ok, that might be neat" and then promptly forget about
| it.
| joegahona wrote:
| I thought you were being silly with "Foam," but it really is
| a thing...
| michaericalribo wrote:
| Responding to your experience: I completely agree, this type of
| system is too detailed / intricate / involved for me to get
| much use out of it...I get distracted from getting anything
| done by all the preparation--it's just productivity porn I use
| for procrastination.
| michaericalribo wrote:
| Not everyone sees every post! someone in another comment
| literally said: "I hadn't heard of Zettelkasten until today".
| GekkePrutser wrote:
| Fair enough, I'm glad it helps people!
| dmje wrote:
| I'm finding dokuwiki absolutely outstanding for notes and, well,
| all the things. I've avoided it for years and years because -
| frankly - it looks bloody awful. Then I downloaded, added a
| bootstrap theme, fiddled with some css, and it's now running
| perfectly. I've got it on my Synology NAS which makes it backed
| up, and all my everything is now searchable using their indexing
| and search tools. I've installed a MD extension so have an exit
| if need be. I've also used some editors - Typora for example -
| and it's all pretty good. Obsidian didn't seem to like the folder
| structure but I didn't try that hard, I'm guessing it could be
| made to work.
| opticnerve wrote:
| Some times ago I started to use Obsidian.md to manage my
| Knowledge. Then I read Essentialism by Greg McKeown, and I
| suddenly realized that embracing Essentialism also means to stop
| having a macro-complexity to manage. I stopped using Obsidian.md
| and now I just have some .md file for the few essential things
| for me.
| oumua_don17 wrote:
| I am slowly coming to the same conclusion.
|
| This just applies to me, when my efforts are not directed
| towards making things and adapting on the fly, I tend to get
| sucked into thinking that I need a ton of knowledge to make
| things which leads me to find out systems which can help me
| manage that volume of knowledge, ironically and laughably
| before gaining that knowledge. Putting the cart before the
| horse !!!
|
| I then go back to making things and I think these systems may
| be useful for certain styles of learning.
|
| Does anyone here have similar experiences/thoughts?
|
| edit: fixed idiom typo!!!
| jarnagin wrote:
| Zettlekasten: the Kubernetes of note-taking systems.
|
| I think it's important to bear in mind the context this system
| grew out of (academic research) and ask yourself whether you
| really need such a heavyweight note-taking system. It's also
| important to realize this system is not a substitute for accepted
| patterns of knowledge generation, such as summarizing
| extemporaneous notes and making time to review your notes
| frequently enough that the knowledge captured actually sticks.
|
| Zettlekasten is a system layered on top of that and basically
| serves as a database for things you already know. If you're not
| already doing the former behaviors then it's likely you're just
| going to be wasting your time hacking on a system that won't
| provide you enough value to justify the maintenance cost. In
| fact, it's likely that the overhead will be so high that you'll
| lose time to practice the foundational behaviors that really pay
| off in the long run.
| gexla wrote:
| It's just sequences of notes and then inserting certain notes
| into other sequences. The "heavyweight" part of it disappears
| when you're using software which handles all this in the
| background.
|
| The remaining parts of it is the unexpected results for someone
| who hasn't used this sort of note taking system. The book "How
| to Take Smart Notes" explains this. You use the notes as a
| starting point to come up with new ideas. It's useful if you do
| regular writing, especially as part of work rather than for
| personal private stuff.
|
| For example, I use this method for jokes. Much of the value is
| simply having a list in one place. If I want to come up with a
| new joke, I look at all my material as a branching tree. I can
| extend a branch by going deeper. I can combine branches to come
| up with something completely different. I can start green
| branches. I can write new material all day long by doing this,
| rather than by waiting for inspiration to nail me.
|
| I think people get too caught up in the technical parts. It's
| just a branching system of ideas.
| Natales wrote:
| There have been several posts in recent weeks on this topic, and
| every time I have the same reaction: how can they all just ignore
| TiddlyWiki [0], that has been out there since 2004 and has
| evolved nicely over the years to deliver most of the same
| outcomes? Is it that folks just ignore prior art? or they just
| gravitate to the latest more sexy software? (honest question).
|
| I've been using TiddlyWiki on and off for many years, but 2-3
| years ago I moved heavily into it (the Drift [1] distribution),
| and I haven't looked back. To me, it has become less about the
| tool and more about the information, and ensuring I have complete
| access to it, even 20 years from now. That includes data,
| metadata and even the software itself, regardless of the platform
| or OS.
|
| [0] https://tiddlywiki.com/
|
| [1] https://akhater.github.io/drift/
| qznc wrote:
| You are not alone. I'm on TiddlyWiki as well:
| http://beza1e1.tuxen.de/tiddlywiki_notes.html
|
| I love my two columns UI and seeing many notes at once. Why
| does Drift only show one note at once?
| 5tefan wrote:
| Comes up more often lately. I do have an issue with organizing
| myself. Scheduling more than a week ahead is close to impossible.
| Not due to my job but due to my messy mind. Same with note
| taking. Has gotten worse and I even tried learning Emacs to get
| the famous Org Mode. I have to admit: This is so loose it seems I
| can get real benefit from it. No rules to follow but I manage to
| stay on top of a lot of things for the first rime. Still don't
| get Emacs though. Zettelkasten seems to require a diligent setup
| and well... no.
| kritiko wrote:
| I'm fascinated by the rise of the Zettelkasten concept among
| hackers (I don't think I've seen it anywhere mainstream yet) and
| the fundraising that Notion & Roam have accomplished. Based on
| the title of the post, I assume you are inspired by Tiago Forte?
|
| I'd be interested to hear more about how your notes are organized
| and what they help you accomplish.
|
| The idea of moving notes across 4 platforms as described in this
| article makes me wince, which is why I'm on OneNote for now -
| maybe not quite as nice for linking stuff but included in O365
| which my work uses, cross platform, etc.
| GekkePrutser wrote:
| Yeah I'm kinda surprised. Most people in the hacker/maker
| community I know are pretty disorganised like myself.. I know
| for me this kind of thing will never fly, it requires too much
| dedication. In this sense I'm not surprised it came from
| Germany as they love formalising things. It's really in their
| nature and I imagine this is also why they're so good at
| technological things.
|
| But for me it'll never work, I know I'll start on it and then I
| have a rush project where I don't have time to keep the docs up
| to date and then I'll abandon it altogether :) I'm the kind of
| guy who fills up their desktop with everything they're working
| on and when it ends up being full just moves it to a folder
| "Old Desktop" (which is in fact a chain of "Even Older Desktop"
| folders :) :) :) ). Somehow it seems to work for me though, it
| really surprises me how I can find stuff back from 10 years ago
| just by seeing the icons of stuff I worked on around the time.
| And it's really zero effort which I like.
|
| And really, I like relying on my memory.. If I don't remember
| something maybe it wasn't worth remembering. And discovering it
| once more may lead to other interesting discoveries.
|
| But I'm glad it helps others forward in their goals! I didn't
| expect it at all though.
| kritiko wrote:
| Your comment really resonates with me. The people who seem to
| push and advance these systems seem to be (broad
| generalizations follow)
|
| -Academics like Andy Matuschak who are trying to create
| better technology for learning or do work on really hard
| problems
|
| -Productivity gurus like Nat Eliason and Tiago Forte who make
| money selling tutorials on how to use these systems.
|
| For "The rest of us" there could probably be some gains from
| using these systems... but sticky notes, texts, notes app,
| Slack, wherever else you jot stuff suffice, and there's a lot
| of administrative overhead & habit change required. I think I
| am gradually implementing more "linked notes" into my work as
| systems like Microsoft Teams make it possible to combine a
| wiki and a file directory easily. But I'm skeptical that this
| is going to become mass market in the near term.
| spences10 wrote:
| For me it was about getting the notes in one place where I
| could manage them as I would in my text editor.
|
| I always got frustrated with the implementation of Markdown and
| no being able to manipulate the text as I would in a .md
| document.
|
| I have lost some functionality that Notion had, like for Kanban
| boards and such but being able to manipulate the plain text is
| where I want to be.
|
| The only downside I have really is that I'm tied to using a VS
| Code now for writing notes, if I want to go mobile I can use
| something like GitJournal on android and make changes there,
| and there's now code spaces in GitHub so I could in theory use
| a code space in a tablet on the move, but none of us are out
| and about that much these days
| vhanda wrote:
| Disclaimer: GitJournal Author.
|
| I've started using GitJournal a bit with my tablet, though
| it's a really old one. I would like to make GitJournal more
| tablet friendly in the future. If you happen to try to it,
| please feel free to to tell me about the issues. I'll be
| happy to fix them.
|
| PS: For markdown + kanban, imdone.io looks interesting. I
| haven't tried it out though.
| jsteinbach wrote:
| For VSC there is also Dendron [1], which I found nicer than Foam.
|
| After lots of trial/error and at the end of the rabbit hole I
| found Emacs with org-roam [2].
|
| It has a steep learning-curve and often seems outdated, but it is
| also very powerful, has VIM hotkeys, and allows me to create the
| academic workflow I want - so far I can automatically create a
| note from my Zotero .bib library, fill it based on a template and
| the insert all my annotations from the associated PDF. Afterwards
| I also semi-automatically extract the references from that PDF,
| insert them into the annotations and then start to link
| everything into my Zettelkasten system.
|
| Sometimes I wish I just stayed with VSCode/Markdown, but then I
| remember that I can now put "elisp" on my resumee :)
|
| Overall I think that the "new" note-taking/Zettelkasten-systems
| is very cool and useful, but I wish someone would come along and
| create "the next big thing" which in my opinion is multi-
| dimensional notes.
|
| Tiddlywiki/Tiddlyroam [4,5], TheBrain[6] and even Scrivener [7]
| seem like a step in the right direction, but they also make some
| other things overly complicated (convoluted UI, no plug/play
| export, bad editors, ...).
|
| I want to be able to freely take notes on my computer the same
| way I can do on paper, and then be able to "super-charge" them by
| linking, aggregating, searching them. At the moment notes are
| "one-dimensional", i.e. I can only write from top to bottom.
| Compare it to paper where I can freely change my style of
| writing, add drawing, annotations, change directions, ... Writing
| on the computer just feels very restricting.
|
| 1: https://dendron.so/ 2: https://github.com/org-roam/org-roam 3:
| https://github.com/inukshuk/anystyle 4: https://tiddlywiki.com/
| 5: https://tiddlyroam.org/ 6: https://www.thebrain.com/ 7:
| https://www.literatureandlatte.com/scrivener/overview
| spences10 wrote:
| Is Dendron on par with Foam for data visualization with related
| tags?
|
| If it works the same way then is it a case of installing the
| extension with little config after that?
|
| I'm not opposed to switching again
| jsteinbach wrote:
| As far as I know both Dendron and Foam stitch together a
| bunch of plug/play VSC extensions, so it should be
| interchangeable.
|
| I liked Dendron more, as it seemed a more curated experience
| - the creator has a plan and is hard at work to make his
| "customers" happy.
|
| "Dendron, the client, is free and will always remain free. It
| is also open source so anyone is free to make their own fork
| of Dendron.
|
| That being said, I'm all in on Dendron and this is my full
| time gig. I want to make sure that developing Dendron remains
| sustainable. To that end, I plan on introducing value add
| server side functionality that folks may pay for."
|
| PS: Why not switch to Emacs? It will only take a measly year
| to get comfortable! :)
| Bakary wrote:
| There's the notorious productivity swamp that is caused by the
| obsession with optimizing productivity without thinking about the
| actual purpose behind it. This is multiplied by the ease and
| incentive of creating and publicizing productivity software and
| articles that are consumed by people in a perpetual state of
| insatisfaction. The result is a psychologically advanced form of
| procrastination and a futile attempt at control that stems from
| fetishizing technology.
|
| To-do lists are for things that aren't a real priority, otherwise
| you would be giving them your full attention and the tracking
| would be unnecessary. At most, it's helpful to track
| administrative minutiae. If you give something your full
| attention, tracking will seem like a non-sequitur.
|
| Despite all of this, I have been finding the card system outlined
| here to be quite useful. The key for me however was to keep to a
| physical pen and paper version. Keeping notes exclusively online
| used to prevent me from being able to address them regularly with
| a clear mind. Forcing myself to synthesize ideas and refer to
| them again has helped me move forward in projects important to
| me. It's not the act of writing the note that is important, but
| the mindset towards having ideas that you want to develop.
|
| Ultimately, most important aspects of life are beyond any
| productivity hack. You can't hack meaningful relationships other
| than by growing as a person, nor can you hack the strength to
| work on things that matter every day.
|
| In a sense, the ultimate hack is to come to terms with your
| mortality and use this as an impulsion to focus on what really
| matters to you.
| kurko wrote:
| > To-do lists are for things that aren't a real priority,
| otherwise you would be giving them your full attention and the
| tracking would be unnecessary.
|
| I disagree with this bit, but perhaps it's because "real
| priority" is vague. To-do lists offload tasks from memory to
| ensure we don't forget them. It's totally possible for
| something to be a "real priority" (whatever definition) and
| someone forgetting about it.
|
| Don't confuse priorities with memorization.
| armatav wrote:
| This is one of the best posts I've seen on this forum.
| Shank wrote:
| > To-do lists are for things that aren't a real priority,
| otherwise you would be giving them your full attention and the
| tracking would be unnecessary.
|
| I really suggest looking at the Eisenhower Matrix. Urgent and
| important tasks are the only types of tasks that really go into
| the category of "real priority." Todo lists are best used to
| manage tasks that are important, but either aren't as urgent as
| the most urgent tasks, or are blocked by some outside factor
| that you can't control.
|
| It's important to finalize insurance plans for the upcoming
| year, but waiting until it's "urgent" may result in not having
| enough time to find the best plan.
|
| Granted, maybe you don't have a problem keeping track of all
| important tasks -- in which case, that's awesome!
| lostintangent wrote:
| If folks are interested in this workflow, but want to auto-sync
| their changes to a GitHub repo, I've been maintaining a VS Code
| extension for managing code snippets, and notes/Roam-like wikis,
| and it includes full Foam interop: https://aka.ms/GistPad.
|
| https://twitter.com/lostintangent/status/1282047676377231360...
|
| https://twitter.com/lostintangent/status/1334225746751983618...
|
| https://twitter.com/lostintangent/status/1282850227695652865...
|
| I built this so that I could manage my knowledge in GitHub, but
| edit my notes like I would with Notion/OneNote (i.e. commit/push
| on save). It also supports managing code snippets via gists,
| since I've found that my personal knowledge is composed of notes
| and code snippets, and I wanted a single, editor-integrated
| solution for managing them both.
|
| Foam + GistPad recipe:
| https://foambubble.github.io/foam/recipes/write-your-notes-i...
| tomcam wrote:
| I want your job! Looks like you're having way too much fun.
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