[HN Gopher] Everything I Know
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       Everything I Know
        
       Author : nikivi
       Score  : 145 points
       Date   : 2021-01-25 14:40 UTC (8 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (wiki.nikitavoloboev.xyz)
 (TXT) w3m dump (wiki.nikitavoloboev.xyz)
        
       | yrimaxi wrote:
       | Everything I know is personal. Most of it is not something I want
       | to share, nor is it useful to anyone else.
       | 
       | I haven't made a personal wiki before but I do keep a fair amount
       | of personal notes (without any cross-referencing rigor).
        
         | nikivi wrote:
         | I keep my personal notes in similar manner, just don't push to
         | github. I never had the need to link to private stuff from
         | public wiki.
        
       | Ansil849 wrote:
       | The title is ridiculous hyperbole. If the wiki is truly a list of
       | everything the person knows, then the page contradicts itself:
       | the person does not state that they know how to write, nor how to
       | use dictation services, therefore they do not know how to do
       | either, because the page lists everything they know. Therefore
       | the page would not exist.
       | 
       | Instead, a more apt title would just be 'random technical
       | knowledge I picked up over the years and kept notes on', which
       | I'm sure many if not most of us do in some shape or form, and is
       | not at all as notable as 'Everything I Know'.
        
         | norswap wrote:
         | You must be really fun at parties.
        
       | dmitrijbelikov wrote:
       | What about school and high school programs? Did u learn them, or
       | u've been trying to make your own? I have profile on VK (medium
       | or any other shitty social dump) and just copy and paste links
       | i'm interested in - really helpful. But make your own site. Man,
       | to be honest, developers are not kittens. Real developer is a
       | man: he is a bit sad, confused and tired. If u want to pick up
       | girls with your profile maybe it'll be cool. But for real, you
       | look like pussy, trash talking, and trying ti make sense of any
       | of your actions. And i don't know what you're really good at. At
       | all? Are u kidding?
       | 
       | Sry for my english)
        
       | Ceezy wrote:
       | I find that weird/sad that you could sum up EVERYTHING you know
       | in few GitHub pages. What about historic facts that you know or
       | just place you visited? I not really critic of what is claim to
       | know, but I think I just disagree with his interpretation of what
       | knowledge is. Knowing how to read time his a knowledge why is it
       | not part of the gitbook...?
        
         | xpe wrote:
         | I'm not completely following your statement. Could you edit it
         | a bit to make it clearer?
        
           | leephillips wrote:
           | I think the point is that the author claims this is
           | everything he knows, but it obviously is not. Does he know
           | how to tell time? It's not in the book.
           | 
           | Maybe the author did not mean to be taken so literally. But,
           | really, it's not possible to write down everything you know--
           | and taken literally, it would lead to an infinite regression
           | (now I know that I've just made this note about what I know,
           | so...).
           | 
           | It's impossible not to be selective, to choose what's worth
           | writing down.
        
             | Ceezy wrote:
             | Thanks pretty much what i meant.
        
           | Ceezy wrote:
           | Sorry i guess @leephillips said it better than me.
        
       | swyx wrote:
       | oooh, thank you for shouting out my Favorite Podcasts list! :)
       | 
       | this thing is super impressive, congrats on curating your brain
       | and inspiring impostor syndrome on all your fellow gardeners haha
        
       | ancharm wrote:
       | Have you ever considered open sourcing this and having it be a
       | wikipedia of learning map?
        
         | nikivi wrote:
         | It is open source https://github.com/nikitavoloboev/knowledge
         | 
         | As for learning map idea, I want to do it but not as part of
         | the wiki but as a general purpose tool for mapping/tracking
         | knowledge. It's also open source.
         | 
         | https://github.com/learn-anything/learn-anything
        
           | ancharm wrote:
           | Awesome. I guess two comments on learn-anything -- is there
           | an easy way for external users to add something? I get it's
           | open source but when you search for something, maybe a
           | "suggest resource" would speed up curation of resources via
           | human indexing.
           | 
           | The other big thing that would be helpful is a "videos" node
           | where you could link to videos on the subject. A lot of
           | people that I talk to struggle learning completely new topics
           | just by reading. Some of the feedback I hear is that a few
           | videos goes a long way to introducing something new, so a
           | videos node could be useful in the overall graph.
        
             | nikivi wrote:
             | Not yet. The project is being built from scratch. So only a
             | roadmap outlined and old build of the site online.
             | 
             | Thanks for feedback though.
        
               | maliker wrote:
               | Since you've got everything in a git repo it would be
               | really easy to diff/fork/merge other folks' knowledge
               | bases.
               | 
               | Probably not useful to you personally since there aren't
               | forks out there yet, but it's cool to see you've got all
               | the infrastructure in place for some kind of "mind meld"
               | feature.
        
       | JW_00000 wrote:
       | What I don't understand, is how you can so meticulously keep
       | notes about everything you learn? This is also my problem when I
       | see the recent "hype" around Roam Research, Obsidian, Foam etc. I
       | constantly come across and read stuff, in newspapers, on HN, on
       | reddit, etc. How can you find the time to keep notes about this
       | and keep it organized? And how do you make sure you aren't
       | spending more time on organizing/formatting/maintaining your
       | notes and making it look nice instead of actually reading doing
       | productive stuff? (Honest questions, I'm interested in other
       | peoples' approaches.)
        
         | runjake wrote:
         | There is a difference between consuming information and
         | learning.
         | 
         | Consuming information on Reddit/HN/etc doesn't do much for you
         | until you apply that information -- or at least paraphase that
         | information into notes.
        
         | albertzeyer wrote:
         | Skimming through this, it looks more like organized public
         | bookmarks. Many of the pages just contain (mostly) a list of
         | links. There are barely any notes.
         | 
         | I actually do this as well. Just some text files, where I put
         | links I stumble upon, which I find interesting. Not always all
         | links but only really interesting ones. Also maybe only for
         | topics where I think it's not so easy to find such links later
         | on via Google. Also, I don't really intend this to be complete.
         | 
         | Sometimes I also do research on some new topic, and for that I
         | keep notes. If I think the research / overview / my notes of
         | this topic are of any value to others, I would maybe just make
         | it public somewhere.
         | 
         | Some of these links and notes I keep private. If it is public,
         | I would probably just put it here:
         | 
         | https://github.com/albertz/wiki
        
           | Pyrodogg wrote:
           | I think this is fairly logical. There will always be more
           | things that you're "aware of, interested in" than you deeply
           | "know and understand". This leads to more references than
           | notes, and more unread books than read books in one's
           | library.
        
         | input_sh wrote:
         | I follow a simple rule: if I don't write it down, I know I
         | _will_ forget it. It 's not a question of _if_ I 'll forget it,
         | but _when_. And when that time comes, I 'm able to do a search
         | and remind myself of my thoughts about the
         | book/article/podcast/whatever.
         | 
         | With that out of the mind, how to do that is easy. Just
         | annotate whatever you're consuming, then look through those
         | annotations, and paraphrase them in a way that it makes sense
         | for you. I do that after every few book chapters, or every few
         | articles in my Pocket with a tag `extract`. I can automate that
         | as well, but annotations alone are not "knowledge" that belongs
         | in my knowledge base.
         | 
         | I also pay attention to properly reference stuff, so that I
         | could easily back up my claims in whichever circumstance I need
         | to do so. This is the most common use case of retrieving info
         | from my knowledge base. I vaguely remember something, I look it
         | up in my kb, and I can phrase it better and back it up with
         | sources if I think it's necessary.
        
         | minxomat wrote:
         | It's not hard, but there's also no silver bullet. Start by
         | reading "How to Take Smart Notes" (Ahrens), which is a science-
         | based review of second-brain/slip-box systems and then iterate
         | on that until it fits your workflow.
        
         | AJRF wrote:
         | Not OP, but I have a 1,000 high quality notes, so I feel a
         | little qualified to talk about this.
         | 
         | 1. Emacs + Org mode & Org Roam.
         | 
         | 2. All my notes are synced in Dropbox so I can use the beorg
         | app on iOS.
         | 
         | 3. Any time I need a note (be that to look for one or create
         | one) I have a shortcut, Cmd + N and I start typing a topic
         | (Health, Xcode, Java, etc). If i've found a match it shows up
         | in a list, if there is no match there is a prompt to create a
         | new note. I don't care about overlapping notes because;
         | 
         | 4. Search over notes by pressing Cmd+F. This starts a fzf
         | search over the notes. If I see multiple notes on the same
         | topic I can link them using org-roam references, consolidate
         | them if they are similar enough, or if I don't care just leave
         | it as is.
         | 
         | People always commend me on my astounding memory. It's all down
         | to org-mode.
        
           | canoebuilder wrote:
           | What code do you have C-N bound to? A public package, or
           | something custom you've written? Is it just searching file
           | names?
        
             | AJRF wrote:
             | it a keyboard shortcut for org-roam-find-file.
             | 
             | (global-set-key (kbd "M-n") 'org-roam-find-file)
        
               | canoebuilder wrote:
               | Thanks
        
           | nomad225 wrote:
           | That sounds like an interesting system. I've been trying to
           | get into using org more often, and so far i've figured out
           | journaling and using org for creating nicely formatted PDFs
           | via LaTeX. But I haven't had much luck getting into taking
           | general notes about topics using org so far.
           | 
           | Do you follow any sort of structure inside of the individual
           | topic notes, or is it more freestyle?
        
             | AJRF wrote:
             | Well just what org affords me headers and subheaders
             | really. Links to other files by typing [[ then it
             | autocompleted what I start typing.
             | 
             | Structure is a time sink with a poor pay off in my opinion,
             | good search and a bit of good old wetware memory about what
             | you've got in there does me fine.
             | 
             | I might be unique in being able to remember generally
             | what's in my notes.
             | 
             | I know some people do Anki style cards with org roam but
             | that's not for me.
        
         | m463 wrote:
         | keeping something important in your mind is a burden.
         | 
         | writing it down is a relief. It won't be forgotten and now you
         | can expound on it, go where it leads, or put it out of your
         | mind until later.
        
         | nikivi wrote:
         | You are right. A lot of the 'notes' in this wiki are actually
         | links under ## Links heading for me to checkout later. It acts
         | as a kind of Pinboard but instead of a db, things are kept in
         | markdown files. Organizing and adding new links is easy with
         | some automation.
         | 
         | My dream though is have a kind of structured way of knowing
         | what ideas I am working on now and what topics I am learning.
         | The wiki then lets me answer the 'how I am learning' and 'in
         | what order' questions.
         | 
         | I started to do the planning in Notion currently.
         | 
         | https://wiki.nikitavoloboev.xyz/focusing/goals
        
         | tartoran wrote:
         | I have another problem as I do take notes to help me focus and
         | remember things. The problem I noticed is that I never really
         | have time to go back to my notes unless I am searching for
         | something specifically. Linear notes with a date usually help
         | me locate the info I am looking for.
         | 
         | So I'm wondering, how do people review their notes? When? Are
         | they using a strategy for this? Also I'm not really looking to
         | commit to memory my notes.
        
           | maxs wrote:
           | I had the same problem which is why I made an app called
           | MindPalace (https://github.com/msipos/mind-palace)
           | 
           | It's a note app where every note has a repetition schedule.
           | The schedule can be dynamic (growing-shrinking) or fixed.
           | 
           | For example, my diary entries repeat every 365 days so I
           | enjoy reading what my diary entries/thoughts were a year (or
           | 2, or 3) years ago.
        
           | jpeloquin wrote:
           | > The problem I noticed is that I never really have time to
           | go back to my notes unless I am searching for something
           | specifically.
           | 
           | If you find what you need when you need it, is never doing a
           | nonspecific review really a problem? Notes are just a tool to
           | support you in achieving your goals. If you don't need to
           | recall information instantaneously, skipping review-as-
           | memorization is just fine. If important items aren't being
           | inadvertently neglected and falling through the cracks,
           | skipping review-as-reflection is ok too.
        
           | not_knuth wrote:
           | Interesting you point that out, because I also used to feel
           | that way. But as I started typing more notes, I realised that
           | just the act of typing out my thoughts and putting them into
           | prose goes a long way to understanding something [0].
           | 
           | Nowadays, if I don't understand something, I head to the
           | keyboard and start explaing it in text and it pretty much
           | always works. I rarely revisit notes, mostly to link them
           | together and very seldomly to revise them. If I have the time
           | to organize the notes, that's great, if not, that's fine too.
           | 
           | I don't know know if this will work for you though. Learning
           | is highly personal and imo just trying to find new ways to
           | learn things can help a lot too.
           | 
           | [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generation_effect
        
         | dkarl wrote:
         | I'm selective about what I take notes about and don't fret
         | about tooling. I've used Evernote since 2011 and think about
         | switching from time to time because Evernote is not great. But
         | I use it, and I can search notes going back to 2011. I have
         | packing checklists, travel notes, and post-trip notes from
         | foreign travel and backpacking trips, lists of books and movies
         | that I have and haven't read, a commonplace book of quotes and
         | images, notes about technologies and commands that I wrote for
         | reference, essays I wrote for the sake of clarifying my own
         | thinking, recipes with notes about adjustments and variations
         | I've tried.
         | 
         | Organized? Pshhh. Mostly search. I put every note in a
         | notebook, and I have some tags that I use to define collections
         | of notes for particular purposes. Search works for the rest.
         | 
         | Oh, and I don't try to make notes about everything I learn. I
         | only have a note if at some point I felt there would be value
         | in working out my thoughts or preserving something for later
         | reference.
         | 
         | I also delete things, because when I need to do, say, a git
         | bisect, I create a note to help me remember the commands right
         | now and for the next month or two in case I need it again, but
         | if I run across that note later and I haven't used it in two
         | years, I'll delete it, because if I ever need it again I'll
         | probably find a better resource in twenty seconds using a web
         | search.
         | 
         | The most important thing is to be very careful and intentional
         | about thinking of your notes as a product. Sometimes you want
         | to document something very well, very clearly, so you can come
         | back to it later when you've forgotten most of the context, but
         | that's rare. Usually the cost/benefit pushes me to almost
         | always write decent notes (which takes effort) but rarely
         | excellent ones. I think people fall into the trap of being
         | attracted to their notes as something they can be proud of,
         | something they could show off (or imagine showing off.) Then
         | your note-taking habit is vulnerable to all kinds of swings in
         | your mind, changes of taste, changes of interest. Have the
         | discipline to be practical, not proud.
        
           | codethief wrote:
           | > I think people fall into the trap of being attracted to
           | their notes as something they can be proud of, something they
           | could show off (or imagine showing off.) Then your note-
           | taking habit is vulnerable to all kinds of swings in your
           | mind, changes of taste, changes of interest. Have the
           | discipline to be practical, not proud.
           | 
           | Beautifully put. Thank you!
        
         | roflc0ptic wrote:
         | I find that not writing things down to save time is a false
         | economy. For me, the act of tracking notes and links with Roam
         | keeps me on track, and increases retention. It further saves
         | time when I want to go look up something I recently learned,
         | e.g. the definition of a slippery word.
        
         | haps wrote:
         | I tried various methods and programs for several years until i
         | found Typora for my note making, which is just a simple
         | markdown-editor with a file-tree to the left, so i can view my
         | different folders and switch between notes easily. I'm an
         | introverted individual who thinks a lot about different topics
         | almost constantly.
         | 
         | The reasons why it helps me:
         | 
         | 1. Thoughts are easily forgotten. I think a lot, but i also
         | forget a lot. Taking notes helps me to actually remember those
         | thoughts for a later date, so that they don't go to waste and i
         | can act upon them.
         | 
         | 2. Thoughts clutter up my brain. When i don't write down what i
         | think, then they pile up in my conscious and leave little space
         | for other things i would rather focus on. This might look like
         | i'm contradicting myself with point 1, but there is a
         | difference between trying to not forget something and having it
         | memorised.
         | 
         | 3. Thoughts aren't formulated in comprehensive sentences. For a
         | lot of these thoughts i have more of a feeling that i realised
         | something or that i've made a break-through somewhere. Writing
         | them down helps me make sense out of them and internalize them
         | more.
         | 
         | 4. I write down the things that i don't want to remember. I
         | would rather learn about the things i really want to remember,
         | then what function B in framework A does and how it connects to
         | C.
         | 
         | The way i take notes is really lightweight. I have build up a
         | simple system on how i write everything, because i don't wanna
         | waste my time with reorganizing and building up smart
         | structures for my notes. I don't bother with making them look
         | nice, because it is meant as a second brain for me and not
         | something i can brag about in front of other people. I don't
         | care about grammar or doing something the "right way", the
         | knowledge is the focus.
         | 
         | In terms of getting in the way of productivity. I noticed that
         | i can be more productive with taking notes, because i can
         | prevent solving the same problem twice and everything i've
         | learned is easily accessible somewhere, i just gotta look for
         | it.
        
         | karlicoss wrote:
         | I'm thinking it's sort of a balance/spectrum.
         | 
         | Some people (like me) have sort of a FOMO and would rather have
         | the comfort of knowing they can access the information later,
         | paying for it with organization/processing. (and yes, in most
         | cases I can find it within seconds when I need)
         | 
         | Some would rather miss on information, but have less cognitive
         | overhead, with minimal organization (e.g. a daily diary/todo-
         | list, and that's it).
         | 
         | I'm also not sure it directly relates to doing 'productive'
         | stuff (in whatever sense) -- there is certainly a plenty of
         | people who don't keep track of any information, and also don't
         | do much apart from passively consuming. You could be super
         | concentrated on your work and have no mental energy for
         | learning other subjects, or you could be more relaxed at work
         | and be engaged in more topics outside of it.
        
         | bumbada wrote:
         | I am not the OP either but I also take notes.
         | 
         | >How can I so meticulously keep notes about everything I learn?
         | 
         | Very easy, because I know if I don't take notes I won't really
         | learn it. I know I will forget that over time because I am
         | trained in spaced repetition and I know if I don't review
         | something I will loose it forever in the future.
         | 
         | If I spend hours reading an important book and don't review it,
         | I will forget and waste those hours. Nothing less productive
         | than that.
         | 
         | Most people forget most of what they learn and are not
         | conscious about it.
         | 
         | >And how do you make sure you aren't spending more time on
         | organizing/formatting/maintaining your notes and making it look
         | nice instead of actually reading doing productive stuff?
         | 
         | I have it automated. I am an expert programmer so I spend very
         | little time doing that. It is extremely productive because I
         | know how to do things most people can't.
         | 
         | "The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources"
         | Albert Einstein
         | 
         | I have never cared about making it look nice. I started using
         | paper and an automatic feeder Fujitsu scanner. It was ugly at
         | first but worked.
         | 
         | After years of improvement,it looks nice, beautiful if you
         | want, but it was never the goal. The goal was automatic review,
         | and powerful search.
        
         | username90 wrote:
         | This seems to mostly just be a lot of books and blogs he have
         | read, is a lot easier than properly writing down everything.
        
         | sgpl wrote:
         | Yeah tbh I didn't know what to expect when clicking the link
         | and it's bringing up feelings where I feel like a bit of an
         | imposter? (imposter syndrome) because I don't track and
         | organize all my learnings. Not sure if imposter is the the
         | right term - perhaps a sense of loss or regret over all the
         | things that I could have written down and revisited over the
         | years.
         | 
         | I've also been seeing everyone (at least a lot of people) talk
         | about roam, etc. to meticulously track and link everything and
         | not sure whether it's something I should invest time in vs.
         | everything else that I want/need to get done.
        
           | eecks wrote:
           | It doesn't matter if you write it down or not. You'll forget
           | it anyway. The writings will look like someone else wrote
           | them and someone else learned them.
        
         | fossuser wrote:
         | This article was really interesting to me and something I want
         | to try: http://augmentingcognition.com/ltm.html
         | 
         | I've used flash cards in the past to memorize things for school
         | - and I'd believe what he describes would really work for
         | learning new complex topics by speeding up some of the basic
         | memory stuff that makes you actually good.
         | 
         | I have a pretty negative impression of Roam though. They talk
         | as if they've invented some new form of computing when they're
         | another centralized document SaaS graph database that's a step
         | up from notion/quip. I think there's real value there building
         | a nice interface and they're probably better than existing
         | options (features around links, etc.), but there's also a ton
         | of bullshit from them that sets off alarms for me. They think
         | they're xerox parc, but they're more like snapchat.
        
           | mcamac wrote:
           | From personal experience, highly recommend this methodology.
           | Note taking was always short-term helpful for me, but I found
           | a step change in retention, etc.. by reliably reviewing new
           | knowledge via spaced repetition. Another good article about
           | notes as flashcards: https://andymatuschak.org/prompts/
           | (written by a collaborator of your linked article).
           | 
           | Also, agree re. Roam!
        
         | young_unixer wrote:
         | I use a Github repository with plain text files.
        
       | PeterBarrett wrote:
       | This is very interesting, do you go through it every now and then
       | to remove stale content and dead links?
       | 
       | If I did something like this I just know I'd get into the habit
       | of adding everything I read vs adding things that actually help
       | me achieve what I want to achieve.
        
         | nikivi wrote:
         | Yes, I search through it with
         | https://github.com/nikitavoloboev/alfred-my-mind and if I see a
         | stale link or outdated note (my mind changed, or it was
         | incorrect), I change it.
        
       | maliker wrote:
       | I've been doing something similar with google drive (been too
       | lazy to choose a standard file format). Kudos on having the
       | discipline to put some structure into it with markdown, add a
       | frontend, and share it!
        
       | cambalache wrote:
       | I checked out an area I like (Neuroscience) and all I saw was a
       | bunch of links. The author and I must have a very different
       | notion of "knowing" something.
        
       | slingnow wrote:
       | Everything you know? I was expecting a lot of useful insights or
       | quick notes about a wide array of topics. Instead this is a
       | collection of links to things to read.
       | 
       | You "know" all of these things?
       | 
       | This seems like the equivalent of someone publishing all of their
       | browser bookmarks and labeling it as "everything I know".
        
       | upofadown wrote:
       | Most technical topics don't have much of a chronological aspect.
       | So a single contributor wiki makes a lot of sense for that sort
       | of thing. It is really nice to be able to be able to improve
       | something by just editing it.
        
       | bovermyer wrote:
       | I have something like this on my own website, though it's nowhere
       | near as big yet.
        
         | nikivi wrote:
         | Just took a look and it's amazing. Love the design & structure.
         | Would be lovely to also have a search over it.
        
           | bovermyer wrote:
           | Thanks! Since my site is static, though, there's no built-in
           | search feature.
        
             | nikivi wrote:
             | Checkout https://github.com/mre/tinysearch
        
               | bovermyer wrote:
               | I just went and built out a search feature on the front
               | page using Algolia. It's not pretty, but it works.
        
       | znpy wrote:
       | Some months ago I started using mediawiki to keep a private
       | knowledge base.
       | 
       | It's way smaller than the OP, but since I'm the only reader, I
       | can allow my self to be either as detailed as I need or just have
       | some quick notes and some link.
       | 
       | After moving together with my SO, she started creating pages too,
       | and we often work together on page (it's a joy to save the
       | recipes we like the most).
       | 
       | And I must say... It's a pleasure. As soon as I do something
       | neat, I feel the urge to take a note bout it so that I don't have
       | to google stuff again in the future.
       | 
       | When I wonder the details about that thing I did in the past...
       | My wiki immediately helps me. It's really a joy.
       | 
       | And since we moved together in our own place, it kinda helps with
       | the house too. We started collecting pdf manuals of all the
       | appliances we bought, and by using PDF widgets I can get a quick
       | view of the manual from my browser without downloading it.
       | 
       | All things about the building, city council, public
       | administrations? We've got pages for that.
       | 
       | To-do lists? A wiki page is not the first thing one would think
       | about, but as long as you're checking it out from time to time it
       | works just fine.
       | 
       | Page trees? Just use sub-pages, maybe categories too.
       | 
       | The visual editor is a godsend.
       | 
       | Media shows nicely in pages (think of wikipedia).
       | 
       | So to sum up:
       | 
       | 1. keep your own wiki, even a private one.
       | 
       | 2. you don't necessarily need the "best" system, you need a
       | system that works well on things you care about (I care for the
       | documental management aspect of mediawiki and the easy/functional
       | inclusion of various media -- i was initially tempted to just buy
       | a confluence self-hosted license).
        
       | tmashb wrote:
       | Everything I've Read *
        
       | polote wrote:
       | previous discussion (2019)
       | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19468993
        
       | kkoncevicius wrote:
       | I don't have anything like this and I think it's a bad idea to be
       | keeping a wiki like that. The premise here is to accumulate
       | knowledge for the sake of knowledge itself. In my experience this
       | isn't productive, takes time, and is not going anywhere. There is
       | a reason you forget things you read about - you don't really need
       | them and your brain does you a favour by forgetting.
       | 
       | For me - a better alternative is to only seek and store knowledge
       | about things you are currently working on, and organise it by
       | project. And if you read something that is actionable - do it and
       | forget about it. Ideas are also fine, but if you have more than 3
       | then it can be a sign of procrastination.
        
         | nickthemagicman wrote:
         | I agree with you. At what point does it make sense to just use
         | Google?
        
         | raghuveerdotnet wrote:
         | Agree with your sentiment. Contextuality and Applicability are
         | definitely two main components when it comes to knowledge
         | acquisition. But there are people who just derive pleasure from
         | learning, irrespective of whether the concepts are connected or
         | disjoint, and I think it is very important that we have all
         | variety of people, and encourage them into pursuing what gives
         | them satisfaction.
        
         | themodelplumber wrote:
         | You can do both. For example, let's say you start organizing by
         | project. Pretty soon, there's overlap between projects and you
         | end up re-documenting. So you can abstract the information into
         | a more general framework and reference it within the project
         | files.
         | 
         | This has additional benefits for efficiency, (DRY) and also
         | usually gives you a result which is generally easier to share
         | with the public, if for example your project file is too
         | personal or too deep for easy reading all by itself.
        
           | kkoncevicius wrote:
           | > For example, let's say you start organizing by project.
           | Pretty soon, there's overlap between projects and you end up
           | re-documenting.
           | 
           | But there is no reason to re-document. It takes time and
           | doesn't give anything for the project. I typically just have
           | a "meta" folder within a project and any related
           | pdf/video/html I stumble upon goes into that folder. I
           | wouldn't care if a few projects share the same file.
           | 
           | In this case DRY also, in my opinion, only gets in the way.
           | Say you abstract the knowledge to a separate system and start
           | referencing it from your projects. What this does is it
           | freezes the knowledge organization within your system. You
           | cannot relabel things or move them around, because the links
           | from projects to your knowledge base will get broken. This
           | would only add unnecessary complexity and inter-dependance.
           | DRY is one of those things I started looking at differently
           | some time ago. Repeating yourself, in certain cases, can be
           | faster, simpler and more maintainable.
        
             | themodelplumber wrote:
             | I think you misunderstood my re-documenting comment. You
             | are referring to assets. I'm referring to things like
             | lessons learned and new systems developed. Proprietary
             | organization is one of the simplest forms this takes.
             | Reinventing even that is a waste of time.
             | 
             | I can also tell some of this is getting into specific case
             | territory. :-) For example, sure, I might not bother
             | referencing a simple component. But that's more like "just
             | Google it" territory. No depth. I have lots of master
             | frameworks that are very deep that I'd never want to
             | repeat. DRY is a life saver there. Those files are also
             | more likely to stay put...
             | 
             | For your moving links scenario, I use search alongside my
             | organization hierarchy and the links double as search
             | prompts. So that's not a problem. I think this is another
             | case where the specifics matter.
        
         | kthejoker2 wrote:
         | > For me - a better alternative is to only seek and store
         | knowledge about things you are currently working on, and
         | organise it by project.
         | 
         | That's the PARA method in a nutshell
         | 
         | https://fortelabs.co/blog/para/
         | 
         | I use this, very helpful, the prioritization piece is by far
         | the most important, if you don't need it now but think you
         | might later, just throw a note with a link in the archive with
         | a couple of tags.
        
         | guerrilla wrote:
         | > The premise here is to accumulate knowledge for the sake of
         | knowledge itself. In my experience this isn't productive, takes
         | time, and is not going anywhere.
         | 
         | And since when can't people do things because they like it? Why
         | does everything need to be productive? That sounds depressing
         | to me.
        
           | kkoncevicius wrote:
           | I just assumed that it is productivity oriented, based on the
           | contents, and also based on other such systems that come with
           | stated goals of "organising", "learning", "remembering". I
           | think they are in the majority. Doing something like that for
           | satisfaction would have different emphasis, in my opinion.
           | Like storing articles about rocks, animals, martial arts,
           | crafts of beer, and things of that nature.
        
             | guerrilla wrote:
             | Can't speak for everyone but my contents are the similar
             | and I also want to organise/remember/learn it in order to
             | progress. I just want to understand the world as best I can
             | and that requires learning and structuring knowledge. I
             | have no intention of applying it for anything other than
             | coincidentally.
        
         | lexapro wrote:
         | I would call it "knowledge hoarding". Reminds me of people who
         | have 50,000 photos on their phone - only to never look at them
         | again. It would make sense if life was a bit longer.
        
         | jedimastert wrote:
         | > There is a reason you forget things you read about - you
         | don't really need them and your brain does you a favour by
         | forgetting.
         | 
         | Maybe this is my neuro-diversity showing, but my personal
         | experience _WILDLY_ disagrees with that statement.
        
           | username90 wrote:
           | Do you often forget important things? Very few people do
           | that, they forget stuff that are easy to look up but rarely
           | forget stuff that matters. Like, would you forget about your
           | minimalist philosophy or whatever you live your life after?
           | Probably not, if you do you have a mental problem.
           | 
           | Your problem is more likely that you value trivia knowledge
           | rather than forgetting important things. Trivia is not
           | important.
        
           | freshpots wrote:
           | "Maybe this is my neuro-diversity showing" Who talks like
           | that? What a weird flex.
        
       | yawn wrote:
       | I have done something similar to this. My first entry is from 11
       | years ago. One thing that bothers me is that over time links stop
       | working. I wish I would have downloaded the content and stored a
       | local cache. Not everything makes it to archive.org.
        
         | nikivi wrote:
         | That's an issue yes. I wanted to write a tool to create
         | snapshots of all links (that aren't found on archive.org).
         | 
         | Together with https://github.com/stevenvachon/broken-link-
         | checker that lets you see what links are broken so they can be
         | replaced. I think you can keep the wiki quite up to date and
         | not lose things.
        
         | jborichevskiy wrote:
         | Check out ArchiveBox, a fairly comprehensive locally hosted
         | archiver:
         | 
         | https://github.com/ArchiveBox/ArchiveBox
        
       | screye wrote:
       | I have started keeping a similar wiki of things on onenote. What
       | you've created is my platonic ideal.
       | 
       | This is easily up there with the most impressive things I have
       | seen over the last year.
       | 
       | 'Ideas as a graph' seems to be a notetaking setup that is slowly
       | gaining traction. I can't wait for a killer app to come around
       | that is built around this concept at its core.
        
         | nikivi wrote:
         | Thank you.
         | 
         | I love the tools being made to aid in maintaining these graphs
         | of notes interlinked between each other.
         | 
         | I recently started working with https://dendron.so and will be
         | moving my wiki there as there is a lot of potential in it
         | especially when it comes to querying the knowledge base.
        
         | xpe wrote:
         | What would you need for this to be more useful for you?
         | 
         | There are many apps in this space. Time will time what kind of
         | traction, support, usability, and data ownership they provide.
         | 
         | (I'm working on a plain-text format for structured note-taking
         | using data structures, including graphs.)
        
           | screye wrote:
           | Yeah, I can add some points. (Fever dream material right
           | here) This is very close to my heart. If you want to lift it
           | wholesale (I doubt it), please give me credit. I would work
           | on this as a fulltime startup, if I did not have visa
           | restrictions and responsibilities :)
           | 
           | 1. Graphs as the fundamental way of navigating notes. Your
           | view is exclusively of the node you are concerned with. You
           | should be able to see a node's content, parents, children and
           | top ranked undirected connections. I don't want graphs to be
           | a 'see we also have this' feature. I want it to be highly
           | opinionated notes app that forces you to represent everything
           | as a graph.
           | 
           | 2. Ability to form strong and weak connections. Ability to
           | extract strongly connected sub-graphs as mostly self-
           | contained 'concepts'.
           | 
           | 3.(specific to me, but fundamentally important to this
           | 'ideal' app) 1st party support for inking, OCR and structure
           | extraction. Inking is what brings all of this together.
           | Drawing graphs with a pen is trivial. OCR, structure
           | extraction and graph reconstruction are all solvable problems
           | in the current Vision space.
           | 
           | User flow: (I expect this to be a 2-in-1 device or tablet)
           | 
           | * Draw a node or an orphaned sub-graph. Title and content for
           | each node. connections (optionally directed) between nodes.
           | Node content can be text, images, video, diagrams, etc.
           | 
           | * Run Ocr, structure extraction -> and get it into text,edge-
           | list format (user can fix any corrupt conversion)
           | 
           | * Run NLP similarity and suggest the most likely parent node
           | (concept header) and suggest some weak connections.
           | Alternatively user can define these themselves.
           | 
           | * Sub-graph/Node gets added to notes
           | 
           | * Share notes by sharing any parent node. All Children and
           | strong connections are shared instantly. Everything else
           | stays public. Shared notes cannot delete existing nodes, but
           | can add new nodes and parent->child connections.
           | 
           | * Nodes can also be tagged with information depth. (low,
           | medium, detailed). That way, you can choose what level of
           | detail to expose to a reader of said notes.
           | 
           | ________________
           | 
           | The big mistake is to try to make a notes app that
           | accommodates graphs.
           | 
           | I am thinking of a graph app that made to accomodate nodes.
           | Sounds similar, HUGE difference in practice.
        
       | radihuq wrote:
       | I love this concept. How long have you been working on this
       | knowledge base for?
        
         | nikivi wrote:
         | First commit was in Sep 21, 2017
         | 
         | https://github.com/nikitavoloboev/knowledge/commit/2528316c3...
         | 
         | Got it via bookmarklet:
         | 
         | https://code.nikitavoloboev.xyz/bookmarklets
         | 
         | I go over my workflow in updating the wiki here:
         | 
         | https://wiki.nikitavoloboev.xyz/other/wiki-workflow
         | 
         | This tool has been a huge boost in my productivity:
         | 
         | https://github.com/nikitavoloboev/gitupdate
        
       | nickthemagicman wrote:
       | Is this just like a limited Google? At what point does it make
       | sense to just Google things? I typically can find almost anything
       | I need on Google. I guess there's a benefit to curation which I
       | use bookmarks for.
        
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