[HN Gopher] Ask HN: How do you organize your knowledge?
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Ask HN: How do you organize your knowledge?
Methods and systems for grasping, understanding, and making sense
of any general knowledge or information.
Author : rxsel
Score : 77 points
Date : 2021-04-25 19:34 UTC (3 hours ago)
| softwaredoug wrote:
| I blog about it.
|
| Writing helps structure and encode information in my mind
|
| If I forget it, it's on google, and I often land back at my old
| posts that I reread.
|
| It might also help other people, but really future me (and
| possibly close colleagues) are the primary audience.
| jll29 wrote:
| After trying out various ways, online and offline (including
| studying Luhmann's famous "Zettelkasten" http://ds.ub.uni-
| bielefeld.de/viewer/image/ZL1A1001/1/#topDo...), and the one that
| I stuck with is using plain text files.
|
| One's knowledge is too valuable and important to entrust it to a
| particular binary format that can soon no longer be read. Plain
| text is durable, portable, easy to process using UNIX command
| line tools, it can be full-text indexed with a reasonable
| overhead. It can be version controlled easier than binary formats
| or formats with heavy markup.
|
| I often summarize scientific articles, write down new ideas or
| need to preserve how I did something (run a system, install a
| tool) for later replay, and plain text is great for that for the
| most part. Occasionally, I used LaTeX commands e.g. for embedded
| $ maths $ or #hastags to tie together files by topic for
| indexing.
|
| Importantly, my workflow is OS independent (I mostly use Linux
| and occasionally MacOS X/iOS) and editor agnostic (I use Sublime
| and Emacs).
|
| I would very much like to hear from others how they address their
| KM needs.
| ImaCake wrote:
| Why not use markdown instead instead of .txt? All good editors
| (including vim etc) have great support for markdown and you get
| plenty of great simple features without much crap getting in
| the way.
| moasda wrote:
| Very interesting, I also tried several approaches and came
| finally to text files. For me the most important feature are
| full text search and some kind of formatting, including basic
| support for images.
|
| As I couldn`t find a good tool I wrote my own Wiki server - 13
| years ago and still using it every day: https://moasdawiki.net/
| devinhn wrote:
| I see two sides of this. There's information collection and
| knowledge keeping.
|
| The information collection: When I'm learning new things and
| sorting by what is interesting I simple bookmark a lot of stuff.
| It could be a blog post, a research paper, a book recommendation
| etc. All this is raw information until I take the time to consume
| it and digest it. Here I use https://lxi.ai/ (disclaimer: I built
| this) to keep my bookmarks organized with a lil ML.
|
| The knowledge keeping: While I consume/digest I take notes in
| obsidian. I like working in markdown and having everything stored
| locally is something that keeps me comfortable. The real key here
| is putting in the time and actually merging what I am learning
| with what I already have in my obsidian "second brain".
| vlfig wrote:
| Obsidian + GitJournal + NeuraCache.
|
| No-cloud (except for git, could be self hosted), local-first,
| plain data formats solution for note taking, knowledge
| organisation, text production and spaced repetition.
| gofreddygo wrote:
| Plain text. I keep metadata embedded in the content of each file.
| I keep only one k:v pair per line. e.g "topic:
| D3", "subject: scales", "context: Side
| Project"
|
| Use grep and awk to slice, group, dice and join as and how I
| want.
|
| Incredibly flexible, a bash-like shell is my only dependency.
| Works with any search engine that i've tried. Easily replacable
| parts. Check into git regularly.
| lolive wrote:
| Obsidian was the mind opener for me. Simple to use. Backuped on
| Dropbox on my various machines, it is my ubiquitous personal
| knowledge base. The fact that you can copy/paste HTML from web
| pages into it makes me rebuild knowledge I get from the internet
| into my own version. Really really a fundamental tool for me. The
| Vi of knowledge.
|
| PS: I don't know the other tools (notion, roam,...) PPS: a big
| downside in Obsidian, in my humble opinion, is publishing that
| knowledge on the web. Probably a static CMS on top of the .md
| file generated with Obsidian can do the trick. But it is a
| tedious step that I never had/wanted to investigate.
| rasulkireev wrote:
| The is the Obsidian Publish service exactly for that usecase.
| (https://obsidian.md/publish), although it is paid. I'm sure
| there will be soon, if not already, an open source extension
| that allows you to do that.
| samstave wrote:
| What about that post just earlier today for HTML-izing .md
| files in addition to turning them into presentation slides
| breck wrote:
| I use spreadsheets and custom 2D dsls. I get the best of tabular
| and tree structures. The latest iterations aren't live yet, but
| there's a lot of stuff on treenotation.org which is the
| foundation of what I use.
|
| I consider it like a tool for clear thinking. There's no
| punctuation or noise, pure signal. I build DSLs and then
| spreadsheets in those DSLs. Both the data and grammars are in 2D
| Lang's. There's no quotes, brackets, patents, etc. Everything is
| strongly typed (eventually, in practice I start with a lot of
| "any" fields and iterate on the ontologies as my knowledge of a
| domain grows).
|
| Everything is backed by git.
|
| I do a lot of visual modeling lately with my remarkable 2 eink
| tablet.
| qcardona wrote:
| I used to use Evernote for bookmarking and note taking but
| honestly, lately it's getting clunky and I'm switching to Google
| Keep.
| herdrick wrote:
| Everything starts in my emacs scratch buffer (the default file
| opened upon startup), which is an org-mode file, and when some
| category of stuff gets big I move it into its own file in
| Dropbox. The content is just links and written-out thoughts and
| questions.
| andthat wrote:
| After what I suppose has been 15 years of searching, I have
| settled on the Zettelkasten method using Doom Emacs (Vim-like
| keybindings) with org-mode and org-roam
| (https://www.orgroam.com). I struggle to think of anything that
| could beat it.
| gman83 wrote:
| I use Google Docs. I actually use it in combination with this
| tool: https://spaceli.io/
|
| Then I use this Custom New Tab URL extension to turn my new tab
| page to Spaceli:
| https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/custom-new-tab-url...
| immnn wrote:
| Just by remembering things. If I can't remember it, it's none
| sense.
|
| For a solid understanding and remembering, I'm applying the
| knowledge by setting up a personal side project.
|
| I furthermore push all my side project to a private git repo and
| if I really need to look up things, I always know on what project
| I need to look at.
| zeeshanqureshi wrote:
| If you're someone who thinks & processes information mainly in
| the form of Stories & Metaphors, then organization (and recall)
| becomes organic/natural.
|
| Also on a side note, we must all be wary of epistemophilia!
| throwaway823882 wrote:
| Make a list, work through it, throw out the list, make a new
| list.
| 0xb0565e486 wrote:
| I rarely find anything that's worth the time to write down and
| organize.
|
| I use the mac OS/iOS notes app to keep track of short lived
| information that I don't want to forget.
| schappim wrote:
| I use a custom Rails app inspirted by Stephen Wolfram's Post:
| "Seeking the Productive Life: Some Details of My Personal
| Infrastructure" [1].
|
| It looks like this [2] (#000000 black interface for mobile due to
| OLED display).
|
| It changes context depending on time of day and device used. Eg.
| before working showing me the info I need about the kids [3].
|
| [1] https://writings.stephenwolfram.com/2019/02/seeking-the-
| prod...
|
| [2] https://files.littlebird.com.au/Shared-
| Image-2021-04-26-07-5...
|
| [3] https://files.littlebird.com.au/Shared-
| Image-2021-04-26-08-0...
| bitcoinmoney wrote:
| How can I use this?
| schappim wrote:
| Hit me up on the email address in my HN profile
| eMGm4D0zgUAVXc7 wrote:
| Try Anki, a spaced repetition flashcard software:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anki_(software)
|
| It is intended for memorizing things, but the fact that it forces
| you to divide knowledge into pieces small enough to fit on a
| flash card also helps to organize it.
|
| And you can have different card stacks in Anki, so there also is
| categorization of knowledge.
|
| Cf. the "Zettelkasten", a physical flashcard system which is
| actually intended at organization, not memorization:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zettelkasten
|
| Anki can be used to emulate that digitally.
| symkat wrote:
| I've used personal wikis and knowledge bases for myself and they
| work okay. vimwiki has been useful for me.
|
| I find that I do some pretty cool stuff and then totally forget
| how I did it a year or 5 years later, mostly with coding. The
| open source projects I documented and explained are things I
| myself google to help me set them up in the future, so a way of
| codifying my knowledge has been to try to write about it and put
| that in public.
|
| I set up development environments for myself a lot, so I wrote an
| article about how I do it https://modfoss.com/creating-my-
| development-environment.html and then put the code on GitHub as
| well https://github.com/symkat/modfoss_devel So if I don't do it
| for a while, I'll have a starting point and me-from-the-past
| explaining what I did and why.
| hashkb wrote:
| I also use vimwiki extensively. It's always at hand.
| ImaCake wrote:
| I have recently transitioned from wet lab biology to knowledge
| work. Something I brought with me through the transition was the
| keeping of dated physical notes with a digital todo list (also
| with dates). I find being able to scribble the physical graph I
| want to make, a vague table, or just some comments or math from a
| research paper really helps. The digital todo list helps me find
| old notes as dates effectively act as relative page numbers and
| all that is needed is a ctrl+F and then a bit of a flick through
| pages.
|
| I personally don't have the discipline to organise my digital
| notes post-hoc, so I focus on just making notes using markdown
| files and sticking them _somewhere_ in my onedrive so I can find
| them later. I do have a notes folder, but there is stuff that has
| found its way elsewhere. Thankfully searching markdown files is
| very easy.
| drenvuk wrote:
| I used to use trillium notes (which is really good) for GTD and
| idea mapping for a few months but stopped. I just use a big three
| ring binder with some five star hard to rip paper now with some
| plastic sticky tabs for categories and write down things that are
| important. The barrier to taking down and recalling info is both
| low and high enough in just the right way that I remember things
| I want to remember and can recall important enough forgotten
| things by referring to my notebook. I just reference other ideas
| by category and some other detailing info and flip through until
| I find what i'm looking for.
|
| Digital notes are good for a lot of people and a lot of
| situations but not for my long term very general knowledge based
| tasks. For specific commands/documentation/syntax/techniques yeah
| digital notes are nice. For Brain storming, and connecting ideas
| though? I fully believe paper works best. It's more flexible.
| samstave wrote:
| Plus it is known that when you write things down with ink and
| paper, your recall tends to be higher. That doesnt mean its
| perfect for everyone, but a larger than just an average amount
| of people.
|
| I like your idea - what ever happened to that e-ink note pad
| one could write on and it saves a digital copy?
| symkat wrote:
| >> I like your idea - what ever happened to that e-ink note
| pad one could write on and it saves a digital copy?
|
| Probably https://remarkable.com/
| nikivi wrote:
| Have it in some markdown files:
| https://github.com/nikitavoloboev/knowledge
| walterbell wrote:
| mind maps, memory palace, vision boards, note taking systems
| where a single item can be embedded in multiple places within a
| hierarchy.
| ammar_x wrote:
| I have folders (and sub-folders for different categories I'm
| interested in. Inside each folder, there are text files, markdown
| files, PDFs, etc. about that category. I mostly use text files to
| write my notes from books, lectures, articles, etc.
|
| For memorizing things, I use Anki which looks old but it's great.
| Every day, I spend a few minutes on it reviewing things I learned
| before and wanted to engrave it in my memory.
|
| I'd suggest an interesting related interview (not mine): How to
| Make Yourself Into a Learning Machine
| (https://every.to/superorganizers/how-to-build-a-learning-mac...)
| sharikone wrote:
| It's Joplin for me and a LibreOffice spreadsheet for tabular
| knowledge.
|
| Joplin is opensource and uses Markdown files. Syncs with WebDAV.
| It's the best I found till now.
|
| LibreOffice is for tables since Markdown sucks for them
| dmje wrote:
| GDrive, Synology, Trello but at the heart of it all, Dokuwiki.
| Man, that thing rocks, all MD, all exportable into whatever
| format I want, my own theme, backend backup however I want,
| links, media, nesting, tags. It's ace, and doesn't get nearly
| enough air time IMO
| herbertl wrote:
| Physical 4x6 index cards (organized with the zettelkasten method
| --https://zettelkasten.de/posts/overview/) and corresponding
| digital version in Notion
| timmit wrote:
| Joplin notebook for personal knowledge
|
| Tiddlywiki for a public knowledge base
| tmhrtly wrote:
| You could do a lot worse than read about the concept of a
| Zettelkasten or Commonplace book. Here's my notes on the two. I
| am currently using the app Bear to take notes on everything and
| anything, tagging as I go, and trying my best to link notes to
| other meaningful notes. Less formal than a Zettelkasten but more
| digital than your average commonplace book.
|
| 1. Commonplace Book This is a book of thoughts, findings and
| general collections of information captured throughout your life
| and brought together into one place. [How And Why To Keep A
| "Commonplace Book" | Thought
| Catalog](https://thoughtcatalog.com/ryan-holiday/2013/08/how-and-
| why-...) [Commonplace Books Part 3: Choosing a System -
| GeekDad](https://geekdad.com/2020/03/commonplace-books-
| part-3-choosin...)
|
| 2. Zettelkasten
|
| A different concept, but also with relevance to storing
| information for a lifetime. From my brief readings, there's more
| emphasis placed on two stages of note. The first is a quick jot -
| an addition. The second is a more thought out, self-contained
| existence of the note. There's also focus placed here on
| _linking_ notes together.
|
| A good example of someone's Zettelkasten is [[Andy Matuschak's
| Note Collection]]:
| https://notes.andymatuschak.org/About_these_notes?stackedNot...
|
| [Zettelkasten -
| Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zettelkasten) [Bear App:
| A Solid Zettelkasten Solution for iOS Users -- Mental
| Pivot](https://mentalpivot.com/bear-app-a-solid-zettelkasten-
| soluti...)
| hkt wrote:
| Nextcloud Notes.
|
| It syncs my notes to a cloud UI, my phone, laptops etc. Also
| provides for good search, and the notes are in markdown format so
| very portable. There are some limitations (no real way to link
| between notes) but I don't notice them or do the kind of writing
| which requires such things really.
| great_reversal wrote:
| For overall memory, I generally just remember things instead of
| using all these fancy apps. Sometimes I'll make some notes in
| Typora (clean .md editor), but more often than not, I'll never
| revisit the file.
|
| I'm a visual learner, so its really easy for me to recall past
| snapshots (static, not like a video) from my life, or how certain
| things looked at a point in time. It's not quite an identical
| memory, but it's not too far off either. Maps are a breeze, and
| even complex tunnel systems like the PATH in Toronto are easy to
| navigate.
|
| For learning, it helps if you just throw yourself into it. Take 5
| minutes and try to work at the concept. Usually this will turn
| into 30-60 minutes. I learned Kubernetes and AWS EKS this way.
|
| For problem solving, I'll make some notes for brainstorming, todo
| lists, and any questions I have. Then when I go for my daily walk
| (~15km/2hrs), I reflect on the abstractions again (from memory)
| and try to refactor what doesn't seem perfect.
|
| I do have a mind palace set up, but I don't really use it.
| jonsen wrote:
| Beware you young men with fresh brains. Brains can and do get
| worn. I could say almost exactly your words about my younger
| self, but not anymore. Now I suffer badly from never having
| learned and trained a good note system. Get your external
| memory configured and operational in due time.
| juke_mills wrote:
| I try to do mind maps sometimes, but on day to day basis when
| reading articles to save for later, Google keep with relevant
| tags. But before that, always define whether the information you
| capture is useful or volatile. If useful, is it today, next week
| or someday? Someday is probably never ;-)
| d0mine wrote:
| If it is likely to be reused, put it in the most public place
| possible (where you usually search). Otherwise just learn it from
| scratch.
| someguy101010 wrote:
| org-roam + anki ripgrep for search
| MuffinFlavored wrote:
| I had a friend who was obsessed with https://roamresearch.com/
|
| Something about like... a syntax similar to Markdown that is
| [[deep-linkable]] or something that allows you to... create
| really deeply nested queries (almost like a GraphQL vibe) to
| finds things that are "loosely/tangentially related"
|
| Something like... if you were to go to Wikipedia and play that
| game where you start on one page (a kind of bird) and try to get
| to a different page that is 50-60 deep/nested links away (a World
| War II event or something).
|
| I personally am not a big note taker, but boy oh boy do some seem
| obsessed with special note-taking syntaxes/apps.
| ArtWomb wrote:
| Just signed up for an invite to mem.ai - a kind of personal
| knowledge graph that looks to be swelling in popularity
|
| What I would love is a way to index & search ALL my digital
| assets: audio, video, images, docs, urls, code and binaries
|
| And it would help if I could use a query syntax to create custom
| time ranges
|
| Recently noticed Weezer frontman Rivers Cuomo taught himself
| Python via Harvard's CS50 to organize his music demos dating back
| decades!
|
| And I've come to realize virtually every one could use such a
| personal digital archive interface ;)
|
| https://techcrunch.com/2020/11/25/rock-star-programmer-river...
| _____bee wrote:
| Moved from Evernote to OneNote, and thinking of moving to Notion
| (https://www.notion.so)
| shesto wrote:
| Notin is the best tool, prsonally use it every time when learn
| something new - all reccomendations !
| wdencker wrote:
| There's a ton of different note taking methods, as you can tell
| by the variety of responses here. People will evangelize one
| method as being superior to another, but I think you just have to
| try them out and see what works best for you.
|
| IMO, a prior question to understanding the information we consume
| is deciding _what_ information to consume. There 's an
| essentially infinite amount of content out there, but we have a
| finite amount of time to learn. The strategy we usually employ is
| random and mindless--we consume whatever happens to show up in
| our HN or Twitter feeds. But I think there's a real value in
| thoughtfully curating the knowledge we take in, which is why I
| built Trove [1,2].
|
| I'm curious to hear, how does everyone else here optimize their
| information diet (if at all)?
|
| [1] https://trove.to/
|
| [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26582658
| all2 wrote:
| I use the GTD method (or a variation of it).
|
| Information capture happens in a variety of media and goes into a
| physical or digital "inbox". I have both kinds because sometimes
| I take a note with pen and paper, or I have business card, or I
| have my cellphone and I can take a picture.
|
| My inbox includes the "pictures" and "downloads" folders on all
| of my devices. I link my devices together using SyncThing.
|
| Then I have an org-mode file I keep my projects, someday-maybe's,
| and project archives in. My reference "file" is a 1/2Tb drive
| split into folders. My file organization is pretty flat right
| now, so at the top level I have "school" and "recipes" and "day
| trips", etc.
|
| This is an utter cludge, but it does most of what I need it to.
| I've actually adapted it some to use at work and that has allowed
| my to stay very organized with work projects.
| bhussai20 wrote:
| I crack open a book about the topic (usually from manning
| publishing). Self-document my learnings in the form of tree-
| structured bullet-point notes. Usually in a git book space.
|
| I can always revisit the notes to quickly refresh myself on the
| topic (if a context-switch happens later down the line, or if the
| topic is not related to my day2day work).
|
| I've successfully used this approach to onboard myself for a
| Spring project (known to have a steep learning curve). It was my
| second time using Spring, with an 8 month time separation. The
| ramp-up/refresh took about a week.
|
| There were also some positive unintentional side-effects of my
| approach. I keep my gitbook notes public. I found that making my
| notes public ended up helping others on other teams in my
| company. Specifically, more experienced Spring devs who were new
| to Webflux were able to use my notes to jump right into a
| client's code base.
| [deleted]
| gmays wrote:
| I've been really happy with Notion (https://www.notion.so). I use
| standard pages with subcategories for personal notes/knowledge.
|
| I wanted to go deeper for my company, so I bought the Notion
| system called Bulletproof workspace
| (https://www.notion.vip/bulletproof/) in December after er doing.
| ton of research, but found it a bit overkill. In retrospect, I
| think it was just my newness to Notion that made it seem so.
|
| However, once we reached a certain point where we were
| overwhelmed and completely unorganized. I finally invested the
| time to learn how to use Notion and Bulletproof Workspace and it
| was amazing, now I use it for everything from onboarding, to
| brainstorming, to-do's, etc. It's quite impressive.
|
| I highly recommend checking them out if you're looking to get
| organized. The flexibility is what really made it work for me
| since it works for everything. It's nice just to have 1 tool.
| adverbly wrote:
| I keep a git repository with mostly markdown files. Its secure,
| searchable, free, updatable and retrievable anywhere. I can edit
| it easily with my favorite text editor of the day. I can also
| include other file types.
|
| Knowledge itself I keep written in markdown files. I keep
| folders, multiple files, and headings within files to organize
| and group things by topic. Everything is in unordered bullet
| points. The bullet points can be nested as well.
|
| Indentation from nested bullets, plus the syntax highlighting for
| headers gives visual indication of where related material is
| located.
| jpeter wrote:
| Joplin https://joplinapp.org/ Free, open-source, markdown, cloud
| sync, encryption, good mobile app
| w4rh4wk5 wrote:
| A per project markdown file that usually lives somewhere inside
| /doc, called dev-note.md (pun intended). It is handled append
| only and therefore quite messy, but grep is your friend.
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(page generated 2021-04-25 23:02 UTC)