[HN Gopher] Tools for Thinking
___________________________________________________________________
Tools for Thinking
Author : juliend2
Score : 219 points
Date : 2021-08-24 17:34 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.juliendesrosiers.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.juliendesrosiers.com)
| civilized wrote:
| Does anyone get anything out of mind-map visualizations?
| Everybody loves to show a screencap of their latest diagram, with
| all the circles and colorful connector lines, but do they ever
| actually help anyone realize anything?
|
| In my experience, this sort of visualization is good for mapping
| out an actual complex, sequential/staged process (and for that,
| one would instead use actual dedicated diagram maker apps). But
| other than that, it seems to be mostly for note-taking app makers
| to show off to show how cool their app is.
| symkat wrote:
| > do they ever actually help anyone realize anything?
|
| Mind maps help me realize things. I use a conference room
| whiteboard rather than an app.
|
| Starting with asking a question as the root node like "Goals?"
| and then putting goals around that, and then from those goals,
| things I'd need to do to accomplish them. "Obligations?" and
| writing out various people/places/things I have obligations to,
| and then next what it means to fulfill those obligations.
|
| Being able to look at it all on the whiteboard and pace around
| a bit seems to be very useful for me. This type of thing helps
| me sort things out and frequently I have realizations during it
| that make things more clear.
|
| I mostly do project planning in outlines, but sometimes I will
| break out the whiteboard. Sometimes those are mind maps and
| will make me see missing pieces; frequently, I suppose they're
| diagrams and may not count.
| civilized wrote:
| Have you ever tried doing this with a plain text Markdown
| file with hierarchy (headers/subheaders)? or an outlining
| tool (emacs org-mode etc)? or a spreadsheet? What do you see
| as the advantages of the mind-map method?
| symkat wrote:
| I've used all of those to organize ideas for different
| things. Markdown files with hierarchy for planning blog
| articles, talks. An outlining tool (OmniOutliner or vim
| with * and indentations) for project planning from building
| things to cleaning my office. Spreadsheets for figuring out
| how I'm managing time and using the cells to represent time
| I'm awake in the week.
|
| I think the advantage of the mind map is using it as a tool
| to explore things I'm not entirely sure about and get more
| depth on them. Like in my examples, I choose Goals and
| Obligations as things I had used mind mapping for
| exploring. Once I have some of them written on the
| whiteboard, more like items start to come to mind that
| might not otherwise. I might also be conflating the value
| of any of the elements of this -- pacing in front of the
| whiteboard, it being a more physical representation by
| being big and hand-drawn, that it starts to look a bit like
| a puzzle. Then it starts to present all of these questions.
| Like after mapping out what my obligations were, it made
| sense to ask, "well, why?", and then tie those to core
| reasons, which started to get into agreements, which then
| made me think about agreements. Why do we form agreements?
| In a way, I suppose it's giving me space to go on a
| somewhat controlled and documented deep dive into my
| thoughts.
| civilized wrote:
| Thank you! This resonates a lot with my experience. In
| particular, sometimes making writing more of a physical
| exercise is helpful.
| ssss11 wrote:
| They've helped me in the past realise project/idea scope -
| breaking it down. Although I often do that breaking down with
| heirarchical lists... mind maps aren't a game changer for me.
| memling wrote:
| There's this scene in Finding Forrester where Sean Connery
| marks up a manuscript with the phrase "constipated thinking."
| Mind mapping for me is a way to grease the skids, as it were,
| since the hardest part in organizing thoughts is just getting
| them down. While I prefer pen and paper--the tactile sense of
| it helps me--the mind map is a useful tool for taking what is
| essentially a disorganized mass of thoughts and figuring out
| how to organize it.
| phailhaus wrote:
| Highly recommend Workflowy (https://workflowy.com/). Its core
| idea is just recursive lists. Everything is a list, and every
| bullet can be expanded to become a top-level list. I've found
| this to be the most natural way for me to organize information,
| and there is a satisfying symmetry to it.
|
| The developers are also clearly careful when adding new features,
| since they always compose well with existing functionality and
| create a multiplier effect on productivity.
| Dyac wrote:
| +1. I've been using it for the best part of a decade. I've
| tried other things but always come back to workflowy.
|
| It was kinda stagnant for years, but in the past year or so
| there's been a lot of new features.
|
| In think it's a YC company too, so the developers are probably
| here...
| phailhaus wrote:
| Mirroring + templates is a gamechanger. Being able to create
| boards is also really nice; whoever realized that lists are
| isomorphic to boards is a genius. You can switch between the
| two seamlessly without ever being afraid of losing
| information or causing unintended side effects!
|
| Just waiting for it to support reminders, at which point I
| feel like I could use it for everything.
| rolleiflex wrote:
| I suspect the new features starting to come into Workflowy
| last year is due to Roam Research which came out about then,
| and has largely been at best a slight improvement over
| Workflowy.
|
| I do use Roam personally, but they were very hamfisted with
| their monetisation effort early on, which left a bad taste in
| my my mouth. If I were starting today, I would use Workflowy
| and be paying them instead. From what I can see, it is the
| more carefully built product.
| candyman wrote:
| I love tools and have tried so many over the past year including
| these new "hot" ones like Roam and Notion. After all that I have
| come full circle and reinvested in making Evernote work better
| for me. It has limitations but has always had a big edge in the
| capture and storage part of the process. I'm still working on how
| best to author/render content from my work to the outside world
| but at least with Evernote I can get things in one place and then
| add notes, content, analysis where I can find it. I agree with
| some here that it's still hard to beat pen and paper for really
| creative stuff - it's so free.
| cyberge99 wrote:
| I've been seeking a drop-in replacement for EN. These days I
| use 'Evernote Legacy' because the new Evernote is horrible.
|
| I'll use it until they kill it. I've seen a few good "almost
| there" replacements, but each have their own quirks.
| egypturnash wrote:
| Same. I just canceled my EN subscription; it refreshed
| _right_ before New EN, and I gave them until renewal to get
| that working. It's still garbage and I have completely lost
| the habit of using it because I can't revert to the old iOS
| app and have to use the slow, awkward new one.
|
| I am currently evaluating Joplin as a maybe. It is webshit in
| an Electron wrapper but I think the only note app that isn't
| webshit that I can use to collaborate with my Windows/Android
| using husband is Microsoft's; it did a shit job of keeping my
| formatting last time I tried it, plus I hate the way it wants
| every note to be a text box floating in an infinite canvas.
|
| I still have to actually check out Joplin's collaboration,
| that only seems to work if you're paying for their sync
| service instead of using something else.
|
| Joplin also has a plug-in to do what EN couldn't do in an
| entire decade: give you a nice diff UI for dealing with
| conflicting changes.
|
| (My requirements: cross platform collaboration, decent EN
| import, not be webshit, deal gracefully with notes with PDFs
| and images in them.)
| kibbleble wrote:
| I've been using Simple Note: https://simplenote.com/
|
| It's good enough for me. I don't think I've ever used
| Evernote's advanced features because I'm too lazy to organize
| things into books. It seems like they have an Evernote Import
| feature?
| dxgarnish wrote:
| What I've discovered is that the real breakthroughs needed in
| these tools aren't in the "taking" of notes but in the
| "retrieval" of notes/ideas.
| zikani_03 wrote:
| I use Notepad++ like the author to keep a big a** text file but
| split it into separate files per quarter; they typically contain
| ideas which then make it to Notion if I'm really excited about
| them. But it's really hard to commit to online tools over
| simplicity of a git repo full of text files.
|
| I also have a text file with 'comments from HN' which I revisit
| randomly and prompts either research or just nice trivia.. so
| thank y'all ;)
| ultra_nick wrote:
| There are different types of note taking. For random items, I use
| lists like Trello. For lots of non-transferrable knowledge, I use
| a wiki like Notion.
|
| I haven't liked the note taking tools for learning, so I've been
| building a prototype to do it better. It's like Roam, but is
| planned to be crowd sourced and self organizing.
| https://www.conceptionary.app/
| dariusj18 wrote:
| Ok, so this seems like a great thread to ask this question.
|
| I want a research tool with the following features:
| - Collaborative - Cloud based with offline mode (changes
| can be synced back up) - History - Separate
| workspaces/projects - The repository would be "taggable",
| meaning that after I set all the notes in a project as "v1" I can
| interact with the research with that snapshot, further when I
| create a "v2" I can see everything that has changed since "v1".
| - Media files (images) can be added
|
| Secondary concerns - The ability to "comment" in
| a collaborative manner. - an API to extract the data
| - Native apps - Dead simple end user workflow, (ex, don't
| have to run git commands) - Simple user permissions (ex.
| read only, contributor, admin)
| kaliszad wrote:
| A friend of mine today just wrote to me about Kinopio, whether
| have been bought by some SV firm and it was our new brand. I can
| assure you, it couldn't be further from the truth - OrgPad.com is
| in my mind way more advanced and overall better designed tool for
| both small things and complex thoughts. It is used a lot by
| anybody from school children to top managers, specialists and
| academics. What we do much better than most tools in my mind is
| design of the user experience and simplicity, where we have been
| inspired by 40 years of research of Zdenek Hedrlin PhD.,
| Clojure(Script) the programming language we use and Apple when
| there was still Steve Jobs around.
|
| We don't fear to do hard engineering to improve the user
| experience. We calculate differential equations on most
| animations in real time to simulate dampened spring movements.
| This is quite fast. Together with parts of the rendering
| rewritten into canvas rendering (e.g. links), OrgPad is now a lot
| faster than before. We have auto-resize and topologically mostly
| stable auto-layout, we support rich multimedia in OrgPages,
| images (even with transparency), iframes so you can embed other
| OrgPages, videos or even e.g. Google Spreadsheets or Calendar in
| the canvas. You can read an overview directly in OrgPad here:
| https://orgpad.com/s/VjMKIa7bfnN
|
| And no, OrgPad is not trying to be a graph database more or less
| like Roam-research or a Zettelkasten clone. It is oriented more
| towards those, that think visually and want to mirror their
| brains in a natural way to have an opportunity to step back and
| look at it.
|
| To be most transparent: You can try OrgPad for free. We will
| introduce the pricing on 29th of August (in a few days from now)
| but leave a limited free tier without adds forever. The standard
| tier will cost ~5 EUR/ month and include 5 GB of storage and most
| OrgPad features although limited. The professional tier for ~10
| EUR/month will include all the bells and whistles plus 10 GB of
| storage and priority support. Until now, we have worked on the
| product itself - we are not a traditional startup, so we can
| afford this less traditional approach.
|
| I hope, this will be understood as a frank recommendation for a
| tool, that might solve the readers problem in a more fitting way.
| crabl wrote:
| This is likely a result of me working in a corporate bureaucracy
| over the last few years, but I've observed executives using
| PowerPoint for the purpose of articulating and iterating on their
| thoughts, and it goes without saying that PowerPoint is
| ubiquitous (for good or for ill) when it comes to communicating
| those ideas to a wider audience.
|
| It seems to me that the tools for thought community generally
| rallies around Excel as the best example of a "bicycle for the
| mind" due to its functional-reactive nature and its programmable
| core, but I feel like PowerPoint has made an equal contribution
| to the democratization of "augmenting collective intelligence"
| due to its affordances around outlining and presentation.
| ssss11 wrote:
| At my corporate job I oscillate between PowerPoint, word and
| excel depending on how I envision I'll need to use the
| information. Often PowerPoint (as a presentation will be
| needed), but if I need to go to a detailed level excel is the
| go to, unless I need to write lots of words, then I'll use
| word.
|
| For notes, heirarchical notes and to do lists, I flip around
| between many tools.. ugh. Often just paper too.
| hyferg wrote:
| I recently interviewed some PhDs, postdocs, and professors for
| whom powerpoint was used as a tool for thought as well.
| tin7in wrote:
| Saga: https://saga.so
|
| - Automatic hyperlinking - When you mention another page, a link
| is created on the go
|
| - Aliases - A page can have multiple titles
|
| - Properties - Meta data on page level
| vczf wrote:
| Instead of a big-ass text file, I recently started a 3-part memo
| system: (1) an Olympus VN541-PC voice recorder for thoughts while
| driving; (2) a pocket memo pad for notes where extra working
| memory is needed for thinking, like tables or lists; (3) a
| memo.txt file synced with my primary devices for convenience.
|
| I've found this approach extremely powerful because I no longer
| need to figure out ahead-of-time where to put todos, ideas,
| questions, and my self-indulgent philosophical musing: everything
| that bubbles up to conscious mind is added to one of my memos and
| then will be filed into other note systems, categorized, and/or
| elaborated at my convenience in the future. There are quite a few
| things I've memoed that surprised me when looking back at it
| later in the day, because I had already forgot.
|
| It makes me wonder how many interesting mental tidbits I've lost
| over the years before I started capturing/organizing them
| systematically.
| submeta wrote:
| Roam Research was a game changer for me. - I know it's expensive,
| the founder behaves arrogantly, but nontheless: They have created
| a product that is very unique. Many have imitated it's feature-
| set (athens, org-roam, logseq to name a few), but they were first
| and paved the way.
|
| What makes this product exceptional is the way it allows to link
| notes: Deliberately by surrounding words by doulbe brackets or
| automatically by linking notes that have the same keyword in
| them.
|
| I started migrating my journal entries (date stamped) and my
| markdown notes into it, and I start to see connections among the
| notes that I did not make intentionally.
|
| Slowly I start to come up with more and more categories for note
| taking that I want to do in Roam: Dream journal, reading notes,
| articles, research.
|
| Before I was using Bear, Ulysses, Evernote, later I started using
| Emacs/org, now with a small detour settled with Roam.
| kurko wrote:
| I recommend taking a look Obsidian.md. I used Roam but now am
| in Obsidian because I can have my files with me, backup it the
| way I want, and it's free.
| jabyess wrote:
| There's also a FOSS version called foam
| https://foambubble.github.io/foam/
| neurotrace wrote:
| Seconded. I've been using Foam for some time now and it's
| been great. Since it's all VS Code, it's also very hackable
| AlanYx wrote:
| Another two good Foam-like VSCode tools are Markdown Memo
| (https://github.com/svsool/vscode-memo) and Dendron.
|
| I personally prefer vscode-memo to Foam. It doesn't have a
| graphical view, but there a couple other things it does
| really well.
| afarviral wrote:
| The problem with a lot of existing strategies is they are
| aspirational - rather than realistic: conforming to our
| limitations. We can only write so much, and remember for so long.
| Have an idea, write it down, half way through you might have
| forgotten the original idea or become distracted by something
| else. I think it's just starting to come to light with the Roam-
| style tools, that imposing structure from the beginning doesn't
| work (too aspirational?), so I'd propose that aside from the
| happy surprises of the Zettelkasten only bound by relationships
| to other notes, its much more in tune with the way Minds work to
| have more unstructured notes. Individual islands that relate to
| others, but not strict hierarchies, or at least let the
| hierarchies be interchangeable.
| kzrdude wrote:
| I'm using Vimwiki for now. I seem to be happiest with notes in
| vim, but (since I use it in a terminal) I'd still like a way for
| that particular vim (in terminal) window to stand out. Any ideas?
| Maybe using an alternative terminal emulator for that one?
| erikcw wrote:
| You could run it in tmux then set the background and or frame
| of the window to something that stands out.
| lordgrenville wrote:
| I used to use a Vim GUI (Macvim) just for notes, terminal for
| everything else.
| rwnspace wrote:
| For a while I used vimwiki in a drop-down term: guake and
| yakuake have this as a primary feature, good for gnome/KDE, but
| if you're using a tiling WM you can use termdrop on most
| terminal emulators.
| kzrdude wrote:
| good point, I should try this
| heywherelogingo wrote:
| I use terminator, one window, tabs, and vimwiki is always my
| first tab.
| Tomte wrote:
| DokuWiki: www.dokuwiki.org
|
| Backlinks out of the box.
| zerop wrote:
| Tools for better thinking
|
| https://untools.co/
| xyzelement wrote:
| A little different but - whiteboard. Now that I have space I
| bought a 5x3 whiteboard and hung it on the wall. The contents on
| it kind of parallel the GTD system but for me it's helpful to
| have it "in my face" the whole time. Plus ability to think
| visually and draw out concepts.
| chapium wrote:
| How does one stick to any of these systems? I've tried BATF, org-
| mode, OneNote, and pen/paper. Each of which fail spectacularly
| due to overload and eventually they just end up being forgotten
| about long enough to no longer be useful.
| pc86 wrote:
| What do you mean by "overload?" If that's why these tools
| always fail for you perhaps looking at that may give you
| insight on the root cause.
|
| I think the key for most of these, particularly BATF/BASS is
| the "always open" part. I've recently started playing around
| with Obsidian mentioned elsewhere and if you don't have it open
| at startup it's easy to forget about it. And you need to be
| pretty diligent at the beginning of adding
| interesting/educational things to your documents while you're
| still trying to form the habit.
|
| Having a decent organization system is pretty important too
| (one of the main failings of BATF/BASS in my experience). If I
| need to scroll through a bunch of development and business
| stuff to find that interesting physics article that is suddenly
| relevant again I'm much less likely to do it than if I have a
| "physics" document or folder I can see and get to easily.
| D13Fd wrote:
| For me, my notes app is a program I use far more than any
| other, except for a web browser, so your question doesn't
| really make sense. It's like asking "how do you stick with Word
| or Excel"?
|
| I use the common folder-of-text-files method (currently with
| Ulysses, although I've used other apps in the past). Any time I
| need to write something down, that's where I go first, unless
| I'm drafting a document that needs to be sent to someone else.
|
| Here is when it gets used most:
|
| - Researching something online
|
| - Preparing for a call or meeting
|
| - Taking notes on a call or meeting
|
| - Random ideas I want to save
|
| - Important information I want to keep (but not so secret that
| it needs to go in a password manager)
|
| - Outlines of documents I want to write
|
| - Snippets of code I want to save
| zuno wrote:
| I agree with chapium, and my thanks to him for penning down his
| observations into words. I would add that there comes a point
| when these systems and their maintenance overwhelm my limited
| abilities (I know because I have tried org-mode, and OneNote).
| I often keep defaulting to pen/paper, but carrying around
| sheafs (now boxes) of papers is no fun.
|
| And I agree with pc86's thoughts on 'decent organization
| system' and "always open". I am working on getting better at it
| with pen/paper.
| stnmtn wrote:
| I can empathize with you and the OP. The only one I've got to
| stick is literally just a text file that I always have open
| in VIM. I have a keybinding to open up the terminal window so
| it's always right there.
|
| I have a couple of macros set up to put in the current date,
| and a different color for bullet points that are "done" or
| not completed yet
|
| This is the only one that works for me, and I've tried Org-
| mode, evernote, onenote, joplin, notion, etc. It's a
| combination of no-friction to open (I literally just press
| alt+~) and opinionless. If I want to paste something in
| there, I don't have to fiddle with a UI to get it how I want,
| because the formatting doesn't matter at all.
| 0xdeadbeefbabe wrote:
| Don't forget treesheets https://strlen.com/treesheets/
| cecilpl wrote:
| I can't help myself but to write that Chef Kinopio is a yellow
| Toad who works at the restaurant in Overlook Tower in Paper
| Mario: The Origami King. :D
| hiidrew wrote:
| I want to try obsidian. I like notion but load times drive me
| nuts.
|
| My primary note taking tool is apple notes, wish it had some
| additional features but by far my favorite is offline capability.
| gardenfelder wrote:
| A grandfather to this space is Ward Cunningham. His latest work
| is FederatedWiki, a javascript platform which enables a lot of
| thinking; with plugins, you can push it in many directions. As a
| "federated platform" you can work in groups
| http://fed.wiki.org/view/federated-wiki
| dpaleka wrote:
| I too use large files with random notes, but I can't be bothered
| to write dates -- so I use git and cron to automate a searchable,
| persistent diary.
|
| Let me write a blog post about it. The author of this article in
| particular might find it useful. Does anyone do something
| similar?
| asimjalis wrote:
| I like this. Would love to see the details of how you do it. I
| too dislike adding dates to entries. My solution has been a
| vimscript snippet that inserts the current date. I have bound
| it to <C-l><C-d> fun! InsertDate() let
| l:line = getline('.') let l:date = strftime('%Y-%m-%d')
| call setline('.',strpart(l:line,0,col('.')).l:date.strpart(l:li
| ne,col('.'))) endfun inoremap <C-l><C-d>
| <ESC>:call InsertDate()<CR>
| tunesmith wrote:
| I see a ton of recommendations that invite you to blurt out all
| your thoughts and capture them, but after you do that for a
| while... what tools/processes help you know what you can delete
| or let go of?
|
| I have kind of a home-grown anti-todo list system that is hooked
| up to my life principles, such that if an "oh, I should do this"
| idea doesn't actually line up with them, I just don't add it to
| the list. But that's pretty manual and home-grown.
|
| I don't know, it's just that the "capture every thought" genre of
| software was attractive in my 20s, but after a point it just gets
| overwhelming.
| major505 wrote:
| Can't recomend Joplin enouth. really like the note app. you can
| use markdown, Latex formulas, great for small notes.
|
| I still use onenote for mor multiporpose notes, specially when
| there are photoso involved, but Joplin is still my main note
| taking tool.
| CA0DA wrote:
| When I realized I could not cleanly get a backup of my notes
| from OneNote, I switched to Joplin and have been quite happy
| since.
| asimjalis wrote:
| I love these threads for the tools people mention. These threads
| are one of the best things about HN.
| pwdisswordfish8 wrote:
| Surprising how few people mention an email addressed to
| oneself, particularly for those concerned about getting their
| thoughts out quickly. (Maybe a side effect of how many people
| use Gmail and it being slow and clunky?) Not saying it's
| brilliant by any means, but conceptually, it makes a certain
| amount of sense. Imagine having an assistant you can trust
| completely, and you don't have to worry about hurting their
| feelings or ever needing to stop to think whether you need to
| phrase things in a certain way. You'd lean on them for stuff
| like this, right? Now, instead of an assistant, it's just you
| explaining things to you.
|
| If you've always got your mail client open then speed bumps are
| minimal, and you get optional titles, automatically dated
| entries, and search for "free".
| pmkiwi wrote:
| Yeap agreed! I discovered a lot of tools just reading them.
| Thanks everyone !!
| chillpenguin wrote:
| I highly recommend TiddlyWiki. The name puts a lot of people off,
| but it is really great. Supports backlinks and transclusion,
| among the more typical tagging and linking.
|
| Great for creating personal wikis.
| jandrusk wrote:
| org-roam should have made the list.
| space_ghost wrote:
| I used the "BATF" method for years, with one file per year. In
| 2014 I switched to Zim [1] and haven't looked back.
|
| [1] https://zim-wiki.org/
| geocrasher wrote:
| I too have been using Zim Wiki since 2013. I've considered
| switching to Joplin however.
| Tomte wrote:
| What's BATF? It's pretty ungooglable.
|
| Edit: it's obviously the big-ass text file, not a "real"
| method.
| StuntPope wrote:
| Joplin is a nice find. I used to use WikiPad religiously until it
| seemed to go defunct.
|
| I like the idea of Kinopio a lot because I use mindmaps heavily
| but find the hierarchical structure to be a limitation, this
| seems more lateral. Only problem is it's hosted, would love
| something like this in an app, like the aforementioned Joplin.
| bulka wrote:
| https://cmap.ihmc.us/
| kevinslin wrote:
| If you fall into the *Big-Ass Text File* approach, I would
| recommend Dendron.so It's an open source plaintext based note
| taking tool that runs inside VSCode with the option to add
| additional structure to your text using schemas (think type
| system but for your notes)
|
| (disclaimer: I'm the founder)
| novakinblood wrote:
| "exo-brain (tech-)tools" is a form of cognitive offloading [0],
| right?
|
| [0] Risko EF, Gilbert SJ. Cognitive Offloading. Trends Cogn Sci.
| 2016 Sep;20(9):676-688. doi: 10.1016/j.tics.2016.07.002. Epub
| 2016 Aug 16. PMID: 27542527.
| afarviral wrote:
| I've had a persistent desire for a knowledge management
| protocol/service that goes beyond the scope of all the software
| and strategies discussed on HN regularly. I firmly believe that
| the needs and barriers are pretty universal between people (not
| personal preference or individual at all) and that in a way, we
| are rate-limited without it, bound to arrive at solutions only
| for them to be lost again. I have a dense page in my Zettelkasten
| dedicated to the idea, but in summarizing it's meant to provide
| an interoperable framework that accepts different forms of media
| (not just text, though it would be central) and facilitates
| various kinds of analysis and thought, e.g. detecting
| similarities, duplication, extrapolating etc. I'd imagine a
| specialized form of distributed version control would be needed,
| and various platforms and tools to solve the capture and
| retrieval dilemma, and in particular the problem of persistence
| and link rot. To be sure all I have is a list of problems and
| some possible clues for solving, but the most hopeful of those is
| a distributed service that is widely used but very open. It could
| consist of some commercialized tools or engines, but the
| underlying protocol must be open for anyone to use.
|
| If the idea I have took off it would take the information age to
| new heights, with the next phase being ubiquitous use of brain-
| computer interfaces.
|
| Imagine how productive we would all be if we never forgot. All
| ideas, perhaps even a collection representing all of humankind,
| transcribed to a format that respects our time, and aids further
| thought.
|
| We can reach in and take the ideas that work from other systems,
| such as Zettelkasten, Nogutchi Filing System, The Web and any of
| it's parts (markup, protocols), the study of sciences, humanities
| etc.
| geenat wrote:
| Obsidian: https://obsidian.md/ - All content
| stored as flat files on your hard drive. - Organised by
| correctly named folders. - Can embed images. Will link or
| autocopy them to the appropriate folders. - Is great if you
| like markdown. - Dark theme.
|
| Honorable mentions: - Infinite tab indentation
| synced in google docs, in google drive, since I already pay for
| google anyway. - todo.txt
| Cshelton wrote:
| Started using Obsidian last week. It's so easy and works how
| ever you want it to. Roam Research is nice, but it's geared
| toward a specific way of writing.
|
| Also, the Syncing across devices they provide for $4/m right
| now is a steal and very effortless.
|
| Of course you can take backups using Git, very easy.
| bsedlm wrote:
| > Roam Research is nice, but it's geared toward a specific
| way of writing.
|
| could you (or anybody) elaborate?
|
| what is different between Obsidian's inteded way of writing
| and Roam Research's??
| selykg wrote:
| Roam is basically an outliner
|
| Obsidian is able to do outlining with some plugins, but is
| primarily designed for writing notes.
|
| I really far prefer Obsidian. If you want to get a good
| primer on things, lookup Linking Your Thinking on YouTube.
| delgaudm wrote:
| I'm with you here. I've recently discovered Obsidian, and have
| been really enjoying using it. It's probably been the tool that
| most matched my mental model (for me that was "personal wiki")
| of note taking and thought processing before I started that has
| also been easy enough to stick with.
|
| I feel like it should be easy to make Obsidian the content
| editor for a static site generator like Hugo, but I haven't
| found a tool for that yet. (Maybe it's so obvious that one
| isn't needed, but I'm not a dev, just a normie)
| Fission wrote:
| I did this recently to start creating a public (but unlisted)
| developer log, a la Carmack .plan. Obsidian has a community
| GitHub backup plugin, but you can also just manually push to
| a repo whenever you want to update the site. Then you can use
| that repo as a proto-CMS, and pull it in with, say, NextJS to
| create a static site. Anything with built in CI (Vercel,
| Netlify, GH Actions) should be able to detect the change to
| the CMS repo and rebuild your static site. Both steps are
| quite easy (took me under 10 minutes total).
|
| That said, if you don't need special control over your
| content/presentation, then you could alternatively just pay
| Obsidian $8 a month for their Publish feature.
| [deleted]
| blocked_again wrote:
| Also not to mention that Obsidian, which is made by 2
| bootstrappers is giving a 200 million dollar valued VC funded
| company a run for it's money.
| bobbylarrybobby wrote:
| Assuming you're talking about notion: collaboration+sharing
| is what brings the real value to these tools. Enterprise is
| where the money is and they're not going to pay for a
| wiki+project management tool without those two features.
| senjin wrote:
| I think they're talking about roam research
| bachmeier wrote:
| Lots of good tools out there, but Obsidian is the one I've
| settled on, for better or worse. I use the $48/year sync
| service. It does a perfect job syncing my files on my Linux
| desktop and laptop, my Chromebook, and my phone. Turns out
| Linux ARM (for my Chromebook) isn't as well supported by
| various apps as I expected, but their build is available and
| works perfectly.
| juliend2 wrote:
| > - Infinite tab indentation synced in google docs, in google
| drive [...]
|
| That sounds interesting. Can you elaborate?
| geenat wrote:
| You can organise text in a hierarchy indefinitely with tabs.
|
| I make a template Google Doc with the margins stripped out
| that I can copy anytime I need one.
|
| I usually will throw on Dark Reader as well and use a
| monospace font.
|
| Added benefits: - Phone editing -
| Easily link to other google docs. - Share them with
| anyone.
|
| It's a cloud version of todo.txt.
| DenverCode wrote:
| Just started using Obsidian this week for classes and I
| couldn't be happier.
| jcelerier wrote:
| I've been using Zim (https://zim-wiki.org) for that for close
| to a decade now, what has Obsidian in addition ?
| bachmeier wrote:
| Zim is great too. In terms of functionality, it does a lot of
| the things Obsidian does, but it uses its own wiki syntax and
| it's not pretty by any means. Obsidian has been much more
| effective at building community and growing the ecosystem of
| plugins.
|
| Edit: And one pretty annoying thing - it's built on old-
| school technology that doesn't even support setting the
| editor width. That's quite a problem in the era of widescreen
| monitors.
| BasilPH wrote:
| I used to work with the Zettelkasten Archive and vim, but I
| think I'll switch to Obsidian. The graph and link
| autocompletion are the main selling points for me compared to
| my current setup.
|
| I maintain a small open-source script[^1] to find clusters and
| orphaned notes in a Zettelkasten, and I find it's a good
| addition to groom my notes from the terminal.
|
| [^1]: https://github.com/BasilPH/vizel
| CA0DA wrote:
| Does it have encryption? How does it compare to Joplin?
| bachmeier wrote:
| It's a pile of files on your hard drive, so encryption is up
| to you. If you buy their sync service, you get encryption:
| https://obsidian.md/sync
| Isthatablackgsd wrote:
| Obsidian don't have encryption built-in, they do have the
| encryption via community plugin. But it is only partial (I
| believe per note), not the entire vault.
| Off wrote:
| If you are looking for something similar focused on privacy
| but that leans more towards RoamResearch UX, you can give
| logseq[1] a try.
|
| [1] https://logseq.com/
| Off wrote:
| I forgot to add that logseq is open source, the file
| encryption feature is built-in (you can opt-in or opt-out)
| and all the documents are saved locally in md files.
| francoisp wrote:
| nice! any iOS clients in the works?
| markdjacobsen wrote:
| I'll echo others here; Obsidian is an amazing tool. For those
| who are curious about Obsidian, I recently created a YouTube
| video series for my graduate students titled "Tools for the
| Life of the Mind." [0] It covers some philosophical points
| about flow and focus, then dives into reading and note-taking
| and then covers a few tools like Evernote, Scrivener, Zotero,
| and Obsidian. Video 13 covers a workflow for migrating Zotero
| highlights and notes into Obsidian, which I found buried in the
| Obsidian forums. Completing this missing link has been a game-
| changer for my research workflow.
|
| [0]
| https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLHmevVAAXtu3_beDLtsTm...
| pc86 wrote:
| I just started using Obsidian and I really like it. I've found
| it even more useful if you add this mind map plugin:
| https://github.com/lynchjames/obsidian-mind-map
| omarhaneef wrote:
| Here are some note-taking "contexts":
|
| - in front of my computer when I am thinking
|
| - in a meeting
|
| - driving
|
| - walking (grocery store, or to a place etc)
|
| Note that each puts on a constraint, but I want the notes to
| sync.
|
| When I am driving perhaps I need to speak into something that
| takes the notes without having to be turned on, hit the I am not
| driving button, find the app and launch it.
|
| When I am walking, I need to take a note on my mobile and it
| cannot be a large graphical mind map.
|
| In front of my computer -- this is where 99% of note taking apps
| shine and what they are made for.
|
| In a meeting, especially in person or zoom, it is almost rude to
| type. It is perfectly acceptable, and almost polite, to write out
| notes by hand in a pad (it shows I care and am paying attention).
| I need to transcribe those notes later on.
|
| The idea note taking system performs and syncs across these
| contexts well.
| talor_a wrote:
| the only app that does this well for me is Todoist, but that's
| for tracking todos. Works via desktop app (+ global hotkey to
| add a todo at any time), browser (+ extension for saving
| webpages), mobile app, and siri (when I'm in the car). Without
| all those things no app has stuck for me. Todoist works
| decently well for short memo-type notes (you can add comments
| and attach files to todos), but I'm also looking for another
| companion app to use for more longform / wide reaching
| information.
| dzink wrote:
| Working on precisely that at DreamList.com.
| Raineer wrote:
| So happy to see Joplin on here. I adore it, as it doesn't try to
| be as big and full-featured as the flavor-of-the-month (currently
| Obsidian but surely something else come September).
|
| Syncing which supports more than just a paid service or forces
| you into a brand name (my own WebDAV works for me). Encryption.
| Flexibility. Just love it.
| yboris wrote:
| I liked using Cinta Notes - https://cintanotes.com/
|
| Super quick way to jot down notes, search through them, tag them
| if needed. May be useful :)
| widea wrote:
| Tiddlyroam: https://tiddlyroam.org/
| Naac wrote:
| This looks like some extensions built on top of tiddlywiki
| slaymaker1907 wrote:
| I use TiddlyWiki for structured notes personally, though I
| haven't yet found a way to do quick outlining with it in a
| satisfactory way.
|
| Honestly though I just need to modify the tiddler editor a bit to
| support tab in/out for lists.
| kreetx wrote:
| And for many "big-a* text files" I'd recommend org-mode. It also
| has its own markup (much more powerful than markdown), and can
| also do spreadsheets (which I personally use only marginally).
|
| Manage this in git and you are independent of any service, yet
| with extensive-- perhaps even uncontested --feature-coverage.
| camoroso24 wrote:
| I am partial to simple text files that I edit in vim.
|
| I have a simple script that parses my notes (based on tags), puts
| them in respective files, and creates a new md file for the day.
|
| I think it's important to have a space where the threshold for
| what needs to be written down is low and unstructured. Since vim
| is great at editing text (compared to writing), I use it as a
| space to dump my thoughts out and organize them in front of my
| eyes. Works great for me.
| MikeLumos wrote:
| Another good one: https://nulis.io/ (or https://gingkoapp.com/).
| It's like a mindmap turned sideways, in a more convenient format.
|
| And of course: https://dynalist.io
|
| Both are infinitely nested tree editors, that enable you to
| organize information very conveniently. Great for writing,
| brainstorming, taking notes.
|
| On iOS I use Editorial (a great text editor) to write down all my
| notes, and I use #tags to make it easy to search all my notes by
| topic (like #webdev, #health, #books, and so on).
|
| Also Track and Share is a great habit tracker, and Things 3 is a
| great todo list manager. The more thoughts I can offload from my
| brain into the app - the better.
|
| On my laptop I use Emacs org-mode, it's fantastic.
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