[HN Gopher] Ask HN: How do you store the knowledge gained in a day?
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Ask HN: How do you store the knowledge gained in a day?
Each day I (and I assume most knowledge workers, devs, creatives)
read many articles, papers, code snippets, AI responses, discord
messages etc. At the end of the day some of this information is
most likely lodged in your brain and the digital version can be
discarded. However some of it should be retained manually in some
system - or at least I feel it should. What approaches do people
use to consolidate and store this information to allow all tabs etc
to be closed for the next work day?
Author : dennisy
Score : 28 points
Date : 2025-05-13 18:23 UTC (4 hours ago)
| alganet wrote:
| I am currently leveraging scammers, doxxers and all sorts of
| scumbags to do that for me, for free. Better than AI.
|
| I advised them to avoid it because it would be shameful for them
| to be used like a marionettes, but I guess if they stopped it
| would be even more shameful. There's something about their pride
| of being covert that makes it easy to use for this.
|
| Sometimes it stores stuff that I don't care about, but that's
| fine.
|
| I also do handwritten notes sometimes.
| dennisy wrote:
| Sorry not sure I really understood your approach.
| alganet wrote:
| They use scam accounts and tactics to annoy me, I steadily
| shape their expectations to relay things that will work as
| reminders and all sorts of distributed storage.
|
| Initially I didn't want to do it, but it's so reliable and
| predictable, that it became useful for that. I can't explain
| the exact mechanism either.
| JohnFen wrote:
| I still don't understand what you mean here. Do you have an
| example?
| alganet wrote:
| I don't have any example to share.
|
| I also have problems storing some things. Like I wanted
| to store information about Tourettes and coprolalia, but
| it doesn't stick to my herd of scammers (maybe some of
| them have it and they're embarrassed?). That's the best
| example I can give (a non working example, but that's
| fine, no storage medium is perfect).
| JohnFen wrote:
| I don't accumulate tabs (I rarely have more than two open at a
| time), so I don't have to do anything to allow them to be closed.
| I just close the browser.
|
| With your larger question, though, if there's specific
| information that I feel the need to keep locally, I add that to a
| wiki that I run. If information is in a non-online form (books,
| etc.), all I need to do is remember that it's in there. I don't
| need to remember the information itself because I can look it up
| at will. For everything else, I don't worry about it at all. If I
| found it online once, I can find it online again should I need it
| again.
| dennisy wrote:
| Ohh, I really wish I also had this attitude (YAGNI)!
|
| But do you not believe there is some value in trying to store
| some of what you found / learnt each day, to allow you to make
| some new connections in the brain the following days?
| JohnFen wrote:
| > do you not believe there is some value in trying to store
| some of what you found / learnt each day,
|
| Sure, but I retain some of that without having to do anything
| special. I have no need to remember everything. My brain
| seems to know better than I do what is worth remembering and
| what isn't anyway. I trust it.
|
| Retention is even more likely to happen if it's information
| that I actually used that day, and if it's really valuable
| information, then I probably have used it immediately.
| rich_sasha wrote:
| Org mode.
|
| I don't worry too much about the structure. So long as it's
| written down and backed up, it is searchable, and that's enough.
| dennisy wrote:
| What sorts of things will you write? I am interested not just
| in the system but what you save.
| eightys3v3n wrote:
| I use a combination of Obsidian notes and Confluence.
|
| Obsidian is a not-very-organized mess unfortunately; I still
| haven't figured this out but it's good enough for me to usually
| find things I remember. Confluence is organized as such
| https://docs.divio.com/documentation-system/. This works great.I
| always know where to put something and where to find it again
| later.
|
| I also don't keep tabs open, I write things on a Todo list in
| Obsidian. Then at the beginning and end of the day I organize it;
| finishing small things like "record this", prioritizing, and
| moving project specific tasks to a page just for that project.
| input_sh wrote:
| Honest suggestion: do not worry about where to put it, worry
| about what you will type into the searchbar when you half-
| remember it 2 years later.
|
| No file structure is ever gonna beat a good searchbar, adjust
| your own notes accordingly. I completely hid the file explorer.
| If I need to cluster things together, I use very specific key
| words at the top of the file (think: #Parent/Child), they're
| far more flexible than a file system.
| eightys3v3n wrote:
| I have been exploring using tags in file properties instead
| of a folder layout. Just so I can pull things like they are a
| person, they worked for this company. Or I'm only looking for
| project docs, or article summaries. I just haven't wholesale
| moved so I'm getting the disadvantages of both approaches :p
|
| I generally think you're right though so I am moving away
| from folders. Especially when the notes are raw text
| (markdown) and can be searched by anything effectively.
|
| I am also interested in graph searching but I haven't used it
| yet.
| corytheboyd wrote:
| I use browser bookmarks organized into folders like /dev/blog
| /dev/tools etc. so that I can browse by category later when I
| think "what was that tool again?" A flat list of bookmarks drives
| me insane, all I want to do is delete it.
|
| I tried Obsidian for a while but I'm too prone to bike shedding
| with it, so I gave up. I DM myself in Slack with bits of info to
| keep around for the near term, because it's already a simple feed
| ordered by time.
| dennisy wrote:
| I know the feeling of the bike shedding with the tools!
|
| This is cool for links, but often I also want some
| nuggets/ideas to be saved.
| ssivark wrote:
| Currently I use Obsidian to make note of a few key things, but
| what I'm more excited about is that the way tech is evolving is
| going to allow us much more expansive solutions for personal
| knowledge-bases. Eg: See what Perkeep tried to do.
|
| Here's an idea: We should be able to record the full experience
| stream (or just the laptop screen, let's say) for a person --
| digitize it suitably (eg. pull out all the text, or tokenize it
| with a VLM, etc), attach some metadata, and have the whole
| database ready for a person to query / play with, using powerful
| LLMs.
|
| To the extent that you can store everything and perform effective
| recall/search, it obviates the need to carefully "pre-process"
| bits by noting them down in the right file, tagging them
| appropriately, adding metadata, etc. All of which should make for
| a much nicer UX.
|
| Given the Jevons' paradox though -- I wouldn't be surprised if
| our experience stream becomes so dense/rich that storing
| everything and querying from it eventually becomes prohibitively
| expensive. We would then have to construct pre-processing rules
| to prune the stream, and amortize the cost of certain deductions
| by performing them at data ingestion time instead of repeating it
| for each query. It's all just the basic principles of system
| design at the end of the day, and how systems need to be
| rearranged as various component capabilities (and user needs)
| scale.
| dennisy wrote:
| I get why this may seem attractive, but my view is that we need
| the manual step there as a way to force our brains to remember
| things.
|
| What you suggest is a nice UC for sure, but not sure it will
| make any of us smarter in the long run.
| willidiots wrote:
| I use a flat text file called "notes" on my desktop, and I leave
| it open in Sublime Text in a corner of my second screen.
| Periodically I throw a datestamp in there as a reference point.
| For generic "stuff that should be retained manually" it works
| well - easy to add to, easily searchable.
| dennisy wrote:
| Could you provide a small example of what you may add in a day
| and how you later search it?
| QuasiGiani wrote:
| Any thing at all.
|
| Ctrl-F.
| willidiots wrote:
| Half of the battle is avoiding over-documentation - I only
| write things here that I know I'll want to remember later:
| for me these are important notes, figures I hear/see in
| meetings, critical names of people, that kind of stuff.
|
| Mostly it's just bullets. If a bullet is critical I'll
| prepend it with !!!. If it's a task, I'll use * instead of -
| for the bullet marker (then move the task to my separate task
| tracker later - notes doc isn't good for long-term task
| management)
|
| If I want to tag the note explicitly with a "tag", I'll add
| one in brackets - but honestly these aren't that helpful.
|
| Ctrl-F will generally find what I need. Aside from that,
| what's mostly been helpful is the dates - I often remember
| roughly _when_ I learned a bit of information, so if I can 't
| find it with Ctrl-F, I'll scroll back to that "era" and look
| around.
|
| Pay a lot of attention to yourself when you're _looking_ for
| historical information: what do you search for? Are there key
| things you often look up over and over? If so, what search
| terms did you use when trying to find them? Add those
| explicitly to the entry, so next time you 'll find it easier.
| QuasiGiani wrote:
| This is it...
|
| KIS
|
| Ctrl-Effing-F
|
| Any other trendy nonsense is time-wasting trifling foolishness.
| LinuXY wrote:
| Zettlekasten with git and https://github.com/foambubble/foam - if
| I'm mobile I use WorkingCopy to paste links into an inbox file
| that I organize later.
| Jgoure wrote:
| Supermemo 18 and the 20 rules of knowledge formulation.
| dennisy wrote:
| I will look it up for sure! It would be cool to elaborate a
| little directly here if you could, or at least a few links
| please.
| sasaf5 wrote:
| Maybe this: https://www.supermemo.com/en/blog/twenty-rules-
| of-formulatin...
| ourguile wrote:
| I use Obsidian for kanban (with urgent tasks) and for drafting
| longer writing, while using Remnote for tracking most other
| general information. Both work really well for me, for different
| purposes. I use Obsidian more as a visual information processing
| medium.
|
| I will say, it's really helpful to open up excalidraw through
| Obsidian and create a quick flow chart or drawing with my team.
| RetroTechie wrote:
| If it's interesting enough, and/or "big, will read later" then I
| save a local copy (pdf, html, plain text or even an image).
|
| Mostly organised in logical-to-me directory structure.
|
| Local storage beats online-only in many ways, imho. Online
| content rots away over time. Whereas backing up local files is
| easy.
|
| Beside that: browser bookmarks, simple note-taking app, and (last
| but not least) pen & paper.
| exolymph wrote:
| I have one massive text file (well, actually an Apple Note) where
| I paste anything I need to reference throughout the day. Reverse
| chronological, newest stuff on top. If I need something later,
| it'll be in there. If the information is sufficiently important,
| it'll eventually move into another more focused document.
| dennisy wrote:
| Is this just links or also ideas, connections etc?
| exolymph wrote:
| All of the above. I throw everything in that one file to keep
| it simple and prevent myself from spending unnecessary time
| organizing information that I _don 't_ end up needing again
| in the future.
|
| I suppose the exception is when I already have a project-
| specific doc set up, then links or thoughts related to that
| project will go in there. But even then, sometimes I use the
| default scratchpad first, and move the info later, the next
| time I'm doing dedicated work on that project.
| whatevermom wrote:
| Obsidian has been really positive for me. It has paid dividends
| for years -- I look up notes I made years ago pretty regularly. I
| highly recommend it. I used Anki on and of with benefits but
| without enough discipline. Good thing with Obsidian is that you
| can write and forget about it - your obscure notes about http2
| multiplexing will still be there.
|
| One thing to remember: most stuff can be forgotten safely. There
| are very few things you'll actually want to look up a few months
| from now on...
| dennisy wrote:
| Yes, but the process of creating the notes, storing ideas and
| connections you made during a day is useful right?
| idbnstra wrote:
| well, if you're using the process of creating notes as a
| means for learning, handwritten notes would probably be more
| beneficial
| deafpolygon wrote:
| that's a myth; while it's true that handwriting does lend
| to better recall, it's the process of breaking down what to
| write down (thus spending more time making sense of it)
| that helps you remember.. not the 'muscle memory' everyone
| talks about. You can do the same thing in digital tools
| (typing out notes, structuring notes, etc) and sometimes
| you can do it faster.
| luotuoshangdui wrote:
| Workflowy. This "list of lists" approach just works for me.
| malux85 wrote:
| I have vscode open and a directory structure for organisation
|
| The first folder - TODO is more like "Working memory" - unsorted
| interesting learnings, my actual todo list, notes and thoughts
| for the next few days
|
| Then different sections for larger relevant parts of my life and
| memory
|
| People Robots Company Code Reading ZanySchemes Family ...etc
|
| Whenever working memory is getting full I'll take the time (30
| seconds) to organise - either move or delete.
|
| The key parts are - 1) Organise when it makes sense to, don't try
| and design it all up front and don't be scared of refactoring
| memories - the directory structure will anneal to something
| stable
|
| 2) have some damn discipline - tidy your notes, tidy your mind,
| and put the time and effort in, most people give up on note
| taking because they are too undisciplined to keep their virtual
| mind tidy, if you keep your notes tidy then up-keep is
| negligible, just like keeping your house tidy, maintain a high
| standard and then upkeep is easy
| dennisy wrote:
| And these are just text files with no fixed structure?
| malux85 wrote:
| Whatever it needs to be - some have pdfs, images, schematics,
| code, text files with links.
|
| If a text file starts getting too big I'll reorder it or
| split it out.
|
| I think the key thing is developing the skill that suits you
| - don't try and constrain it with some rule (all files must
| have structure X) because invariably something will not fit
| that pattern and then you'll give up or spend too much effort
| trying to find the holy grail of data structures and then
| you'll give up.
|
| Let it flow naturally without constraints, it will settle on
| a form that is useful
| jf22 wrote:
| I think it's impossible to retain the amount of information we
| consume.
|
| I've personally given up and if I remember, that's great, if I
| don't, oh well. There is always more to learn tomorrow.
| lcall wrote:
| I use the knowledge organizer I wrote at https://onemodel.org
| [AGPL], and write things wherever they fit in the deeply nested,
| searchable outline. Maybe it's like my own, efficient, highly-
| interlinked zettlekasten.
| Froedlich wrote:
| I tried several "information management" and "knowlege
| management" programs over the years, but none of them worked the
| way I wanted.
|
| My original method was a directory full of plain text files
| arranged by subject, that I brought up with my text editor.
|
| Over the years I wrote a specification for a system tailored for
| my needs, that could manage different forms of media, notes,
| saved web pages, ebooks, and so forth. The spec grew until I set
| the project aside as more trouble than it was worth. In
| retrospect I wish I had kept going.
|
| At the moment I'm using plain old hand-written subset of HTML
| linked to subdirectories arranged by subject. As time permits I
| will finish the (simplistic) custom browser, which will also let
| me annotate pages and edit files.
|
| I have looked into some of the indexing programs that look inside
| files and index their contents in a searchable fashion. They all
| take a vast amount of storage space, probably because over the
| decades I have amassed a vast amount of data. After
| experimentation I decided to pass on the indexers as well. I have
| always managed things in a rigid hierachical arrangement, and
| it's pretty easy to find what I'm looking for. On the other hand,
| I know what's there and where I put it, which makes it easy for
| me. It would be much less useful for someone else.
|
| Never underestimate the usefulness of a plain text file. It can
| be written, read, searched, and indexed by almost anything,
| should you wish to do so. Some of mine date back to the mid-1980s
| and MS-DOS 2.1, to OS/2 and Windows (briefly), Linux, and even
| Haiku. Every platform has subdirectories and some kind of editor;
| that's real portability. And if you ever have to deal with
| ancient machines that don't speak ASCII, much less UTF, there's
| probably some kind of conversion utility to let you move your
| files to IBM EBCDIC or DEC Sixbit.
|
| If you're running emacs, the "org mode" add-in uses lightly-
| formatted text files organize data, which is then available
| within the editor. It's worth looking at if you're an emacs user,
| assuming you're not using org mode already.
| niux wrote:
| I primarily use Logseq because I've found that outliners best
| align with my mental model. I mainly take notes within my daily
| journal. When I encounter something worth saving, I simply create
| a new entry. A typical day looks like this:
| https://i.imgur.com/wAiYgSY.png
|
| To categorize the information, I simply link the entry to a
| specific page. For example, if I discover an interesting React
| library, I create a new entry like this:
| https://i.imgur.com/dDlStkZ.png
|
| A great feature is that Logseq understands page hierarchies, so
| if I click on [[Dev/JS]], it presents a clear hierarchical
| overview: https://i.imgur.com/z9hGmmh.png
|
| Using this approach, I've stopped bookmarking sites in my browser
| altogether. In Logseq, I can connect useful things to each other,
| add entire notes, and more, as shown here:
| https://i.imgur.com/Krld2cS.png
|
| If I want to remember something, I just add a #card tag to the
| block, and it automatically syncs with Anki via a plugin.
| codingdave wrote:
| > However some of it should be retained manually in some system -
| or at least I feel it should.
|
| I question this premise. If the content you read on any given day
| did not the result in some change to your work product, it is
| really important enough to save it? Do you really need to
| remember all the messages, chats, articles that didn't give you
| any actionable answers? Or do you just keep the results that you
| created based on such things?
|
| I keep none of it. I do, however, keep all my old code. Every
| throwaway line I've ever written is saved somewhere, even if it
| is just in git history on old throwaway projects. So when I do
| need to do something again, I don't need to re-do research or
| figure it out from scratch... I have my working solutions already
| stored.
| ashwinsundar wrote:
| For things online, I just bookmark web pages in a folder called
| "Other". For written materials/books, I write notes in the
| margins or write free-hand notes on a piece of paper and insert
| it in the book somewhere. Then when I'm bored, instead of
| infinite-scrolling some stupid app, I try to pick out of the
| "Other" folder or read a book off the shelf. At least, that's
| what I aspire to do most of the time...
|
| I also decided that if something's worth remembering, I'll
| remember it. If it's not worth remembering, then I'm also not
| gonna both re-reading notes about it, no matter what note-taking
| tool or method I use...
| beret4breakfast wrote:
| I've been using obsidian for this for the past couple of years. I
| have lots of folders and notes for work projects along with notes
| for learning topics. I keep track of tasks and to do lists for me
| and people in my team (using #people/name tags).
|
| I have specific updates notes for each project. I add a weekly
| header (via a template) in reverse chronological order. Pull the
| key updates into that (I also have a todo for each project that
| pulls in tasks from all files in that project subfolder - so
| picks up meeting actions)
|
| I also put them all in a canvas so when I doing updates about
| projects they're all in one place.
|
| I do the same for people I manage so I can keep track of updates
| and todos when I'm meeting with them.
|
| My go to start point is a daily not where I throw in new tasks
| (tagged to projects or people) and those get pulled into the
| corresponding project/person file.
|
| Because it's markdown with lots of plugins it helps me do things
| like diagrams (mermaid diagrams) etc and excalidraw/canvas for
| architecting/mind map style ideation.
| subsection1h wrote:
| TIP: When asking for advice in relation to knowledge management,
| note-taking, etc., be sure to ask for precise details regarding
| commenters' solutions. There are many people who participate in
| these discussions who don't seem to take a lot of notes (e.g.,
| one file or paper notepad for all of their notes!).
|
| I have a personal knowledge base that currently includes almost
| 7,000 files in which I store my notes. I take notes on
| everything. Every technology. Every project. Every meeting. Every
| product I evaluate. EVERYTHING.
|
| My notes are stored in Org files that I edit with Emacs and Org
| mode[1]. Org files are written using a feature-rich lightweight
| markup language[2] that is much more powerful than Markdown
| (which is used by other note-taking tools like Obsidian). For
| example, Org supports plain text spreadsheets[3], a feature I
| love.
|
| People tend to disqualify Org and say, "I don't use Emacs," while
| assuming that Emacs users choose Org because we already use
| Emacs. But I started using Emacs specifically for Org, not
| programming.
|
| Regardless of which tool you end up using, consider organizing
| your note files using hierarchical tagging. I started using
| hierarchical tagging for my notes right after Wikipedia launched
| and I saw how effectively hierarchical tagging was being used
| there. Each Wikipedia article can belong to multiple categories,
| and each category can belong to multiple categories. This is
| hierarchical tagging, and it's worked great for my notes. At the
| bottom of every one of my Org files, there is a list named
| "Parent topics", and each parent file has its own "Parent topics"
| list (excluding the "main topics" files, which have no parents).
|
| [1] https://orgmode.org/
|
| [2] https://orgmode.org/features.html
|
| [3] https://orgmode.org/manual/The-Spreadsheet.html
| coolcase wrote:
| Confluence for work. Personal space has a TIL and Personal notes
| on what I am working on. I leave them fully shared for Rovo and
| other staff to discover.
|
| Every thing else is Confluence in team spaces. And Jira. Slack
| too.
|
| Things can be harder to find in Slack so that is more a second
| resort after Confluence.
| gmuslera wrote:
| Consolidate? All in a single place? Information comes from a lot
| of sources, in a lot of ways to be accessed, and a lot of ways to
| be shared and with who.
|
| A lot are notes or links collections in obsidian. Others may be
| canvas on slack channels or conversations, some cloud note taking
| apps depending on with who I am sharing or collaborating on them,
| bookmarks in browser or RSS reader, even chats with ChatGTP.
|
| In general it depends on where I got that piece of information or
| knowledge, what I plan to do with it, who I want to share it with
| and so on. There is no central consolidation process for all the
| diverse kinds of information, as there are "right" places to have
| them depending on it.
| paulcole wrote:
| I don't bother.
|
| You'll almost certainly never look at 99.9% of it again so just
| move on.
| rdtsc wrote:
| A git repo with text files (markdown) with names as tags
| separated by underscores (foo_bar_baz.md). Edit those with emacs.
| Periodically commit to be able to browse it by date.
|
| Search by file tags: ls *tag*
|
| Search by contents: rg topic
| raphaelty wrote:
| I created my personnal search engine to index and retrieve
| content I like. I like the idea of keeping track of content you
| like without too much effort.
|
| https://github.com/raphaelsty/knowledge
|
| I did not find yet a solution that suit me for knowledge which is
| not an online webpage / pdf.
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