3 ms·

YAGNI has merit for sure, and bookmarks may work for you, but they certainly are not enough for everyone. You cant do search within of all bookmarks at once, hi

YAGNI has merit for sure, and bookmarks may work for you, but they certainly are not enough for everyone. You cant do search within of all bookmarks at once, highlights, notes or spaced repetition integration of highlights with simple bookmarks. I applaud your minimalistic workflow, however, ive always found bookmarks next to useless (i still use them). Of course thats my own problem, just pointing out what benefits I get using other tools.

csdvrx 5y ago
> You cant do search within of all bookmarks at once, highlights, notes or spaced repetition integration of highlights with simple bookmarks. Yes you can. Use sqlite on the underlying datasource and some minor scripting. > ive always found bookmarks next to useless You need to change your view on bookmarks: they are mostly a data source. Nobody maintains a carefully crafted tree of bookmarks, if only because interests and personal ontologies change with time. Instead of expecting yourself to click on your bookmarks, see them as providing extra data to create your own JIT approach, that will depend on algorithms and automation instead of requiring you to do many things by hand (including reading and summarizing) If you want to write something, here's a simple candidate heuristic for such a score: - level 0 is if you've visited the page at least once (if you haven't, you can't include it in your search) - level 1 is if you've visited the page more than once, then and how frequently / recently - level 2 is if you've bookmarked the page - level 3 is if you still have a tab or a collection (in Edge) featuring this page The Ctrl-F approach is the simplest way to test the efficiency of a JIT approach, and to let you compare it to the complex proactive approaches often suggested (which require effort, and will waste a lot of time for sure on the 99.99% cases where YAGNI) Notice how without even touching sqlite, you can Ctrl-F in different places to hit level 0 (history), level 2 (bookmarks), level 3 (this one depends on your OS and how you can search active windows) You'll get over 80% of the benefits for far less time spent on it. If you really insist on making some DIY solution, using the time gained to improve the way you can use these datasources by putting them under one umbrella is likely to give you more gains than any approach requiring so many manual steps and tweaks. It's like new years resolution: you'll give up after a while because of the effort/commitment required. Except it's worse, because you'll have wasted time and money creating a complicated knowledge assimilation stack, while you could have use the same amount of effort to do something you're more likely to stick to, as it requires less effort. The approach suggested here still requires highlighting and writing a note. I have no time for that: I read, and if something is interesting, I bookmark and hope I will remember the keywords. And if I didn't even bookmark, as long as I more or less remember some keywords, I will be able to find that on DDG in a few minutes.
- penjelly 5y ago
  let me start by saying i love this idea. > You need to change your view on bookmarks: they are mostly a data source. ill try to integrate this mental model. But still this seems far less flexible for me then what is currently set up. I spend very little time maintaining my setup, actually to me its conducive to how i read articles in general. Highlighting for example, if i see something important ill reread the sentence until im sure i understand what of its point/implications. i nearly always have time to highlight something.. > I bookmark and hope I will remember the keywords. i dont see this as a reliable system. My memory is not perfect. > Except it's worse, because you'll have wasted time and money creating a complicated knowledge assimilation stack its no different then your 4 level process just outlined, which even relies on sql, a deal breaker for ~95% of the population. you still have a mental model for your system, same as i do. You're correct on the money aspect. But to me the value far exceeds the cost. The setup is frankly very simple, save article for now or later, read, highlight anything interesting and add my thoughts, those automatically appear anywhere i need them device wise, and spaced reptition is automatically sent to me each morning. I wouldnt switch to manually writing SQL queries of bookmarks and relying on my memory if you paid me. > It's like new years resolution: you'll give up after a while because of the effort/commitment required On the contrary.. i rely on simple short habits and system building to be efficient long term. My setup fits both those criteria. -- But again, this stuff ultimately is a preference, your tone almost seems to suggest everyone should only set bookmarks and search their contents using SQL queries, which is mind boggling to me. Your perspective is appreciated however.
  - csdvrx 5y ago
    > But still this seems far less flexible for me then what is currently set up It totally is. It's also far less costly in time. > i nearly always have time to highlight something.. I don't. I guess we have different usecase > My memory is not perfect Exactly! And it's a feature!! See that as a mechanism to purge an entry from the cache if it hasn't been refreshed for a while. The problem with bookmarks (and TODO, and everything) is that they tend to accumulate, since there's no natural pruning mechanism. So you need to only use them as a data source, or augment them with some algorithm to extract what remains relevant. > you still have a mental model for your system, same as i do My model runs in the background, and doesn't depend on any action. If at any point in time I need something, I'll fire up a query that will hit all datasources to give me a list of possibilities sorted by this rough score, so something in edge collections (level 4) will be above something in level 3 etc. Someone here gave stats: in 4 years, for 7000 entries, they used their system 20 times. That's like a 0.28% usefulness. It's not worth spending much time on. > I wouldnt switch to manually writing SQL queries of bookmarks and relying on my memory if you paid me. Well, if your system makes you happy, stick to it. Personally, I prefer to optimize my workflow for 99.72% of the usecases than the 0.28% > this stuff ultimately is a preference Totally > your tone almost seems to suggest everyone should only set bookmarks and search their contents using SQL queries If you got that impression, sorry. I think your system would work for people who are say researchers and need to carefully read and categorize everything. My personal belief is that isn't the case for the modal HN reader, and that they'll be best served by being lazy and avoiding premature optimization - and if they really want to optimize, maybe they can start tapping into the data that's already collected (bookmarks, timestamped visit) some of it automatically instead of creating a parallel workflow that's highly dependent on their ability to do some manual tasks (highlighting, reading, annotating) that will require a lot of effort considering it will be useless about 99.72% of the time

csdvrx 5y ago

> You cant do search within of all bookmarks at once, highlights, notes or spaced repetition integration of highlights with simple bookmarks. Yes you can. Use sqlite on the underlying datasource and some minor scripting. > ive always found bookmarks next to useless You need to change your view on bookmarks: they are mostly a data source. Nobody maintains a carefully crafted tree of bookmarks, if only because interests and personal ontologies change with time. Instead of expecting yourself to click on your bookmarks, see them as providing extra data to create your own JIT approach, that will depend on algorithms and automation instead of requiring you to do many things by hand (including reading and summarizing) If you want to write something, here's a simple candidate heuristic for such a score: - level 0 is if you've visited the page at least once (if you haven't, you can't include it in your search) - level 1 is if you've visited the page more than once, then and how frequently / recently - level 2 is if you've bookmarked the page - level 3 is if you still have a tab or a collection (in Edge) featuring this page The Ctrl-F approach is the simplest way to test the efficiency of a JIT approach, and to let you compare it to the complex proactive approaches often suggested (which require effort, and will waste a lot of time for sure on the 99.99% cases where YAGNI) Notice how without even touching sqlite, you can Ctrl-F in different places to hit level 0 (history), level 2 (bookmarks), level 3 (this one depends on your OS and how you can search active windows) You'll get over 80% of the benefits for far less time spent on it. If you really insist on making some DIY solution, using the time gained to improve the way you can use these datasources by putting them under one umbrella is likely to give you more gains than any approach requiring so many manual steps and tweaks. It's like new years resolution: you'll give up after a while because of the effort/commitment required. Except it's worse, because you'll have wasted time and money creating a complicated knowledge assimilation stack, while you could have use the same amount of effort to do something you're more likely to stick to, as it requires less effort. The approach suggested here still requires highlighting and writing a note. I have no time for that: I read, and if something is interesting, I bookmark and hope I will remember the keywords. And if I didn't even bookmark, as long as I more or less remember some keywords, I will be able to find that on DDG in a few minutes.

penjelly 5y ago
let me start by saying i love this idea. > You need to change your view on bookmarks: they are mostly a data source. ill try to integrate this mental model. But still this seems far less flexible for me then what is currently set up. I spend very little time maintaining my setup, actually to me its conducive to how i read articles in general. Highlighting for example, if i see something important ill reread the sentence until im sure i understand what of its point/implications. i nearly always have time to highlight something.. > I bookmark and hope I will remember the keywords. i dont see this as a reliable system. My memory is not perfect. > Except it's worse, because you'll have wasted time and money creating a complicated knowledge assimilation stack its no different then your 4 level process just outlined, which even relies on sql, a deal breaker for ~95% of the population. you still have a mental model for your system, same as i do. You're correct on the money aspect. But to me the value far exceeds the cost. The setup is frankly very simple, save article for now or later, read, highlight anything interesting and add my thoughts, those automatically appear anywhere i need them device wise, and spaced reptition is automatically sent to me each morning. I wouldnt switch to manually writing SQL queries of bookmarks and relying on my memory if you paid me. > It's like new years resolution: you'll give up after a while because of the effort/commitment required On the contrary.. i rely on simple short habits and system building to be efficient long term. My setup fits both those criteria. -- But again, this stuff ultimately is a preference, your tone almost seems to suggest everyone should only set bookmarks and search their contents using SQL queries, which is mind boggling to me. Your perspective is appreciated however.
- csdvrx 5y ago
  > But still this seems far less flexible for me then what is currently set up It totally is. It's also far less costly in time. > i nearly always have time to highlight something.. I don't. I guess we have different usecase > My memory is not perfect Exactly! And it's a feature!! See that as a mechanism to purge an entry from the cache if it hasn't been refreshed for a while. The problem with bookmarks (and TODO, and everything) is that they tend to accumulate, since there's no natural pruning mechanism. So you need to only use them as a data source, or augment them with some algorithm to extract what remains relevant. > you still have a mental model for your system, same as i do My model runs in the background, and doesn't depend on any action. If at any point in time I need something, I'll fire up a query that will hit all datasources to give me a list of possibilities sorted by this rough score, so something in edge collections (level 4) will be above something in level 3 etc. Someone here gave stats: in 4 years, for 7000 entries, they used their system 20 times. That's like a 0.28% usefulness. It's not worth spending much time on. > I wouldnt switch to manually writing SQL queries of bookmarks and relying on my memory if you paid me. Well, if your system makes you happy, stick to it. Personally, I prefer to optimize my workflow for 99.72% of the usecases than the 0.28% > this stuff ultimately is a preference Totally > your tone almost seems to suggest everyone should only set bookmarks and search their contents using SQL queries If you got that impression, sorry. I think your system would work for people who are say researchers and need to carefully read and categorize everything. My personal belief is that isn't the case for the modal HN reader, and that they'll be best served by being lazy and avoiding premature optimization - and if they really want to optimize, maybe they can start tapping into the data that's already collected (bookmarks, timestamped visit) some of it automatically instead of creating a parallel workflow that's highly dependent on their ability to do some manual tasks (highlighting, reading, annotating) that will require a lot of effort considering it will be useless about 99.72% of the time