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These programs will not help you organize your thoughts; they work if you have already organized them. Some seem to think the causation goes otherwise.

by oxff 4y ago

fluidcruft 4y ago
Generally I agree. But I actually think tooling can matter. And in particular I had a very good experience with logseq in terms of importing source documents and then processing them down and integrating them. The main reason logseq works for that is because of the block references (I don't know if other systems have that, but that's what made logseq different and interesting as a tool for processing knowledge). [Ultimately my problem with logseq is that as far as I know I can't run it through a browser self-hosted. Unfortunately that's what I need at work since I can't install anything and all the remote desktop things are blocked. I'm mostly an idiot about electron but I wish it functioned like X11 forwarding where you could install an app on a port and browse to it remotely.]
- oxff 4y ago
  logseq feels such an anti-intuitive mess to use, haha. struggling to even get the cards work.
  - fluidcruft 4y ago
    Yeah I agree about that. I actually didn't figure out what it can do and how it can be used until I watched a few youtube videos watching other people actually use it and then it clicked. The video that helped me get a vision of ways I can use it was https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PN6tjeQfxRc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PN6tjeQfxRc This is nitpicking but I wish there were more videos of people just using PKM systems without all the talking about philosophy of note taking etc. A lot of the video was "... wait, you can do that? I want to do that. How the hell did she do that?" which is a good way to learn the tool, but can be frustrating. Of note: My mode of writing is to collect/generate messes of ideas and then clean them up and organize them iteratively to create structure and polish. I'm one of the people who used to write on index cards and then compose by rearranging them on my bed. I loved abusing Word's outline mode for rough drafts and restructuring and refactoring text and have been trying to explain the missing functionality to OpenOffice.org/LibreOffice for over a decade ("we have outline mode you just click the thing" "no it's not about creating an outline of document structure" "hey we improved outline check it out see if it looks better" loops). So when I saw some of logseq in action it was an "omg this looks even better than Word's outline mode" sort of thing. The next thing I wish logseq would do is allow you to double click to explode paragraphs and temporarily separate sentences into bullets for processing and reorganizing.
lijogdfljk 4y ago
I'm generally not looking to organize my thoughts. I'm looking to record my conclusions and ideally some way to see the history of that. I too often feel like my brain is like Twitter/etc. I read an article, but summarize it heavily and forget the rest. I want to A: record the summary, so at least i don't forget that, and B: ideally record a few facts that lead to that summary-conlusion-thing. So if i have to rethink my conclusion i'll know what source material it came from.
selykg 4y ago
The apps themselves HELP. But you need a system. Something like Building a Second Brain (with CODE and PARA) or Linking Your Thinking. The system helps, but the app enables the system.
bribri 4y ago
I held off taking notes for many years because of this line of thinking. Now I view taking notes as active learning. Highly recommend the book “how to take smart notes”

These programs will not help you organize your thoughts; they work if you have already organized them. Some seem to think the causation goes otherwise.

by oxff 4y ago

These programs will not help you organize your thoughts; they work if you have already organized them. Some seem to think the causation goes otherwise.

fluidcruft 4y ago

Generally I agree. But I actually think tooling can matter. And in particular I had a very good experience with logseq in terms of importing source documents and then processing them down and integrating them. The main reason logseq works for that is because of the block references (I don't know if other systems have that, but that's what made logseq different and interesting as a tool for processing knowledge). [Ultimately my problem with logseq is that as far as I know I can't run it through a browser self-hosted. Unfortunately that's what I need at work since I can't install anything and all the remote desktop things are blocked. I'm mostly an idiot about electron but I wish it functioned like X11 forwarding where you could install an app on a port and browse to it remotely.]

oxff 4y ago
logseq feels such an anti-intuitive mess to use, haha. struggling to even get the cards work.
- fluidcruft 4y ago
  Yeah I agree about that. I actually didn't figure out what it can do and how it can be used until I watched a few youtube videos watching other people actually use it and then it clicked. The video that helped me get a vision of ways I can use it was https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PN6tjeQfxRc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PN6tjeQfxRc This is nitpicking but I wish there were more videos of people just using PKM systems without all the talking about philosophy of note taking etc. A lot of the video was "... wait, you can do that? I want to do that. How the hell did she do that?" which is a good way to learn the tool, but can be frustrating. Of note: My mode of writing is to collect/generate messes of ideas and then clean them up and organize them iteratively to create structure and polish. I'm one of the people who used to write on index cards and then compose by rearranging them on my bed. I loved abusing Word's outline mode for rough drafts and restructuring and refactoring text and have been trying to explain the missing functionality to OpenOffice.org/LibreOffice for over a decade ("we have outline mode you just click the thing" "no it's not about creating an outline of document structure" "hey we improved outline check it out see if it looks better" loops). So when I saw some of logseq in action it was an "omg this looks even better than Word's outline mode" sort of thing. The next thing I wish logseq would do is allow you to double click to explode paragraphs and temporarily separate sentences into bullets for processing and reorganizing.

lijogdfljk 4y ago

I'm generally not looking to organize my thoughts. I'm looking to record my conclusions and ideally some way to see the history of that. I too often feel like my brain is like Twitter/etc. I read an article, but summarize it heavily and forget the rest. I want to A: record the summary, so at least i don't forget that, and B: ideally record a few facts that lead to that summary-conlusion-thing. So if i have to rethink my conclusion i'll know what source material it came from.

selykg 4y ago

The apps themselves HELP. But you need a system. Something like Building a Second Brain (with CODE and PARA) or Linking Your Thinking. The system helps, but the app enables the system.

bribri 4y ago

I held off taking notes for many years because of this line of thinking. Now I view taking notes as active learning. Highly recommend the book “how to take smart notes”