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I use plain text files (1 markdown doc per day) + grep so kind of in line with your recommendation here. But I've also tried Obsidian/Logseq and stuff like that

I use plain text files (1 markdown doc per day) + grep so kind of in line with your recommendation here. But I've also tried Obsidian/Logseq and stuff like that for complex topics with interlinking, and I still think backlinks & knowledge graphs are useful and maybe better than just grep. Basic search relies on you to remember some keyword you want to search on, but networked notes let you traverse your old notes in faster more productive ways. I revisit old notes maybe once a month, and every time I do that I wonder why I still haven't migrated fully to Logseq. > Such features are just productivity industry nonsense to make you feel productive while the content remains elusive to your mind. Don't forget that everyone has a different workflow and what works for you might not be ideal for someone else. Also Obsidian/Logseq are both free vs Roam/Notion/etc -- some people just intensely incorporate notes as a part of their workflow.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
waboremo 3y ago
Are they faster more productive ways though? You're still operating off keywords. It combines the mechanical effort of tags, with the mental upkeep required to remember which notes can be linked. Not great. I do agree everyone has a different workflow, but also you're a really good example of why the productivity is so massive despite the very little improvement to productivity brought on by these additional services: everyone is so desperately trying to convince themselves a better workflow is right around the corner. That someone else has a superior workflow, you just have to use that new app or service. Repeat every time a new gimmick comes out.
- zmgsabst 3y ago
  But synthesizing your notes into tags and remember the index of tags is learning! Isn’t that the goal — to process your notes, so as to come to new insights and connections?
  - melagonster 3y ago
    some people have huge notebooks in real world, appended tags by sticky note or colour.
- Capricorn2481 3y ago
  What do you mean by remembering which notes can be linked
  - arbitrandomuser 3y ago
    I've never used obsidian or zettelkasten based notes app . I only have a vague idea of how they operate . It's something I've wondered how one would do effectively. When adding a new note , how would one know what are the relevant notes one has to link the current notes to ? It seems a bit stressful .One has to go through O(N) notes every time a new note is added to find all possible links . I think what the original commenter meant was not to worry about these structuring in your notes , "letting it go" . Else it can tend to become productivity masturbation.
- nawgz 3y ago
  > Are there faster more productive ways though? I mean, given that you pose this question and leave it entirely unanswered, the rest of your response reads pretty condescendingly to me. A knowledge graph in markdown is not propped up by Big Notetaking, what an asinine stance.
- deafpolygon 3y ago
  > Are they faster more productive ways though? I have ADHD, and I couldn't function without my notes.
- jdironman 3y ago
  I think this is an avenue LLMs will shine. Contextual search. "I was writing about one idea for an app I had a few weeks back. I think it had something to do with a calendar? Can you help?" And that should be enough for GPT4 to actually act on I'd say.
  - kajecounterhack 3y ago
    If you're okay with losing the privacy of your notes. A locally hosted model seems more reasonable, though I don't know when it'll get good enough to have the context it needs to do proper search in a thicc stack of notes. Something something vector databases, I guess.
    - thelittleone 3y ago
      Sure it will. I've got similar setups working effectively with both OpenAI Api and Falcon. Though there is room for improvement, it's moving at a rapid enough pace and it's already better than old school search.
    - patrickk 3y ago
      There are (probably many) solutions being developed for this. Open source, self-hosted LLMs that can be used to query private data sets. You can query private data sets with an LLM hosted on your local machine. There are some projects online doing these kinds of projects with LangChain and using the leaked Meta LLM. It also ties into the "second brain" concept, being able to query your own data exclusively (there's a book on this, but you can get the gist of the concept on youtube). I myself have a huge OneNote notebook, with all kinds of interesting projects or snippets that I've collected from HN or Reddit over the years. Being able to query that like a super-smart friend ("what was the error I ran into when I tried to implemt a self-hosted Synapse instance? How I can I fix that?") would be insane for personal productivity.
    - midoBB 3y ago
      I think Apple is working on on-device LLM training. Which can fix this for privacy if they are actually handling it on-device.
- kajecounterhack 3y ago
  > Are they faster more productive ways though? You're still operating off keywords It's explore vs exploit (or hash table vs graph lookup); keywords are faster if you know what you're looking for. But reviewing linked notes leads to more exploration about related topics, and walking the graph can still be a reasonably efficient way to find what you're looking for. If you adopt networked notes, you get both at the cost of some notetaking overhead, but it's typically pretty small. The one thing I hate about some of the notetaking apps is (and I understand folks need to make money) notes are really personal and private and need to stand the test of time. I can't have my notes locked away in a proprietary format or held hostage by some company charging $/mo so Notion is a no-go for me. I also don't really want to get locked into a workflow only to find out that the app is discontinued and then have to reinvent my workflow. But yeah, networked thought is still cool and totally unrelated to why I don't use typical networked thought tools. Logseq came closest to converting me.
Vrondi 3y ago
You caught my interest, so I went to look at LogSeq. I began to get excited, then got a message from the live demo that it requires Chromium. Oh, well. So much for that.
- kajecounterhack 3y ago
  What's your opposition to Chromium? Do you use a low powered machine? I've sucked it up and use a ton of electron apps. I can hardly blame anyone for doing that given the terrible fragmentation of hardware and lack of easier to use unifying APIs. Sometimes we just don't have time for that shit :)
- fivestones 3y ago
  What OS are you on? Linux? I’m on MacOS and there’s just an electron app which runs fine. Yeah maybe it’s Chromium underneath but I don’t need to know it, and can keep right on using Firefox as my daily driver for the web alongside the Logseq app for notes.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

waboremo 3y ago

Are they faster more productive ways though? You're still operating off keywords. It combines the mechanical effort of tags, with the mental upkeep required to remember which notes can be linked. Not great. I do agree everyone has a different workflow, but also you're a really good example of why the productivity is so massive despite the very little improvement to productivity brought on by these additional services: everyone is so desperately trying to convince themselves a better workflow is right around the corner. That someone else has a superior workflow, you just have to use that new app or service. Repeat every time a new gimmick comes out.

zmgsabst 3y ago
But synthesizing your notes into tags and remember the index of tags is learning! Isn’t that the goal — to process your notes, so as to come to new insights and connections?
- melagonster 3y ago
  some people have huge notebooks in real world, appended tags by sticky note or colour.
Capricorn2481 3y ago
What do you mean by remembering which notes can be linked
- arbitrandomuser 3y ago
  I've never used obsidian or zettelkasten based notes app . I only have a vague idea of how they operate . It's something I've wondered how one would do effectively. When adding a new note , how would one know what are the relevant notes one has to link the current notes to ? It seems a bit stressful .One has to go through O(N) notes every time a new note is added to find all possible links . I think what the original commenter meant was not to worry about these structuring in your notes , "letting it go" . Else it can tend to become productivity masturbation.
nawgz 3y ago
> Are there faster more productive ways though? I mean, given that you pose this question and leave it entirely unanswered, the rest of your response reads pretty condescendingly to me. A knowledge graph in markdown is not propped up by Big Notetaking, what an asinine stance.
deafpolygon 3y ago
> Are they faster more productive ways though? I have ADHD, and I couldn't function without my notes.
jdironman 3y ago
I think this is an avenue LLMs will shine. Contextual search. "I was writing about one idea for an app I had a few weeks back. I think it had something to do with a calendar? Can you help?" And that should be enough for GPT4 to actually act on I'd say.
- kajecounterhack 3y ago
  If you're okay with losing the privacy of your notes. A locally hosted model seems more reasonable, though I don't know when it'll get good enough to have the context it needs to do proper search in a thicc stack of notes. Something something vector databases, I guess.
  - thelittleone 3y ago
    Sure it will. I've got similar setups working effectively with both OpenAI Api and Falcon. Though there is room for improvement, it's moving at a rapid enough pace and it's already better than old school search.
  - patrickk 3y ago
    There are (probably many) solutions being developed for this. Open source, self-hosted LLMs that can be used to query private data sets. You can query private data sets with an LLM hosted on your local machine. There are some projects online doing these kinds of projects with LangChain and using the leaked Meta LLM. It also ties into the "second brain" concept, being able to query your own data exclusively (there's a book on this, but you can get the gist of the concept on youtube). I myself have a huge OneNote notebook, with all kinds of interesting projects or snippets that I've collected from HN or Reddit over the years. Being able to query that like a super-smart friend ("what was the error I ran into when I tried to implemt a self-hosted Synapse instance? How I can I fix that?") would be insane for personal productivity.
  - midoBB 3y ago
    I think Apple is working on on-device LLM training. Which can fix this for privacy if they are actually handling it on-device.
kajecounterhack 3y ago
> Are they faster more productive ways though? You're still operating off keywords It's explore vs exploit (or hash table vs graph lookup); keywords are faster if you know what you're looking for. But reviewing linked notes leads to more exploration about related topics, and walking the graph can still be a reasonably efficient way to find what you're looking for. If you adopt networked notes, you get both at the cost of some notetaking overhead, but it's typically pretty small. The one thing I hate about some of the notetaking apps is (and I understand folks need to make money) notes are really personal and private and need to stand the test of time. I can't have my notes locked away in a proprietary format or held hostage by some company charging $/mo so Notion is a no-go for me. I also don't really want to get locked into a workflow only to find out that the app is discontinued and then have to reinvent my workflow. But yeah, networked thought is still cool and totally unrelated to why I don't use typical networked thought tools. Logseq came closest to converting me.

Vrondi 3y ago

You caught my interest, so I went to look at LogSeq. I began to get excited, then got a message from the live demo that it requires Chromium. Oh, well. So much for that.

kajecounterhack 3y ago
What's your opposition to Chromium? Do you use a low powered machine? I've sucked it up and use a ton of electron apps. I can hardly blame anyone for doing that given the terrible fragmentation of hardware and lack of easier to use unifying APIs. Sometimes we just don't have time for that shit :)
fivestones 3y ago
What OS are you on? Linux? I’m on MacOS and there’s just an electron app which runs fine. Yeah maybe it’s Chromium underneath but I don’t need to know it, and can keep right on using Firefox as my daily driver for the web alongside the Logseq app for notes.