How do you go from information sources like twitter, forums, reddit, news articles, blogs, etc to active knowledge?

[escher]

I have a lot of bookmarks but they aren’t really useful as they’re just links sitting in some poorly design folders. I’d like to have a pipeline from seeing an interesting link online to dissecting the knowledge and storing it in Obsidian.

What do you do for this problem?

[edward]

I combine a lot of things in my PKM workflow.

• In general, Evernote is the initial dumping ground of external information.
  • If it’s an article, I can perform progressive summarization in subsequent re-reads.
• Various highlights from different sources are automatically synced to my Readwise for spaced-repetition.
• Curated notes are put in Obsidian so they could be linked with other knowledge
• Finally, I put things I want to be able to recall with little effort into Anki Flashcards (active recall + spaced repetition)

I also have a task management / project management workflow:

• I use the PARA method in all of my apps to organize information into horizons of actionability
• I use GTD for task management with Things
• I use Notion for project management / dashboards

Starting from the bottom (raw information from the internet / books)

• archives / references -> Evernote
• miscellaneous snippets -> Evernote
• paper books
  • -> GoodReads for bookmarks
  • -> Readwise for highlights/notes
• digital books
  • -> MarginNotes for book specific mindmaps
  • -> Readwise for highlights/notes
• online articles -> Instapaper (highlights/notes) -> Readwise (auto-synced)
• podcasts -> Airr (Airr “quotes”) -> Readwise (auto-synced)

A lot of bookmarks aren’t immediately actionable information so I archive them in databases in Notion:

• Online courses list
• Tutorials list
• Follow list (people, projects, and organizations)
• Maps and lists (Websites that curate maps/lists to other resources)

For people, projects, and organizations that have an RSS feed, I subscribe to them on Reeder 5.

If I really like some information from these raw sources, I can write Evergreen notes / follow the Zettelkasten method and put them in Obsidian.

I made an infographic for my system for reference.

Hope this was helpful

[icebear]

I like using the Roam Highlighter plugin to quickly copy a link and bulleted highlights. This quickly goes into a “Seeds” folder in Obsidian, and then I move on. This way I can also go there to tinker various seeds into a proper note. For me this works as it incorporates that sometimes I’m only interested in consuming media, and other times I’m in the mood for crafting my own notes from past highlights.

I also mercilessly delete or merge seeds that seem useless later on, which I think is important in reducing clutter.

[EleanorKonik]

Honestly I use the daily notes plugin to create a resonance calendar (except I use conversational-style prose instead of tags and flags, beside the link); every time I see something interesting I want to take notes on but don’t have time to do it “right” I basically record my top-level thoughts and big-picture takeaways on the calendar with as many links to why I might want that information later I can think of.

Then when I’m on a relevant or related page, I see that daily note in the backlinks panel, and then since it’s relevant for real this time I update the note.

Here’s an example: