What is your Personal Knowledge Management problem?

Integration

  • I’ve been using OneNote for a really long time now. but they’ve stopped developing the software, the app ecosystem sucks bigtime. Transferring to Notion and Evernote cant be done without distorting my organisation.

  • Obsidian as cool and straightforward as it is doesn’t offer a solution for viewing or editing my notes in the android device.

  • Notion doesn’t allow offline support which makes me really scared. What if they hut down and everything is lost?

  • Obsidian doesn’t have WYSIWYM which is a bummer.

1 Like

I have rather big collection of quotes from different books. There are three pieces of information: Author name, Book title and Quotes. Right now the collection is stored in Apple Notes in linear form like this:

Note title: Author name. "Book title"

Note body: Quotes (Unordered list)

Looking for suggestions: how would you restructure this in networked way? Or current linear representation is good enough?

Thanks!

2 Likes

yeah I’ve run into the issue, I usually give it a long name. From just the way I learn, I try to find in each lemma the “crux” or key idea or step i.e. if I could only remember one thing about the lemma, what is it?

I then just give it that name.

I’m not really sure how zettelkasten works though?

1 Like

I’ve mainly just been splitting “special case” so single-variable calculus is a special case of multi-variable etc. The gradient vector is also a covariant tensor etc.

My main process has been writing in traditional note form, then going back and processing it into smaller notes.

That’s what I’m doing right now, and I have to admit I didn’t run into issues yet. But I’m sure there’ll be some lemma that I won’t be able to summarise in one sentence.

As for Zettelkasten, I’d recommend you to check out this blogpost or this video (preferable). Well worth your time, I assure you.

3 Likes

Evernote has a web plugin for Chrome that will show search results from your notes alongside the online results every time you use a search engine. This has helped me (sometimes) avoid this problem. I am constantly surprised to see that I have searched and taken notes on something already, sometimes years ago!

1 Like

iOS. I’m with my iOS devices much more than I’m with my laptop. I’m also always with my iPhone when I have time to kill … time that would be perfect for working with my Zettelkasten. 1Writer is fine, but it’s a different environment with different rules. I’d like to have a system with feature parity across devices. I don’t like having to think about making things work more than I have to.

3 Likes

what do you mean by tree structure vs. graph view?

  1. All pasted screenshots are named Pasted image1.png, Pasted image2.png, etc.

As far as this goes, I’ve been happy with ctrl-clicking the image link and renaming the file each time I paste one, but that could get annoying if you need to do it 20+ times…

1 Like

My PKM problem is find a way to simply my system: I have apps for capture (like Pocket and Evernote), for metadata (Zotero), for searching (DevonThink), for notes (Obsidian) and for writing (Scrivener) and a system for archiving files in my computer. This creates too much friction. But at least it works (most of the times).

1 Like

Just to add my $0.02 here.

Tried various apps and systems and what not, and Obsidian is checking a lot of the boxes for me.

But the one constant problem cutting across all of them is the “gardening” or “weeding” of the sea of notes that accumulate over time. It becomes a question of how much time is needed to ensure they remain (1) discoverable and (2) “relevantly-connected”.

Something that works in Obsidian’s favor (IMO) is its open format; I’m confident of being able to find and change the “internal structure” to my whim.

2 Likes

With obsidian and markdown files you can do the same thing with windows search.
Let windows index your vault and I search with windows if I have something about it.
(You need clear filename tho)

If I don’t find anything I can go to web results in the search.

I am currently working through a history course and have a lot of dates. I started with tags, then migrated to [[1814]] links. Now I am realizing that I need to include months and sometimes days. Wouldn’t be a problem but for the giant “fireworks” in my graph of whole centuries. Otherwise, the link events across topics by date, I have to go in and at least create the note. How are y’all handling dates in text?

@scootshep Same with you. With past date, inside a timestamp note I have to create the related month and year link as well. Just so things come up in backlinks on that year link.

I use a template for it to help a bit, but it’s a bit manual there. Just ctrl or cmd click to make creating notes faster at least haha then ctrl/cmd +w to close note close note close note

Although I’ve also been using just the search pane to be honest.

Formatting things as 2020-11-11 when applicable. Searching 2020-11 to find all dates.

So far have mostly been creating dates for future events.

My notes for the day, month, and year have #day, #month, #year in them so I can find them. At least that’s how I’ve been using #day haha.

Haven’t been using Obsidian for long yet.

Mine is the “capturing” part. I know there are aggregating services out there like Readwise (which I haven’t yet used) but I take notes from so many different sources nowadays such as paper notes, photos, screenshots, podcasts, YouTube videos, movies, articles, etc.

Anything that isn’t inherently text based becomes a pain to know how to capture, in what format and where to put it temporarily. I know I need some sort of digital, cloud-based “in-tray” or “holding pen” before these get processed to go into Obsidian but I haven’t found a solution just yet.

1 Like

I manage a property designated as a Wildlife Area with a focus on native plants and pollinators. A useful knowledge base would include an inventory of plants and “critters” permanently living on the property as well as a record of census counts when birds and pollinators migrate through the area. Part of the management is propagating food source plants for pollinators. That requires knowledge about what plants are growing where and thriving under what conditions, other suitable growing areas on the property, what time of years should seeds be harvested or cuttings transplanted.

It is clear that Obsidian is a very good tool for documenting the existing plants and wildlife as well as their relationships. Where I’m struggling is trying to decide if this tool can be used to plan activities on a project calendar.

1 Like