[HN Gopher] Tools for Thinking ___________________________________________________________________ Tools for Thinking Author : juliend2 Score : 219 points Date : 2021-08-24 17:34 UTC (1 days ago) (HTM) web link (www.juliendesrosiers.com) (TXT) w3m dump (www.juliendesrosiers.com) | civilized wrote: | Does anyone get anything out of mind-map visualizations? | Everybody loves to show a screencap of their latest diagram, with | all the circles and colorful connector lines, but do they ever | actually help anyone realize anything? | | In my experience, this sort of visualization is good for mapping | out an actual complex, sequential/staged process (and for that, | one would instead use actual dedicated diagram maker apps). But | other than that, it seems to be mostly for note-taking app makers | to show off to show how cool their app is. | symkat wrote: | > do they ever actually help anyone realize anything? | | Mind maps help me realize things. I use a conference room | whiteboard rather than an app. | | Starting with asking a question as the root node like "Goals?" | and then putting goals around that, and then from those goals, | things I'd need to do to accomplish them. "Obligations?" and | writing out various people/places/things I have obligations to, | and then next what it means to fulfill those obligations. | | Being able to look at it all on the whiteboard and pace around | a bit seems to be very useful for me. This type of thing helps | me sort things out and frequently I have realizations during it | that make things more clear. | | I mostly do project planning in outlines, but sometimes I will | break out the whiteboard. Sometimes those are mind maps and | will make me see missing pieces; frequently, I suppose they're | diagrams and may not count. | civilized wrote: | Have you ever tried doing this with a plain text Markdown | file with hierarchy (headers/subheaders)? or an outlining | tool (emacs org-mode etc)? or a spreadsheet? What do you see | as the advantages of the mind-map method? | symkat wrote: | I've used all of those to organize ideas for different | things. Markdown files with hierarchy for planning blog | articles, talks. An outlining tool (OmniOutliner or vim | with * and indentations) for project planning from building | things to cleaning my office. Spreadsheets for figuring out | how I'm managing time and using the cells to represent time | I'm awake in the week. | | I think the advantage of the mind map is using it as a tool | to explore things I'm not entirely sure about and get more | depth on them. Like in my examples, I choose Goals and | Obligations as things I had used mind mapping for | exploring. Once I have some of them written on the | whiteboard, more like items start to come to mind that | might not otherwise. I might also be conflating the value | of any of the elements of this -- pacing in front of the | whiteboard, it being a more physical representation by | being big and hand-drawn, that it starts to look a bit like | a puzzle. Then it starts to present all of these questions. | Like after mapping out what my obligations were, it made | sense to ask, "well, why?", and then tie those to core | reasons, which started to get into agreements, which then | made me think about agreements. Why do we form agreements? | In a way, I suppose it's giving me space to go on a | somewhat controlled and documented deep dive into my | thoughts. | civilized wrote: | Thank you! This resonates a lot with my experience. In | particular, sometimes making writing more of a physical | exercise is helpful. | ssss11 wrote: | They've helped me in the past realise project/idea scope - | breaking it down. Although I often do that breaking down with | heirarchical lists... mind maps aren't a game changer for me. | memling wrote: | There's this scene in Finding Forrester where Sean Connery | marks up a manuscript with the phrase "constipated thinking." | Mind mapping for me is a way to grease the skids, as it were, | since the hardest part in organizing thoughts is just getting | them down. While I prefer pen and paper--the tactile sense of | it helps me--the mind map is a useful tool for taking what is | essentially a disorganized mass of thoughts and figuring out | how to organize it. | phailhaus wrote: | Highly recommend Workflowy (https://workflowy.com/). Its core | idea is just recursive lists. Everything is a list, and every | bullet can be expanded to become a top-level list. I've found | this to be the most natural way for me to organize information, | and there is a satisfying symmetry to it. | | The developers are also clearly careful when adding new features, | since they always compose well with existing functionality and | create a multiplier effect on productivity. | Dyac wrote: | +1. I've been using it for the best part of a decade. I've | tried other things but always come back to workflowy. | | It was kinda stagnant for years, but in the past year or so | there's been a lot of new features. | | In think it's a YC company too, so the developers are probably | here... | phailhaus wrote: | Mirroring + templates is a gamechanger. Being able to create | boards is also really nice; whoever realized that lists are | isomorphic to boards is a genius. You can switch between the | two seamlessly without ever being afraid of losing | information or causing unintended side effects! | | Just waiting for it to support reminders, at which point I | feel like I could use it for everything. | rolleiflex wrote: | I suspect the new features starting to come into Workflowy | last year is due to Roam Research which came out about then, | and has largely been at best a slight improvement over | Workflowy. | | I do use Roam personally, but they were very hamfisted with | their monetisation effort early on, which left a bad taste in | my my mouth. If I were starting today, I would use Workflowy | and be paying them instead. From what I can see, it is the | more carefully built product. | candyman wrote: | I love tools and have tried so many over the past year including | these new "hot" ones like Roam and Notion. After all that I have | come full circle and reinvested in making Evernote work better | for me. It has limitations but has always had a big edge in the | capture and storage part of the process. I'm still working on how | best to author/render content from my work to the outside world | but at least with Evernote I can get things in one place and then | add notes, content, analysis where I can find it. I agree with | some here that it's still hard to beat pen and paper for really | creative stuff - it's so free. | cyberge99 wrote: | I've been seeking a drop-in replacement for EN. These days I | use 'Evernote Legacy' because the new Evernote is horrible. | | I'll use it until they kill it. I've seen a few good "almost | there" replacements, but each have their own quirks. | egypturnash wrote: | Same. I just canceled my EN subscription; it refreshed | _right_ before New EN, and I gave them until renewal to get | that working. It's still garbage and I have completely lost | the habit of using it because I can't revert to the old iOS | app and have to use the slow, awkward new one. | | I am currently evaluating Joplin as a maybe. It is webshit in | an Electron wrapper but I think the only note app that isn't | webshit that I can use to collaborate with my Windows/Android | using husband is Microsoft's; it did a shit job of keeping my | formatting last time I tried it, plus I hate the way it wants | every note to be a text box floating in an infinite canvas. | | I still have to actually check out Joplin's collaboration, | that only seems to work if you're paying for their sync | service instead of using something else. | | Joplin also has a plug-in to do what EN couldn't do in an | entire decade: give you a nice diff UI for dealing with | conflicting changes. | | (My requirements: cross platform collaboration, decent EN | import, not be webshit, deal gracefully with notes with PDFs | and images in them.) | kibbleble wrote: | I've been using Simple Note: https://simplenote.com/ | | It's good enough for me. I don't think I've ever used | Evernote's advanced features because I'm too lazy to organize | things into books. It seems like they have an Evernote Import | feature? | dxgarnish wrote: | What I've discovered is that the real breakthroughs needed in | these tools aren't in the "taking" of notes but in the | "retrieval" of notes/ideas. | zikani_03 wrote: | I use Notepad++ like the author to keep a big a** text file but | split it into separate files per quarter; they typically contain | ideas which then make it to Notion if I'm really excited about | them. But it's really hard to commit to online tools over | simplicity of a git repo full of text files. | | I also have a text file with 'comments from HN' which I revisit | randomly and prompts either research or just nice trivia.. so | thank y'all ;) | ultra_nick wrote: | There are different types of note taking. For random items, I use | lists like Trello. For lots of non-transferrable knowledge, I use | a wiki like Notion. | | I haven't liked the note taking tools for learning, so I've been | building a prototype to do it better. It's like Roam, but is | planned to be crowd sourced and self organizing. | https://www.conceptionary.app/ | dariusj18 wrote: | Ok, so this seems like a great thread to ask this question. | | I want a research tool with the following features: | - Collaborative - Cloud based with offline mode (changes | can be synced back up) - History - Separate | workspaces/projects - The repository would be "taggable", | meaning that after I set all the notes in a project as "v1" I can | interact with the research with that snapshot, further when I | create a "v2" I can see everything that has changed since "v1". | - Media files (images) can be added | | Secondary concerns - The ability to "comment" in | a collaborative manner. - an API to extract the data | - Native apps - Dead simple end user workflow, (ex, don't | have to run git commands) - Simple user permissions (ex. | read only, contributor, admin) | kaliszad wrote: | A friend of mine today just wrote to me about Kinopio, whether | have been bought by some SV firm and it was our new brand. I can | assure you, it couldn't be further from the truth - OrgPad.com is | in my mind way more advanced and overall better designed tool for | both small things and complex thoughts. It is used a lot by | anybody from school children to top managers, specialists and | academics. What we do much better than most tools in my mind is | design of the user experience and simplicity, where we have been | inspired by 40 years of research of Zdenek Hedrlin PhD., | Clojure(Script) the programming language we use and Apple when | there was still Steve Jobs around. | | We don't fear to do hard engineering to improve the user | experience. We calculate differential equations on most | animations in real time to simulate dampened spring movements. | This is quite fast. Together with parts of the rendering | rewritten into canvas rendering (e.g. links), OrgPad is now a lot | faster than before. We have auto-resize and topologically mostly | stable auto-layout, we support rich multimedia in OrgPages, | images (even with transparency), iframes so you can embed other | OrgPages, videos or even e.g. Google Spreadsheets or Calendar in | the canvas. You can read an overview directly in OrgPad here: | https://orgpad.com/s/VjMKIa7bfnN | | And no, OrgPad is not trying to be a graph database more or less | like Roam-research or a Zettelkasten clone. It is oriented more | towards those, that think visually and want to mirror their | brains in a natural way to have an opportunity to step back and | look at it. | | To be most transparent: You can try OrgPad for free. We will | introduce the pricing on 29th of August (in a few days from now) | but leave a limited free tier without adds forever. The standard | tier will cost ~5 EUR/ month and include 5 GB of storage and most | OrgPad features although limited. The professional tier for ~10 | EUR/month will include all the bells and whistles plus 10 GB of | storage and priority support. Until now, we have worked on the | product itself - we are not a traditional startup, so we can | afford this less traditional approach. | | I hope, this will be understood as a frank recommendation for a | tool, that might solve the readers problem in a more fitting way. | crabl wrote: | This is likely a result of me working in a corporate bureaucracy | over the last few years, but I've observed executives using | PowerPoint for the purpose of articulating and iterating on their | thoughts, and it goes without saying that PowerPoint is | ubiquitous (for good or for ill) when it comes to communicating | those ideas to a wider audience. | | It seems to me that the tools for thought community generally | rallies around Excel as the best example of a "bicycle for the | mind" due to its functional-reactive nature and its programmable | core, but I feel like PowerPoint has made an equal contribution | to the democratization of "augmenting collective intelligence" | due to its affordances around outlining and presentation. | ssss11 wrote: | At my corporate job I oscillate between PowerPoint, word and | excel depending on how I envision I'll need to use the | information. Often PowerPoint (as a presentation will be | needed), but if I need to go to a detailed level excel is the | go to, unless I need to write lots of words, then I'll use | word. | | For notes, heirarchical notes and to do lists, I flip around | between many tools.. ugh. Often just paper too. | hyferg wrote: | I recently interviewed some PhDs, postdocs, and professors for | whom powerpoint was used as a tool for thought as well. | tin7in wrote: | Saga: https://saga.so | | - Automatic hyperlinking - When you mention another page, a link | is created on the go | | - Aliases - A page can have multiple titles | | - Properties - Meta data on page level | vczf wrote: | Instead of a big-ass text file, I recently started a 3-part memo | system: (1) an Olympus VN541-PC voice recorder for thoughts while | driving; (2) a pocket memo pad for notes where extra working | memory is needed for thinking, like tables or lists; (3) a | memo.txt file synced with my primary devices for convenience. | | I've found this approach extremely powerful because I no longer | need to figure out ahead-of-time where to put todos, ideas, | questions, and my self-indulgent philosophical musing: everything | that bubbles up to conscious mind is added to one of my memos and | then will be filed into other note systems, categorized, and/or | elaborated at my convenience in the future. There are quite a few | things I've memoed that surprised me when looking back at it | later in the day, because I had already forgot. | | It makes me wonder how many interesting mental tidbits I've lost | over the years before I started capturing/organizing them | systematically. | submeta wrote: | Roam Research was a game changer for me. - I know it's expensive, | the founder behaves arrogantly, but nontheless: They have created | a product that is very unique. Many have imitated it's feature- | set (athens, org-roam, logseq to name a few), but they were first | and paved the way. | | What makes this product exceptional is the way it allows to link | notes: Deliberately by surrounding words by doulbe brackets or | automatically by linking notes that have the same keyword in | them. | | I started migrating my journal entries (date stamped) and my | markdown notes into it, and I start to see connections among the | notes that I did not make intentionally. | | Slowly I start to come up with more and more categories for note | taking that I want to do in Roam: Dream journal, reading notes, | articles, research. | | Before I was using Bear, Ulysses, Evernote, later I started using | Emacs/org, now with a small detour settled with Roam. | kurko wrote: | I recommend taking a look Obsidian.md. I used Roam but now am | in Obsidian because I can have my files with me, backup it the | way I want, and it's free. | jabyess wrote: | There's also a FOSS version called foam | https://foambubble.github.io/foam/ | neurotrace wrote: | Seconded. I've been using Foam for some time now and it's | been great. Since it's all VS Code, it's also very hackable | AlanYx wrote: | Another two good Foam-like VSCode tools are Markdown Memo | (https://github.com/svsool/vscode-memo) and Dendron. | | I personally prefer vscode-memo to Foam. It doesn't have a | graphical view, but there a couple other things it does | really well. | afarviral wrote: | The problem with a lot of existing strategies is they are | aspirational - rather than realistic: conforming to our | limitations. We can only write so much, and remember for so long. | Have an idea, write it down, half way through you might have | forgotten the original idea or become distracted by something | else. I think it's just starting to come to light with the Roam- | style tools, that imposing structure from the beginning doesn't | work (too aspirational?), so I'd propose that aside from the | happy surprises of the Zettelkasten only bound by relationships | to other notes, its much more in tune with the way Minds work to | have more unstructured notes. Individual islands that relate to | others, but not strict hierarchies, or at least let the | hierarchies be interchangeable. | kzrdude wrote: | I'm using Vimwiki for now. I seem to be happiest with notes in | vim, but (since I use it in a terminal) I'd still like a way for | that particular vim (in terminal) window to stand out. Any ideas? | Maybe using an alternative terminal emulator for that one? | erikcw wrote: | You could run it in tmux then set the background and or frame | of the window to something that stands out. | lordgrenville wrote: | I used to use a Vim GUI (Macvim) just for notes, terminal for | everything else. | rwnspace wrote: | For a while I used vimwiki in a drop-down term: guake and | yakuake have this as a primary feature, good for gnome/KDE, but | if you're using a tiling WM you can use termdrop on most | terminal emulators. | kzrdude wrote: | good point, I should try this | heywherelogingo wrote: | I use terminator, one window, tabs, and vimwiki is always my | first tab. | Tomte wrote: | DokuWiki: www.dokuwiki.org | | Backlinks out of the box. | zerop wrote: | Tools for better thinking | | https://untools.co/ | xyzelement wrote: | A little different but - whiteboard. Now that I have space I | bought a 5x3 whiteboard and hung it on the wall. The contents on | it kind of parallel the GTD system but for me it's helpful to | have it "in my face" the whole time. Plus ability to think | visually and draw out concepts. | chapium wrote: | How does one stick to any of these systems? I've tried BATF, org- | mode, OneNote, and pen/paper. Each of which fail spectacularly | due to overload and eventually they just end up being forgotten | about long enough to no longer be useful. | pc86 wrote: | What do you mean by "overload?" If that's why these tools | always fail for you perhaps looking at that may give you | insight on the root cause. | | I think the key for most of these, particularly BATF/BASS is | the "always open" part. I've recently started playing around | with Obsidian mentioned elsewhere and if you don't have it open | at startup it's easy to forget about it. And you need to be | pretty diligent at the beginning of adding | interesting/educational things to your documents while you're | still trying to form the habit. | | Having a decent organization system is pretty important too | (one of the main failings of BATF/BASS in my experience). If I | need to scroll through a bunch of development and business | stuff to find that interesting physics article that is suddenly | relevant again I'm much less likely to do it than if I have a | "physics" document or folder I can see and get to easily. | D13Fd wrote: | For me, my notes app is a program I use far more than any | other, except for a web browser, so your question doesn't | really make sense. It's like asking "how do you stick with Word | or Excel"? | | I use the common folder-of-text-files method (currently with | Ulysses, although I've used other apps in the past). Any time I | need to write something down, that's where I go first, unless | I'm drafting a document that needs to be sent to someone else. | | Here is when it gets used most: | | - Researching something online | | - Preparing for a call or meeting | | - Taking notes on a call or meeting | | - Random ideas I want to save | | - Important information I want to keep (but not so secret that | it needs to go in a password manager) | | - Outlines of documents I want to write | | - Snippets of code I want to save | zuno wrote: | I agree with chapium, and my thanks to him for penning down his | observations into words. I would add that there comes a point | when these systems and their maintenance overwhelm my limited | abilities (I know because I have tried org-mode, and OneNote). | I often keep defaulting to pen/paper, but carrying around | sheafs (now boxes) of papers is no fun. | | And I agree with pc86's thoughts on 'decent organization | system' and "always open". I am working on getting better at it | with pen/paper. | stnmtn wrote: | I can empathize with you and the OP. The only one I've got to | stick is literally just a text file that I always have open | in VIM. I have a keybinding to open up the terminal window so | it's always right there. | | I have a couple of macros set up to put in the current date, | and a different color for bullet points that are "done" or | not completed yet | | This is the only one that works for me, and I've tried Org- | mode, evernote, onenote, joplin, notion, etc. It's a | combination of no-friction to open (I literally just press | alt+~) and opinionless. If I want to paste something in | there, I don't have to fiddle with a UI to get it how I want, | because the formatting doesn't matter at all. | 0xdeadbeefbabe wrote: | Don't forget treesheets https://strlen.com/treesheets/ | cecilpl wrote: | I can't help myself but to write that Chef Kinopio is a yellow | Toad who works at the restaurant in Overlook Tower in Paper | Mario: The Origami King. :D | hiidrew wrote: | I want to try obsidian. I like notion but load times drive me | nuts. | | My primary note taking tool is apple notes, wish it had some | additional features but by far my favorite is offline capability. | gardenfelder wrote: | A grandfather to this space is Ward Cunningham. His latest work | is FederatedWiki, a javascript platform which enables a lot of | thinking; with plugins, you can push it in many directions. As a | "federated platform" you can work in groups | http://fed.wiki.org/view/federated-wiki | dpaleka wrote: | I too use large files with random notes, but I can't be bothered | to write dates -- so I use git and cron to automate a searchable, | persistent diary. | | Let me write a blog post about it. The author of this article in | particular might find it useful. Does anyone do something | similar? | asimjalis wrote: | I like this. Would love to see the details of how you do it. I | too dislike adding dates to entries. My solution has been a | vimscript snippet that inserts the current date. I have bound | it to <C-l><C-d> fun! InsertDate() let | l:line = getline('.') let l:date = strftime('%Y-%m-%d') | call setline('.',strpart(l:line,0,col('.')).l:date.strpart(l:li | ne,col('.'))) endfun inoremap <C-l><C-d> | <ESC>:call InsertDate()<CR> | tunesmith wrote: | I see a ton of recommendations that invite you to blurt out all | your thoughts and capture them, but after you do that for a | while... what tools/processes help you know what you can delete | or let go of? | | I have kind of a home-grown anti-todo list system that is hooked | up to my life principles, such that if an "oh, I should do this" | idea doesn't actually line up with them, I just don't add it to | the list. But that's pretty manual and home-grown. | | I don't know, it's just that the "capture every thought" genre of | software was attractive in my 20s, but after a point it just gets | overwhelming. | major505 wrote: | Can't recomend Joplin enouth. really like the note app. you can | use markdown, Latex formulas, great for small notes. | | I still use onenote for mor multiporpose notes, specially when | there are photoso involved, but Joplin is still my main note | taking tool. | CA0DA wrote: | When I realized I could not cleanly get a backup of my notes | from OneNote, I switched to Joplin and have been quite happy | since. | asimjalis wrote: | I love these threads for the tools people mention. These threads | are one of the best things about HN. | pwdisswordfish8 wrote: | Surprising how few people mention an email addressed to | oneself, particularly for those concerned about getting their | thoughts out quickly. (Maybe a side effect of how many people | use Gmail and it being slow and clunky?) Not saying it's | brilliant by any means, but conceptually, it makes a certain | amount of sense. Imagine having an assistant you can trust | completely, and you don't have to worry about hurting their | feelings or ever needing to stop to think whether you need to | phrase things in a certain way. You'd lean on them for stuff | like this, right? Now, instead of an assistant, it's just you | explaining things to you. | | If you've always got your mail client open then speed bumps are | minimal, and you get optional titles, automatically dated | entries, and search for "free". | pmkiwi wrote: | Yeap agreed! I discovered a lot of tools just reading them. | Thanks everyone !! | chillpenguin wrote: | I highly recommend TiddlyWiki. The name puts a lot of people off, | but it is really great. Supports backlinks and transclusion, | among the more typical tagging and linking. | | Great for creating personal wikis. | jandrusk wrote: | org-roam should have made the list. | space_ghost wrote: | I used the "BATF" method for years, with one file per year. In | 2014 I switched to Zim [1] and haven't looked back. | | [1] https://zim-wiki.org/ | geocrasher wrote: | I too have been using Zim Wiki since 2013. I've considered | switching to Joplin however. | Tomte wrote: | What's BATF? It's pretty ungooglable. | | Edit: it's obviously the big-ass text file, not a "real" | method. | StuntPope wrote: | Joplin is a nice find. I used to use WikiPad religiously until it | seemed to go defunct. | | I like the idea of Kinopio a lot because I use mindmaps heavily | but find the hierarchical structure to be a limitation, this | seems more lateral. Only problem is it's hosted, would love | something like this in an app, like the aforementioned Joplin. | bulka wrote: | https://cmap.ihmc.us/ | kevinslin wrote: | If you fall into the *Big-Ass Text File* approach, I would | recommend Dendron.so It's an open source plaintext based note | taking tool that runs inside VSCode with the option to add | additional structure to your text using schemas (think type | system but for your notes) | | (disclaimer: I'm the founder) | novakinblood wrote: | "exo-brain (tech-)tools" is a form of cognitive offloading [0], | right? | | [0] Risko EF, Gilbert SJ. Cognitive Offloading. Trends Cogn Sci. | 2016 Sep;20(9):676-688. doi: 10.1016/j.tics.2016.07.002. Epub | 2016 Aug 16. PMID: 27542527. | afarviral wrote: | I've had a persistent desire for a knowledge management | protocol/service that goes beyond the scope of all the software | and strategies discussed on HN regularly. I firmly believe that | the needs and barriers are pretty universal between people (not | personal preference or individual at all) and that in a way, we | are rate-limited without it, bound to arrive at solutions only | for them to be lost again. I have a dense page in my Zettelkasten | dedicated to the idea, but in summarizing it's meant to provide | an interoperable framework that accepts different forms of media | (not just text, though it would be central) and facilitates | various kinds of analysis and thought, e.g. detecting | similarities, duplication, extrapolating etc. I'd imagine a | specialized form of distributed version control would be needed, | and various platforms and tools to solve the capture and | retrieval dilemma, and in particular the problem of persistence | and link rot. To be sure all I have is a list of problems and | some possible clues for solving, but the most hopeful of those is | a distributed service that is widely used but very open. It could | consist of some commercialized tools or engines, but the | underlying protocol must be open for anyone to use. | | If the idea I have took off it would take the information age to | new heights, with the next phase being ubiquitous use of brain- | computer interfaces. | | Imagine how productive we would all be if we never forgot. All | ideas, perhaps even a collection representing all of humankind, | transcribed to a format that respects our time, and aids further | thought. | | We can reach in and take the ideas that work from other systems, | such as Zettelkasten, Nogutchi Filing System, The Web and any of | it's parts (markup, protocols), the study of sciences, humanities | etc. | geenat wrote: | Obsidian: https://obsidian.md/ - All content | stored as flat files on your hard drive. - Organised by | correctly named folders. - Can embed images. Will link or | autocopy them to the appropriate folders. - Is great if you | like markdown. - Dark theme. | | Honorable mentions: - Infinite tab indentation | synced in google docs, in google drive, since I already pay for | google anyway. - todo.txt | Cshelton wrote: | Started using Obsidian last week. It's so easy and works how | ever you want it to. Roam Research is nice, but it's geared | toward a specific way of writing. | | Also, the Syncing across devices they provide for $4/m right | now is a steal and very effortless. | | Of course you can take backups using Git, very easy. | bsedlm wrote: | > Roam Research is nice, but it's geared toward a specific | way of writing. | | could you (or anybody) elaborate? | | what is different between Obsidian's inteded way of writing | and Roam Research's?? | selykg wrote: | Roam is basically an outliner | | Obsidian is able to do outlining with some plugins, but is | primarily designed for writing notes. | | I really far prefer Obsidian. If you want to get a good | primer on things, lookup Linking Your Thinking on YouTube. | delgaudm wrote: | I'm with you here. I've recently discovered Obsidian, and have | been really enjoying using it. It's probably been the tool that | most matched my mental model (for me that was "personal wiki") | of note taking and thought processing before I started that has | also been easy enough to stick with. | | I feel like it should be easy to make Obsidian the content | editor for a static site generator like Hugo, but I haven't | found a tool for that yet. (Maybe it's so obvious that one | isn't needed, but I'm not a dev, just a normie) | Fission wrote: | I did this recently to start creating a public (but unlisted) | developer log, a la Carmack .plan. Obsidian has a community | GitHub backup plugin, but you can also just manually push to | a repo whenever you want to update the site. Then you can use | that repo as a proto-CMS, and pull it in with, say, NextJS to | create a static site. Anything with built in CI (Vercel, | Netlify, GH Actions) should be able to detect the change to | the CMS repo and rebuild your static site. Both steps are | quite easy (took me under 10 minutes total). | | That said, if you don't need special control over your | content/presentation, then you could alternatively just pay | Obsidian $8 a month for their Publish feature. | [deleted] | blocked_again wrote: | Also not to mention that Obsidian, which is made by 2 | bootstrappers is giving a 200 million dollar valued VC funded | company a run for it's money. | bobbylarrybobby wrote: | Assuming you're talking about notion: collaboration+sharing | is what brings the real value to these tools. Enterprise is | where the money is and they're not going to pay for a | wiki+project management tool without those two features. | senjin wrote: | I think they're talking about roam research | bachmeier wrote: | Lots of good tools out there, but Obsidian is the one I've | settled on, for better or worse. I use the $48/year sync | service. It does a perfect job syncing my files on my Linux | desktop and laptop, my Chromebook, and my phone. Turns out | Linux ARM (for my Chromebook) isn't as well supported by | various apps as I expected, but their build is available and | works perfectly. | juliend2 wrote: | > - Infinite tab indentation synced in google docs, in google | drive [...] | | That sounds interesting. Can you elaborate? | geenat wrote: | You can organise text in a hierarchy indefinitely with tabs. | | I make a template Google Doc with the margins stripped out | that I can copy anytime I need one. | | I usually will throw on Dark Reader as well and use a | monospace font. | | Added benefits: - Phone editing - | Easily link to other google docs. - Share them with | anyone. | | It's a cloud version of todo.txt. | DenverCode wrote: | Just started using Obsidian this week for classes and I | couldn't be happier. | jcelerier wrote: | I've been using Zim (https://zim-wiki.org) for that for close | to a decade now, what has Obsidian in addition ? | bachmeier wrote: | Zim is great too. In terms of functionality, it does a lot of | the things Obsidian does, but it uses its own wiki syntax and | it's not pretty by any means. Obsidian has been much more | effective at building community and growing the ecosystem of | plugins. | | Edit: And one pretty annoying thing - it's built on old- | school technology that doesn't even support setting the | editor width. That's quite a problem in the era of widescreen | monitors. | BasilPH wrote: | I used to work with the Zettelkasten Archive and vim, but I | think I'll switch to Obsidian. The graph and link | autocompletion are the main selling points for me compared to | my current setup. | | I maintain a small open-source script[^1] to find clusters and | orphaned notes in a Zettelkasten, and I find it's a good | addition to groom my notes from the terminal. | | [^1]: https://github.com/BasilPH/vizel | CA0DA wrote: | Does it have encryption? How does it compare to Joplin? | bachmeier wrote: | It's a pile of files on your hard drive, so encryption is up | to you. If you buy their sync service, you get encryption: | https://obsidian.md/sync | Isthatablackgsd wrote: | Obsidian don't have encryption built-in, they do have the | encryption via community plugin. But it is only partial (I | believe per note), not the entire vault. | Off wrote: | If you are looking for something similar focused on privacy | but that leans more towards RoamResearch UX, you can give | logseq[1] a try. | | [1] https://logseq.com/ | Off wrote: | I forgot to add that logseq is open source, the file | encryption feature is built-in (you can opt-in or opt-out) | and all the documents are saved locally in md files. | francoisp wrote: | nice! any iOS clients in the works? | markdjacobsen wrote: | I'll echo others here; Obsidian is an amazing tool. For those | who are curious about Obsidian, I recently created a YouTube | video series for my graduate students titled "Tools for the | Life of the Mind." [0] It covers some philosophical points | about flow and focus, then dives into reading and note-taking | and then covers a few tools like Evernote, Scrivener, Zotero, | and Obsidian. Video 13 covers a workflow for migrating Zotero | highlights and notes into Obsidian, which I found buried in the | Obsidian forums. Completing this missing link has been a game- | changer for my research workflow. | | [0] | https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLHmevVAAXtu3_beDLtsTm... | pc86 wrote: | I just started using Obsidian and I really like it. I've found | it even more useful if you add this mind map plugin: | https://github.com/lynchjames/obsidian-mind-map | omarhaneef wrote: | Here are some note-taking "contexts": | | - in front of my computer when I am thinking | | - in a meeting | | - driving | | - walking (grocery store, or to a place etc) | | Note that each puts on a constraint, but I want the notes to | sync. | | When I am driving perhaps I need to speak into something that | takes the notes without having to be turned on, hit the I am not | driving button, find the app and launch it. | | When I am walking, I need to take a note on my mobile and it | cannot be a large graphical mind map. | | In front of my computer -- this is where 99% of note taking apps | shine and what they are made for. | | In a meeting, especially in person or zoom, it is almost rude to | type. It is perfectly acceptable, and almost polite, to write out | notes by hand in a pad (it shows I care and am paying attention). | I need to transcribe those notes later on. | | The idea note taking system performs and syncs across these | contexts well. | talor_a wrote: | the only app that does this well for me is Todoist, but that's | for tracking todos. Works via desktop app (+ global hotkey to | add a todo at any time), browser (+ extension for saving | webpages), mobile app, and siri (when I'm in the car). Without | all those things no app has stuck for me. Todoist works | decently well for short memo-type notes (you can add comments | and attach files to todos), but I'm also looking for another | companion app to use for more longform / wide reaching | information. | dzink wrote: | Working on precisely that at DreamList.com. | Raineer wrote: | So happy to see Joplin on here. I adore it, as it doesn't try to | be as big and full-featured as the flavor-of-the-month (currently | Obsidian but surely something else come September). | | Syncing which supports more than just a paid service or forces | you into a brand name (my own WebDAV works for me). Encryption. | Flexibility. Just love it. | yboris wrote: | I liked using Cinta Notes - https://cintanotes.com/ | | Super quick way to jot down notes, search through them, tag them | if needed. May be useful :) | widea wrote: | Tiddlyroam: https://tiddlyroam.org/ | Naac wrote: | This looks like some extensions built on top of tiddlywiki | slaymaker1907 wrote: | I use TiddlyWiki for structured notes personally, though I | haven't yet found a way to do quick outlining with it in a | satisfactory way. | | Honestly though I just need to modify the tiddler editor a bit to | support tab in/out for lists. | kreetx wrote: | And for many "big-a* text files" I'd recommend org-mode. It also | has its own markup (much more powerful than markdown), and can | also do spreadsheets (which I personally use only marginally). | | Manage this in git and you are independent of any service, yet | with extensive-- perhaps even uncontested --feature-coverage. | camoroso24 wrote: | I am partial to simple text files that I edit in vim. | | I have a simple script that parses my notes (based on tags), puts | them in respective files, and creates a new md file for the day. | | I think it's important to have a space where the threshold for | what needs to be written down is low and unstructured. Since vim | is great at editing text (compared to writing), I use it as a | space to dump my thoughts out and organize them in front of my | eyes. Works great for me. | MikeLumos wrote: | Another good one: https://nulis.io/ (or https://gingkoapp.com/). | It's like a mindmap turned sideways, in a more convenient format. | | And of course: https://dynalist.io | | Both are infinitely nested tree editors, that enable you to | organize information very conveniently. Great for writing, | brainstorming, taking notes. | | On iOS I use Editorial (a great text editor) to write down all my | notes, and I use #tags to make it easy to search all my notes by | topic (like #webdev, #health, #books, and so on). | | Also Track and Share is a great habit tracker, and Things 3 is a | great todo list manager. The more thoughts I can offload from my | brain into the app - the better. | | On my laptop I use Emacs org-mode, it's fantastic. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2021-08-25 23:01 UTC)