
Ask HN: How do you manage/organize information and knowledge in your life? - ay1n
This is a general question, but I didn&#x27;t want to ask specific one because I&#x27;m still trying to understand the bigger picture.<p>We &quot;collect&quot; data all the time, and sometimes it helps us learn something. On one hand we have things that were created by others: funny images, movies, articles on the web, books. On the other we have things creted by us: personal insights, thoughts, snippets of code. How do you manage&#x2F;organize all of this? Do you have apps&#x2F;tools for organizing specific type of information and if so, why this particular one? Do you have ideas how to organize&#x2F;manage this efficiently?<p>But we&#x27;re not only collecting information [0], we also learn from it. Most people store all this knowledge in their heads for their whole life, but I think it&#x27;s not efficient (memory loss, can&#x27;t search, not always reliable etc.), some people create some kind of personal knowledge bases (e.g. personal dokuwiki&#x2F;mediawiki on localhost). How do you manage&#x2F;organize things you learn?<p>It may seem that I should create 2 different topics, but for me both concepts are connected[1]. What I&#x27;m trying to find is an efficient solution to managing (almost) all the information that enters (and already is in) my life. I don&#x27;t think that there exist a good app for that, I know that there are some that solve parts of this problem (evernote, wikis etc.), but I&#x27;m more interested in your ideas on the whole topic, how to approach this problem, where to look, how to think about this etc.<p>I&#x27;m curious about your solutions, ideas and &quot;setups&quot; for this problem(s). If you have any resources (books, research papers etc.) about the topic, I&#x27;d love to learn from them. Thank you for your time.<p>[0] as in bits on the disk, learning can be viewed as collecting new information, I guess<p>[1] I liked quote from a book, some code from LLVM gave me an insight into a compiler design etc.
======
thaumaturgy
1\. Live simply. As I've gotten older I've found more and more value in not
having too many things going on. Gradually I'm sleeping better, eating better,
reducing stress, and getting more exercise, all of which is important for the
next thing:

2\. Memorize as much as I can. It's an exercise; I memorize phone numbers,
schedules, people's names, trivia, all kinds of stuff. I've never found
anything that matches the flexibility and utility of my own brain. I should
use the best tool I have, and that's in my head. Technology is unreliable and
constantly changing and difficult to organize and search. I've been practicing
this for long enough that now I'm pretty good at it.

3\. For everything else, I use a few simple systems: a few sheets of paper to
the right side of my desk for scribbling and note-taking (meant to be
discarded after a day or two), a pile of to-do to my left, a tab open in my
text editor labeled "notepad" for longer-term stuff, and a well-organized
directory of documents on my laptop with subfolders like "projects",
"writing", "sysadmin", etc. -- I try to keep this directory as small as
possible by dedicating time here and there to either finishing or pruning
projects.

I disagree that keeping knowledge in your head isn't efficient. I think a lot
of people just don't practice it enough. Smartphones and computers and
everything else make it really easy to not bother. But, my brain is always
with me, doesn't require batteries (well...), can store any type of
information I want, and can instantly recall it without having to craft some
kind of search query or organize the information in a rigorous way. It is
exactly the kind of database storage we all wish we had. It never changes data
formats, it never tries to get acquired by a bigger company and then shut
down, and it gets reception everywhere I go. If my brain were an electronic
tool, I would want to use it all the time. And, the more I use it, the better
it works.

(edit: oh yeah, and pinboard. Looove pinboard.)

~~~
meesterdude
One of the problems of keeping everything in your head is trust. People
forget! Maybe you have a great memory, but eventually it'll forget things. And
it should! otherwise there won't be room for any new stuff. I don't think we
have infinite storage available; at some point things have to be erased to
make room.

But also, keeping that stuff in a system you can trust frees your brain to do
other things. Instead of falling asleep reminding yourself to buy milk
tomorrow, you can leave it to the system to remember. The system being
anything - a notebook, an app, or what have you. There is some good evidence
that this kind of delegation allows for more high-level thinking to come
about, since your brain is more free to do other things.

Now, as you've touched on - sometimes technology screws you one way or
another, and that trust is broken. So if you have no redundancy or backup or
plan for that dependency, maybe you'd be better off keeping things in your
head.

But you are human and your head is human by extension. it is faulty,
imperfect, and not nearly as good at storing things as pretty much anything
else. Even if its good now, it won't necessarily always be, and isn't in such
good shape for a lot of folk. So I would not paint it in such a rosy light.

I'm curious, Have you done any experimentation with Method of loci?

~~~
thaumaturgy
Yeah, I've messed around with Method of Loci off and on over the years, but it
hasn't done much for me. Probably I'd just need to put the effort in to it,
and I haven't. My natural tendency has been a grab bag of sorts; if I want to
recall something, I think about a category -- "people", "projects", "trivia",
etc. -- to kind of prime my brain in some way I don't really understand, and
then it just pukes out a bunch of stuff until the thing I'm looking for pops
up. Like, if I'm trying to remember an actor's name, it goes, "face -> action
movie -> movie box was dark blue at night -> heat -> Val Kilmer". It's usually
pretty quick.

You're right though, brains are pretty fallible. If something's really really
really important, I do have backups. Usually email, or text, or paper.

...but, honestly? I'm scared to death of old age. It scares the piss out of
me. One of the things about it that really gets to me is the idea that I might
be 90 one day and not recognize people I care about, or remember anything
about myself, or have any idea what's going on around me. The smartest elderly
people I know are all very mentally active, and always have been, so even
though there isn't good scientific evidence for the prevention of alzheimer's
through puzzles and brain teasers and the like, I do it anyway.

~~~
Immortalin
Figure out a way to cure cancer and you can be immortal-- just consume as much
telomerase as you need.

------
ay1n
There is a 2000 character limit in the question box, so here is what I'm using
now:

\- pinboard for managing bookmarks (database of things that _may_ be useful
sometime; probably never) & reading list for articles

\- I'm testing tagspaces
([http://www.tagspaces.org/](http://www.tagspaces.org/)) for local files
organization (mostly tagging research papers and books; didn't like Mendeley)

\- cardav & caldav from owncloud for contacts and events

\- anki as a memorization tool (spaced repetition) - from languages to my own
mistakes (i.e. "lessons learned", so I won't repeat them)

\- for insights, notes, ideas, things I've learned & everything else I use
personal wiki (media wiki) on localhost. This is the biggest part of my
"system", I have there entries like things to buy someday, current project's
notes/resources, useful scripts, configuration snippets, notes from books,
journeys, analysis of my own behaviour, personal journal, ideas for startups
etc. But it's hard to organize, it becomes a mess very easly after some time.
Also, I can't use it on mobile (I don't want to put all this on the web, there
is a lot of personal info), it takes time to add new thing/entry (I need to
think to which page new piece of information belongs etc.).

\- simplified version of gtd as a meta-system managing this system and for
projects/things to do

~~~
frik
I tried a personal wiki (MediaWiki and SharePoint) on localhost too and
encountered the same problems (hard to reorganize, secure mobile access).

So I switched back to plain text, using the _Markdown_ syntax format. Sync
works fine with IMAP based email account (note apps on iOS & Android support
that too). For visual complex documents I use a WYSIWYG HTML editor and the
HTML format. SVN/Git repo to preserve the edit history. And I coded an
desktop/enterprise search engine myself to search through PDFs, HTML and
various Office formats - similar to the discontinued Google Desktop search and
some enterprise search software.

~~~
rndn
Org-mode is a really good replacement for MediaWiki. You can manage links,
tables and lists all with simple and reliable text files with .org suffix in
Emacs.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oJTwQvgfgMM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oJTwQvgfgMM)

------
ivan_ah
I have totally given up hope on classifying all the interesting things I find
on the web each day, so I use an __uncategorized save all __strategy. I save
all opened and downloaded files (mostly PDFs) to ~ /Desktop/ and I also
bookmark things there (by dragging the URL icon onto the desktop). After a few
weeks the desktop becomes a complete mess, so I use a script[1] that puts
files into subfolders (by extension), and then I put away this "complete week
of research" archive and start from a clean slate (except for one or two
active projects dirs).

It's a bit time-intensive to find things, but it's not impossible: let's just
say the system is optimized for write efficiency and not read efficiency ;)

[1]
[https://gist.github.com/ivanistheone/9daa23ae2a7abb472cb2](https://gist.github.com/ivanistheone/9daa23ae2a7abb472cb2)

~~~
cmpb
I like this idea since it solves the issue of easily persisting things you may
want to keep around, but wouldn't it limit the types of things you can persist
(e.g. can you easily persist ideas/snippets this way)?

~~~
ivan_ah
Ideas no, but I sometimes drag snippets of text to the desktop too and they
get saved as `.textClipping` files.

I think ideas are _folder-like_ structures so I usually create a folder to
store code/links/pdfs/clippings specific to that idea, then file away that
Idea folder as one piece.

My general advice is to spend less time planning and more time doing, else you
might get stuck on what Ze Frank calls "Brain Crack"
[http://youtu.be/0sHCQWjTrJ8?t=8s](http://youtu.be/0sHCQWjTrJ8?t=8s)

------
markbao
I mostly use Simplenote for ideas and loose notes, and Quip/Evernote for more
structured notes. All three sync to all my devices, and while neither are
perfect for my needs, they are OK.

The problem comes from keeping everything organized (impossible with Evernote
and Simplenote with their lack of structure, impossible with Quip since it's
docs/spreadsheets-only) and in a way that works with my mind and workflow.

I'm working on sketching out what a unified personal knowledge management
product might look like, which combines a kind of "inbox" of sorts of
resources and notes coming in, and also a "personal wiki" with structured
docs, and a number of people I know are also thinking about what a 'perfect'
knowledge management system would look like. Let me know if you want to bounce
around some ideas around.

~~~
paglia_s
What I would like is a way to organize not only written notes but files too,
keeping them where they are in my disk or dropbox/google drive without having
to duplicate them in another online service

~~~
ay1n
Tagspaces ([http://www.tagspaces.org/](http://www.tagspaces.org/)) is worth
checking out if you're interested in files organizaiton

------
MichaelGG
1\. A paper notebook. I don't often actually refer back to it, but just the
process of sketching things out seems to make them stick. More importantly,
once written down, my subconscious starts working on another idea.

2\. Poor solution, but I email myself notes a lot. Usually from my phone, then
I drop them into a folder in Outlook when I get back to my desk.

3\. OneNote, for more long term collections. Microsoft did an amazing job with
this product.

------
alanclimer
I use TextWrangler and several text files along with Chrome bookmarks. I'm
minimalist and run a very simple operation so this may not be appropriate for
many.

To organize the text files; over time I build an index of categories at the
top in CAPS, and each category heading below is also in CAPS. Then when I save
/ retrieve / cull information I search the category "Case sensitive" to locate
it quickly. Once major groupings can be identified and corralled, I separate
those into independent text files. It's work.

For Chrome bookmarks I build similar categories but this can get unwieldy if
not maintained and subdivided on the regular.

If it matters; all my local files reside in one of two folders (or downstream
of them). One is for current "in flux" files & the rest goes in the other
"archive" folder. I do encrypted backups on the "in flux" often and the
"archive" far less often to external drive(s) & the cloud/online. I have a
third "clients" folder but all the files there are temp and go back to their
respective servers and I don't backup any of it.

I concur with sp3n concerning over-collecting, often I get back to something
and it's already obsolete or maybe not at all. As a result I end up in a data
cull session from time to time.

Don't like paper and would love to migrate all to 100 percent online one day.

------
aikah
By the way,is there a solution for windows or linux that would take SQL like
queries and allows one to search among files in a computer. Something like :

    
    
        SELECT All *.jpg as image FROM /myfolder/** where image.creationDate > yesterday and image.size < 100 and image.filename LIKE TRIP% ;
    

Then either display the result in a window or as text.

Something that would combine find,grep+pipes into something more
"userfriendly".

~~~
renaudg
You've just described MacOS X's 10 year old Spotlight feature :
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spotlight_%28software%29](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spotlight_%28software%29)

------
bsilvereagle
I used to use OneNote pretty extensively for nearly everything. Recipes,
course notes, thoughts while working on projects, lists of reminders, etc. The
main problem with it was that if I wanted to search on something, I'd have to
search X number of OneNote notebooks.

I've recently started to use fedwiki instead of OneNote, and things are
alrightish. Fedwiki has lots of room for improvement as a wiki, and then as a
knowledge store.

I think the ideal personal information/knowledge store would incorporate a
tagging filesystem combined with something like OneNote/fedwiki. The tagging
filesystem would allow PDFs, movies, etc to show up in searches with
fedwiki/OneNote handling the plain text & images. Ideally the client that the
user uses is something like fedwiki, where you can have multiple different
pages open at once, but also allow you to pull in the PDF/video resources.

~~~
ay1n
For me the biggest downside of OneNote is that I can't use it on Linux/Unix
(Wine doesn't always work). I didn't know fedwiki, looks interesting and I'll
look into this, thanks for that.

Do you have categories in which single entries are grouped or you just add new
thing and search for it later?

~~~
bsilvereagle
Yeah, that was my issue with OneNote as well.

With fedwiki, I have a bunch of 'Table of Contents' pages grouped around
themes, Project 1, Project 2, etc, and some pages then link to other pages,
like a normal wiki.

Currently fedwiki just does searching based on page titles, I'm (slowly)
working on an elastic search backend for it to get full-text search.

------
analog31
Three things that have helped me.

1\. A little bound paper notebook such as a Moleskine.

2\. A mind mapping program -- I use FreePlane -- to store links, including
links to files on my hard disk. An advantage is that I don't have to get the
organization right on the first, second, or even third try.

3\. A lot of the information in my life is not digitized, such as most of the
sheet music in the world. So I now rely on my cell phone camera to record a
lot of that stuff.

Amusingly, when I was in grad school, it was still considered to be an open
question whether a person should get their own computer. The university
computer store had a little guide, and the most memorable advice -- which
certainly rings true in my life -- was: "Don't expect a computer to make you
organized. If you have a messy desk, you will have a messy computer."

------
andrey-p
What I do is:

\- For meetings, events, social obligations, I carry a small paper-based
diary.

\- For ideas and thoughts, I write them down. The idea is that the act of
writing something down aids recall. For example, story and blog ideas go in a
A5 notebook that I carry around with me, and I commit them to a digitally
backed up document as soon as possible. Note-to-self lifestyle advice goes in
my bedside drawer, to check on if I ever feel like I've forgotten anything.

\- For things to learn and interesting articles, I don't do anything and keep
my fingers crossed that the salient bits will have rubbed off on me, lurking
in my subconscious and subtly improving my life forever after.

I'm not 100% sure that last one works quite that well.

~~~
icco
This is pretty close to what I do, but I also try and keep track of what I
read. To do this, I just bookmark everything I read in pinboard so if I
remember some tendril of a thing, I can search for it. In general my memory is
horrible, every little bit helps.

------
mozillas
I use Evernote. Because it can handle multiple types of content. The most
useful information I keep in there are tutorials. Mostly written by me. How to
do things that I only have to do a few times a year. Basically recipes for
anything, not just food. The stuff I do repeatedly I just remember or
automate.

Passwords are a good example of this. I can deduce them(based on a formula),
but I don't want to do that every day, so I use 1Password.

But it's not bad to just forget. There are quotes, links, funny pics in my
Evernote that I've never used. So I'm now much more selective in my note
taking. It's less stressful.

------
galfarragem
To organize myself I use Secretweapon [1] (GTD for evernote) and Folder-System
[2] (an hierarchical folder system to organise personal documents based on
GTD, making it easy to predict where something is stored). The initial
investment (file renaming) pays off very fast.

[1] [http://www.thesecretweapon.org/media/Manifesto/The-Secret-
We...](http://www.thesecretweapon.org/media/Manifesto/The-Secret-Weapon-
Manifesto.pdf)

[2] [https://github.com/we-build-dreams/folder-system](https://github.com/we-
build-dreams/folder-system)

------
hammerandtongs
org-mode in emacs

Simple text file that's actually more functional then almost any other
solution, designed around allowing you to create and adapt new workflows and
WILL be available and useful to you for decades.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Org-mode](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Org-
mode)

------
jamesisaac
I approached this problem and decided to try and solve it for myself just over
a year ago. Firstly, I decided that instead of knowledge being segregated by
medium (notes -> evernote, bookmarks -> Chrome, etc), it should be organised
by purpose.

The most important purpose, I decided, was personal goals.
Knowledge/information which is relevant to helping me achieve my own goals is
the most important thing I should be focusing on, and should be extremely well
organised and easily accessible. Any other interesting info that falls outside
that is a bit of a shame to lose, but ultimately just a distraction and
clutter. For this purpose, I developed this tool:
[https://nachapp.com](https://nachapp.com)

I believe the next level of information down would be general
learning/knowledge. Stuff that doesn't fall under any specific goals, but is
still useful information to know and understand (and may in disparate ways tie
into core goals). For this, I'm currently using
[https://pinboard.in](https://pinboard.in), although it's not ideal as it's
again limited to a single medium. I have a solution in mind, but haven't
started developing yet. If you're interested, feel free to get in touch and I
can keep you updated (contact info in profile).

------
meesterdude
I've come to find that everyone has a different solution, and lots of people
have different priorities. A client of mine keeps everything in text files. I
know another that does everything in excel. Others use some combination of
apps and services (dropbox for files, omnifocus for todos, evernote for notes
and articles) and that works ok for them too.

After trying several solutions, I ended up building a SaaS to manage
everything. I found most things out there are fairly boring, and are not at
all as powerful as what I wanted. It's basically a brain for my brain; so i
can remain a scatterbrain and it can tell me when its time to water the
plants, or if food in my fridge is about to expire. But it also handles all my
notes, important files, time-series data, and historic dates.

But really, you have to figure out whats important to you and what system best
aligns with that; and in the end you'll likely need to make a few tradeoffs to
get something working.

But I think there are definitely some principles you can apply to any system
you use; I can't recommend Getting Things Done by David Allen enough. His
methodology is great, but even if you don't like it or can't use it for
whatever reason, there are oodles of great tips; and it'll make you into a
natural project manager / information guru.

~~~
petemir
Do you have it online? care to share?

------
smarks159
I write a lot and have a lot of text files scattered all over my desktop with
ideas, plans and notes. Everytime I start a programming project I also end up
with a lot of text files with requirements, design decisions and
implementation details. I kept all these ideas in plain text files because,
none of the existing tools really fit what I wanted. I ended up creating a
program to help with this based on the ideas of Doug Engelbart.[1] The program
is still experimental and just deals with text at the moment but I still find
it useful.

In terms of research papers, you may want to look at the ideas of Doug
Engelbart. The process which you speak of, of collecting information and
learning from it, Engelbart termed the CODIAK process. There is a section
describing what CODIAK is in this paper[2]. (click on the CODIAK Process link
in the table of contents). Engelbart speaks of this process in terms of groups
and organizations, but the ideas apply to individuals as well. Engelbart's
goal was to create an integrated "knowledge workshop", where all the different
programs for organization everything would be integrated together and act as
an extension of the human mind to augment people's abilities to collect and
digest an ever increasing amount of information and knowledge. There is a lot
of work left to be done in this area, but it is an important problem to solve.

[1] [https://github.com/smarks159/hyperdocument-system-
wiki](https://github.com/smarks159/hyperdocument-system-wiki)

[2]
[http://www.dougengelbart.org/pubs/augment-132811.html#6](http://www.dougengelbart.org/pubs/augment-132811.html#6)

------
therealmarv
After trying a lot of software I returned at the end always to Evernote. I
always missed good rich text and image support and easy web page saving in all
other products. Evernote has a great web clipper (also works for Android with
Everclip) which saves sooo much time and great IFTTT integration for
interaction with other services. Especially having everything synced and
editable on your phone is something the other solutions are missing.

------
bonobo3000
I've been using Kifi[0]. It lets you collect any webpage thats interesting,
tag it with multiple tags, and search your whole collection based on
tags/content of the page. I highly recommend it.

For example, I want to learn more and more about distributed systems, so when
I see an interesting article, i tag it. When i have some time, i go through
the relevant tags.

[0] [https://www.kifi.com/](https://www.kifi.com/)

------
pwelch
This is something I am constantly trying to get better at.

I have recently started using jrnl: [http://jrnl.sh](http://jrnl.sh)

I really like it because you can export it any many formats which I think
would come in handy later to import the data, say a database. I always like
the idea of a flat file for right now so you can ack/grep on the command line.

The cons are not great for assets such as images.

Looking forward to reading some other solutions.

------
laxatives
Depends on the level of activity/energy required:

Things with well defined start/end dates or with very high priority/high cost
of missing (ie flights, parties, reservations, deadlines): calendar (I use my
iphone calendar with alarms if necessary)

Things with less well defined start/end dates: starred emails/browser
bookmarks toolbar

Menial things that need to be in the near future (ie groceries, laundry,
shopping): Leave something out of place as a reminder, or put in calendar with
alarm if urgent

Things with low priority/low cost (ie things to read/learn/listen/watch,
fitness goals/accomplishments, future trip plans, long term plans, misc
notes): iphone notes

Also keep a notepad at everywhere I work regularly (home desk/office desk) and
in my backpack with notes

I also feel its very important to maintain 0 unread emails in all of my
inboxes. Makes it much more feasible to stay up to date on everything and
avoid missing anything important. 90% of the time I'm awake, I will read any
incoming mail within 15 minutes and respond immediately if necessary.

------
Ixiaus
Org-mode with mobile app, and a grimoire file. It holds all snippets, captured
thoughts, bookmarks, to-read, etc...

It's also responsible for my spaced repetition system, my work agenda, my
personal agenda, blog post ideas, project ideas, grocery lists, todo lists,
etc...

It's extremely powerful and my life is forever changed because of that
software.

------
dpweb
All appontments meetings personal and work - in a single Outlook calendar. All
work related notes in a single OneNote workbook (text searchable) All code
files/projects - on Onedrive in cloned repos from Github, so I can include
them locally and commit to GitHub as needed. Lastpass for passwords and credit
card info.

One unique thing I started doing, I use this program called ClipX which lets
you have a popup of your recent clipboard entries. Its will let you save to a
text file. So, everything I clip, code snips, passwords, etc.. goes into a
single text file - so I can just Ctrl-C something and forget about it. Six
months later I just do a text search in this file. Its gets big (10MB or so)
and I back that file up and start with a new file every year.

------
rakoo
I don't have a lot of information that I need to handle, but I use zim
([http://zim-wiki.org/](http://zim-wiki.org/)) as a desktop wiki. It's working
well for my little needs.

There is also camlistore ([http://camlistore.org/](http://camlistore.org/))
which is trying to be the recpipient for every content one wishes to store:
images, music, PDF files, bookmarks, RSS feed items, ... It's working well in
the "aggregating" phase, but still a little bit lacking in the "organizing"
phase (which may very well be the work of third-party application). For the
moment content is accessible through a simple search engine though.

------
nickthemagicman
I have a bunch of text files in folders on google drive. The cool thing about
google drive is you can sync it and it propogates to any web enable device.

Keep your life to three to five major things and this works really well.

Also, Don't go more than two or three folders deep. If you do you're
organizing wrong.

I also scan or photo all of the paperwork I get throughout life put it in
Google drive and throw the original away.

Also, you can put all your photos up on google drive. (Just not very private
photos..)

Note: security/privacy concerns if you do this with personal stuff like
medical or financial docs.

There's ways to encrypt it all on google drive just don't really have enough
important info there to care.

------
tunesmith
Still figuring this out - I have DevonThink to collect/catalog but I find that
I don't often get in there to search, so that information basically rots. Same
with my web bookmarks, many are several years old. As time goes on I find that
information is basically useless unless I either internalize or act on it. So
I tend to use information to adjust either my anki decks or my goal maps, and
then I try to deliberately not save the rest... although that is still
difficult since some of it is still just so tempting to flag by saying "gosh I
will really want to refer this later after I do x, y, and z"...

~~~
ay1n
I never used DevonThink, can you tell me what are the your personal biggest
pros and cons of this program? Also, what do you think is the biggest problem
of this/similar systems?

I can sympathize with bookmarks problems, not only they rot, but after few
years there is a lot of 404 (pinboard provides archiving bookmarks but that is
a paid service).

Do you have a lot of Anki decks of just a single "random things from the
bookmarks"? Do you use Anki every day or rather infrequently?

~~~
tunesmith
I use DevonThink as mostly just a clipping/storage app, but it has tons of
utility beyond that - seems a lot of grad students use it for managing
resources they later write papers from. I chose it over Evernote because it
does more. The main downside of it is that it doesn't yet have a good mobile
syncing solution, even though they've been working on it for years now. But it
has a ton of UI customizability for searching and browsing, and search works
well too.

The main problems with all these systems are just that we use them to attempt
to augment our own intelligence/utility based off of some concept of who we
are aiming to be in the future, and then as things change for us personally,
our aborted plans lead to a lot of rot that doesn't clear itself away
automatically. So only some small percentage of what we collect ends up
relevant.

I have a lot of individual Anki decks, which isn't recommended. But I create a
filter deck that rebuilds from the other decks every day and properly
randomizes the cards, and only study from that. I do it every day except when
I forget and then I catch up later. My cards are mostly along the lines of
music, logic, math, stats, programming, and rational thinking.

------
krapp
Ironically, one of my unfinished personal projects is a project manager, so I
can organize myself better, but I find just pasting random stuff into a
notepad++ tab does the job most of the time. I also have a ton of browser
bookmarks organized by nothing in particular (most of my logins actually say
"Login") and a lot of random stuff in my downloads folder, repos I found
interesting, pdfs, etc.

So I guess my answer is "poorly," but somehow it seems to work.

------
xj9
I have a notebook (moleskine atm, but I've used a lot of other brands/kinds)
for sketching out and expressing ideas/insights and I use Evernote for long-
term storage, project management, and to store reference material. I also use
Safari's reading list to hold on to things I want to read, but don't know if I
want to save permanently.

 __Edit: __I seriously keep everything in Evernote, whats up with the down
votes?

~~~
ay1n
Don't know why somebody downvoted you, I've upvoted your post. I also use
notebooks, mostly when I'm away from computer but as you, I'm using it for
sketching and brainstorming sessions.

Do you regularly review things in your Safari's reading list or it keeps
growing? Because that's the problem in my case.

~~~
xj9
My reading list is pretty big. I keep articles there until I get around to
reading them, if they seem like something I want to keep around I clip them to
Evernote and remove them from the list. In some cases I'll just move them into
bookmarks which are mostly unsorted, as I use them primarily as a durable form
of browsing history.

------
humpt
I use google docs. I have a bunch of google documents i regularly use for work

\- one where I keep track of my work: it's half a todo list with bullet
points, half notes about my progress for meetings \- one where i write ideas,
things I want to dig into later

I write in them from bottom to top (so that my last entry is always on top). I
basically use them as paper notebooks.

Actually if it wasn't for URL copy pasting, I think i'd use paper and pen.

------
gravedave
I just dump it somewhere (OneTab extension for web pages, random folders for
stuff, note-taking for anything else).

Most of it I'll never need again (and probably look online for it first
anyway, if ever), so it's really just to satisfy a compulsive need to have the
impression I'm not "losing" anything. Rarely did I ever dearly miss anyhing on
accidental deletion of my "stores".

------
walkingolof
Nothing beat a filesystem to organize stuff, it also happen to be great way to
find stuff fast..

\- Folders like \doc \tutorial \ideas \recipics \- Store everything in .txt
and .odt \- Replicate to favorit cloud storage

\- For comunication: Fastmail, Skype

\- Contacts & calender: Fastmail

\- Keep a diary in a mail folder, I send myself a mail every now and then with
a subject to an alias, that gets sorted into a "diary" folder

------
gexla
Here is one idea.

[http://lifehacker.com/im-ryan-holiday-and-this-is-how-i-
work...](http://lifehacker.com/im-ryan-holiday-and-this-is-how-i-
work-1485776137)

The take-away there is index cards. I like the idea of information being
broken down small enough to fit on an index card. Reading a book, it could be
one point, one quote or something of similar size.

~~~
ay1n
Will read the article, thank you.

In the past I've tried to use POIC system[0][1] but it wasn't really that
efficient and the biggest 2 problems were search (mostly full text, I could
find entry from a particular date quite easly) and portability - over time it
becomes a big physical thing you need to store (I move quite often).

I agree with you about dividing (almost) everything into single pieces of
information and adding to the system, but I'm still trying to figure out how
to do this _well_.

[0]
[http://pileofindexcards.org/wiki/index.php?title=Main_Page](http://pileofindexcards.org/wiki/index.php?title=Main_Page)

[1] [http://lifehacker.com/the-pile-of-index-cards-system-
efficie...](http://lifehacker.com/the-pile-of-index-cards-system-efficiently-
organizes-ta-1599093089)

------
motyar
Not an expert but here is what I do:

1\. Dropbox for all the read-only ( Images, PDFs, Books, important papers).

2\. I use IFTTT to autobackup a specific folder (very imp one) from Dropbox to
Box.

3\. Something I need to edit, like spreadship or docs. GoogleDrive works very
well.

4\. I keep most important files on atleast two services.

5\. IFTTT works great to collect data automaticaly.

Edit: Goodlooking line breaks inserted.

------
bunsen_honeydew
Thanks for sharing. There are a lot of cool ideas here. I've had the most
sucess with a custom notebook approach using QR codes to stitch together
analog and digital information:

[http://www.drbunsen.org/custom-notebooks/](http://www.drbunsen.org/custom-
notebooks/)

------
ismiseted
I use vimwiki to collect, store and organise snippets links and references,
then sync it to all my machines with unison. Helps if you're a vim user!

[https://github.com/vimwiki/vimwiki](https://github.com/vimwiki/vimwiki)

------
TimJRobinson
For thoughts and ideas I use Evernote and it works very well. Have over 3000
notes now and it's fun looking back on thoughts, feelings and challenges I had
years ago and how they've changed and evolved since then.

------
alx
Previous discussion : "Designing a Personal Knowledgebase" \-
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8270759](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8270759)

------
chubot
I wrote in this thread about using a Wiki I wrote:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8753599](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8753599)

~~~
ay1n
Just started reading. Most of the items on your list of things to fix I was
thinking about for quite some time. Besides the comments, maybe you could
write a blog post about your system and experience with it? I for sure would
be interested.

Do you think that solution to the whole personal knowledgebase problem should
be solved from a single app perspective or is it better to think about this as
a sort of ecosystem - one "module" for adding new things to the system, other
for statistics[0], sync etc.? Also, did you consider semantic part of such
system? So we can write programs that can make sense of all the things we have
in the system?

[0] I was actually thinking about using machine learning to somehow finding
the most important things in the wiki and suggesting tags/place in hierarchy
of new entries

~~~
chubot
Actually my main takeaway is that organizing information shouldn't occur in a
single app. It needs to take advantage of the web as much as possible. The
model I want is basically small "apps" joined by hyperlinks -- exactly what
the web is.

The primary app is a wiki with unstructured text, outlined/indented text and
hyperlinks. But, as mentioned, information comes other forms too: structured
data like bookmarks, spreadsheets, images, etc. The web lets you express all
those things (spreadsheets being the weak link, since it involves executing
code). Reinventing it all within a single app would be a lifetime of work.

The web already has common patterns and facilities for log analysis and so
forth. If you just make it a web site, you can track all your actions with web
log analysis. Whereas if you make it some "app", then you have to reinvent the
analytics.

I definitely considered doing more textual analysis, stuff like PageRank, and
even semantic analysis. I think it's interesting to explore but I don't the
cost/benefit works out right now.

I have over 2000 pages, but probably 500 or less are "active". That can mostly
be managed with full text search, and nothing smarter. You just have to make
the search fast, which isn't hard with that amount of data.

But, if you want to write more code and programs against the data, a web site
is a good format for doing so. I basically use the Unix philosophy of
independent programs and data, rather than the "app" philosophy of data locked
up behind code / user interface.

My philosophy is just to optimize for speed and ease of both writing and
reading. And then you use it more. And the more you use it, the more valuable
becomes. Just like with learning itself, you start to make more connections
once you have some existing knowledge/content to graft on to it.

I think the most important thing is the content, and not the tool, and as long
as the tool is lightweight and fast, you will keep up the habit of entering
content and (just as importantly) retrieving it.

------
lllllll
A combination of ( sorted from more to less relevance):

Trello

Workflowy

StackOverflow's favourites

Pocket

Goodreads

Delicious ( I hardly check it)

------
siavosh
Some self promotion, I'm tackling this problem with my side project:
www.faqt.co

------
sp3n
badly, i have hundreds of bookmarks, articles, documents that i haven't looked
at since adding them - not quite sure what i'm waiting for but i spend a lot
more time collecting them then actually reading them

~~~
ay1n
Yes, I think this is a common problem. We collect things, because they seem
worth reading/watching but never return to them. One thing is that some effort
is required to read/watch those things but other thing is that we forget that
we even saw that particular article/video. So, maybe bookmarks should have a
reminder mechanism built into them of some sort? Sombining Spaced Repetition
with bookmarking seems interesting.

~~~
pyre
This is further fuelled by recalling something (e.g. an article you read), and
not being able to find it again.

For example, a while ago I read an article that talked about peanut allergies
being less prevalent/severe in Europe than the US, and Europe having more
cases of other allergies (like apple allergies). It then went on to talk about
different pollens that may react with our bodies to trigger certain allergies.
I can't recall how long ago I came across this, or where (could have been HN,
Slashdot, Digg, etc). I've also not been able to put together a search to turn
up this article in Google. Had I been better about bookmarking, maybe I would
be able to find this article even if it took a brute-force search through all
of my bookmarks.

~~~
ay1n
Yes, I know the feeling. So even if I know that I won't return to 90% of my
bookmarks, I'm adding all of the interesting things so if I'll need it in the
future I'll have pretty small set of links (rather that billions from google).

Another thing is archiving all those bookmarks, since after few years a number
of them is 404.

------
Chevalier
Trello - ESSENTIAL kanban system for project management and daily
organization. I'm an absolute fanatic for Trello.

OneNote - The greatest program ever made. OneNote isn't useful for short-term
to-dos, but I couldn't live without its organization of my long-term work.

Pocket - I never have time to read articles, and they're unpleasant to read on
a squat laptop screen in any case. Pocket lets me read them on my tablet, in
the subway, with gorgeous formatting.

Google Calendar - The whole Google ecosystem is ridiculously useful for
organization, including auto-additions to your calendar from Gmail and Google
Now's intelligent suggestions.

Gmail - Particularly the five-tab filtering. Holy shit. I had no idea how
disorganized my inbox was before I could filter away the dreck.

Google Keep - It's been displaced somewhat by Trello (in terms of grocery
lists, etc.) but it's still great for medium-length notes that you'd like to
read on the subway or something. I store a huge amount of poetry in mine.

Google+ - The BEST place for photos. I don't understand the fashionable
hatred. G+ is by far the best photo backup/organizer/enhancer/sharer I've ever
seen, and the G+ social network is WAY better than Facebook's clunky
organization. I'm amazed that Facebook is so bad with photos... isn't that
pretty essential for social networks? G+ is just too good to be ignored
forever.

GDrive - Corollary to G+. Putting photos on GDrive automatically uploads them
to G+, which again is just excellent. Google DEFINITELY needs to upgrade their
1TB limit to "unlimited," though... and offer auto-deduplication for identical
photos for the billions of us with redundant photo hoards. Right now, GDrive
prices are the highest on the market for limited storage and no extra features
like deduplication or auto-organization. I still pay for GDrive just for G+
photo features, but Dropbox offers equal/better functionality and OneDrive
offers much better value.

Kindle - You never realize what a burden paper books are until you have an
alternative. Ebooks are incredible.

Calibre - Especially if you have a ton of academic papers or studies to pore
through, organizing them in Calibre makes life infinitely simpler.

Spotify - Outsourcing my music collection to streaming services is GREAT. I'm
now trying out Google Music, which lets me upload 20,000 MP3s to supplement
the holes in Google's collection. (Perfect for unpublished songs and so on.)

Steam - The original Spotify for video games. All the same benefits, plus
amazing sale prices that have forced me to buy way too large a collection.

edX - Coursera and Udacity also, but any of these are gold mines for
organizing self-paced education.

Pidgin - Still the best instant messenger, though the shift toward closed
networks is making it harder to use. That Google still allows Pidgin to access
Hangouts via (limited) XMPP has kept me faithful. I don't understand why
anyone would use something like WhatsApp and its crappy clients.

\- - - - -

If anyone from Google is reading this, particularly from the Tasks team...
just buy Trello already. GTasks is woefully inadequate, particularly when
compared against Trello's unbelievably powerful kanban organization.

Also, I'm a little disturbed by how heavily I depend on Google. I don't see
any viable competitors, though -- Outlook lacks Gmail's tabs and themes,
OneDrive lacks GDrive's functionality, Facebook lacks G+'s insane photo
features, WhatsApp lacks open APIs. I hope Microsoft steps up soon, because I
don't see any other real competitors against Google dominance of web services.

~~~
lllllll
I second this, Trello totally decreased my overinformation-induced uneasiness,
and happened to help me summarize information. Of course not all kinds of
information fit there. I found out it's great particularly for information I
want to be in contact with quite often.

Also Trello Inc's public development
board([https://trello.com/b/nC8QJJoZ/trello-
development](https://trello.com/b/nC8QJJoZ/trello-development)) is just
genius, imo.

------
b6
I recently started keeping track of a lot of stuff in Tiddlywiki (in server
mode). I keep a browser tab open to localhost:8080.

~~~
ay1n
I've used Tiddlywiki in the past but I didn't quite like it (just my
experience, I know that a lot of people use it). Switched to dokuwiki and
after that to media wiki and I'm using this now, but as you can guess from the
question, I'm trying to find/build something better for my needs ;).

How do you use Tiddlywiki - do you often search or do you know where did you
put some note? What in your opinion are pros and cons of this wiki? What do
you think is the biggest problem?

~~~
b6
I just search. Between text and tags, I always seem to be able to find
whatever I'm looking for.

Pros: It's easy to set up, and has been robust. I like it that it stores its
data in the filesystem, in a location of my choosing.

Cons: It seems to use a somewhat unconventional formatting syntax. I find a
lot of the terminology pretty opaque. Having had a few scary configuration-
related incidents, I don't try to push it to do exactly what I want anymore.

I'm glad to have found Tiddlywiki and set it up, because at the time, I was
storing notes in a thousands-of-lines-long text file, which just wasn't
working. But I should probably resurvey the scene and see if there's anything
better.

