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Comment by kiba | Hacker News Reader

His blog is definitely a treasure trove of insights but I fear the principles that he confer in his blog will be lost to the sea of information that I digest daily.

This is something that I am aware for some time now. I have no coherent modeling system and my knowledge are organized very ad hoc. Some economic insight here and there, stories, evidences, etc. It's not very systematic at all.

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> I fear the principles that he confer in his blog will be lost to the sea of information that I digest daily. ... I have no coherent modeling system and my knowledge are organized very ad hoc.

You might consider creating a file or note for every major project, campaign, or life goal you have. Then when you see something relevant to that, you copy/paste it in or make a note.

There's ideas I've done that would have been totally gone if I didn't have loose thoughts sketched into a file on them. It takes a bit of work to set up, but it's actually surprisingly easy and natural to update throughout the day.

Edit: I took a screenshot and uploaded it to Flickr - http://www.flickr.com/photos/sebastmarsh/5028168457/lightbox - that file was built out and iterated over five months, so definitely start smaller and let things expand. Feel free to email me if do something like this and have any questions on getting set up.

I use Gmail to organize information that I encounter on the web. I email myself the link and the content/text. The great advantage of Gmail is that I can assign multiple Labels to each piece of email or content.

Folder systems don't work as well for me because I would have to make multiple copies for something that was relevant to more than one major project.

Links + descriptions + tags = http://del.icio.us/ no?

There's a plugin for Xfce4 called Notes that I use. It's hands-down the best such program I've used, so much so that it's a real barrier to switching away from Xfce.

In the past, I've used text files on the desktop and e-mail drafts. This program (text only, no formatting/embeds/hyperlinks, does have named notes) sits on my top menu bar, and in one click opens up to fill half my screen. If I've used it today, it'll open up where I was last. Another click and it's gone, automatically saved.

I don't know exactly how much I get out of it, but I definitely recommend some form of note-taking for everyone browsing the Internet.

I use a method similar to yours with a personal wiki and the free Evernote. I get lots of ideas while in the car or in bed and it's easy to jot it quickly down in Evernote and then transfer it to my wiki later.

whats the software you used for this?

sorry that was a dumb question, i figured it out now

This is how I am. The way I see it, knowledge will always exist somewhere in your multidimensional conceptual space, so as long as you keep adding more with some degree of diversity, it will eventually start to form clouds, clusters, and networks. My sense is that the problem will tend to solve itself over time.

One of my close friends was a researcher in neuroscience and memory, and I'll tell you - this just simply isn't true for the majority of people. Lots of stuff you input is just lost if you don't make a note or copy it down.

If you come across a really valuable obscure piece of information, you really ought to make a note of it, especially if you're not likely to come across it again.

I've noticed this as well.

However, once I note something down I might as well throw the piece of paper away. When I need the knowledge in a fuzzy way (obscure reference, seed of an idea etc.) it will just be there. If I need it specifically (like on an exam) noting it down or pretty much anything doesn't help, I have to study for the occasion and when I do my notes are too incomplete to be of help, I have to confer a more reliable source.

> it will just be there.

And if you don't remember it, you won't notice yourself being any worse off.

I use Microsoft OneNote to keep track of interesting things I read.

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