The problem with this (and Mendeley, Papers, Bibtex, etc.) is that each paper/thought is isolated. Roam Research (http://roamresearch.com/) is my new jam.
Here's a video explaining the new functionality:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6M6jNlairGc
Basically all the documents you read can have tags. So you can manage all your documents via whatever tag you want.
You can then read those documents in Polar directly and highlight parts of text that are interesting.
These highlights, notes, comments, and flashcards that you create can also have tags.
We call these annotations. We then have an annotation manager which you can manage by tag so you can pivot everything around the tags you're working with.
This version is pushed to the web version of Polar now and the new desktop version will make it out this weekend.
We're also working on a new Polar 2.0 which will support Android and tablets and have better pen support too so you can work directly in a tablet rather than a desktop/laptop.
We're also working on a dark mode but first need to get 2.0 out the door.
We're adding support for DOI lookup and APIs like Arxiv so you could just add a DOI to polar and it will fetch the PDF and keep the metadata.
Will also support export to bibtex too.
Our big focus right now is shipping 2.0 so that we have a more modern platform that can scale us moving forward.
I love the idea of Polar for document management, and Roam for knowledge management, so I'd love to find a way to use both
The biggest challenge is deletions though so I'm still trying to work out the ideal sync framework.
Also, while I can see tags being useful, I don't think it'll really be Zettelkasten-like until you can link from one annotation to another.
Also, going to work on the ability to link them together with a search and auto-complete system so that you can just start typing tags, or the body of the note, and then they can be linked.
I'll be giving polarized a look this weekend and compare with zotero!
[0] https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/NfdHG6oHBJ8Qxc26s/the-zettel...
I know Zotero has a lot of other features, but 99% of my workflow with it is what I described above.
It's definitely one of those topics where you could spend a huge amount of energy organizing but not much actually doing :)
Regarding roamresearch.com: How do you find yourself writing/organizing pages? Daily journal with a log of what you did first, then linking out from there?
(don't feel pressured to write a novel in response, I don't want to steal time from your day!)
Once your second brain is searchable, you can quickly find those keywords and the context thanks to Roam bidirectional links. This is one way to approach your notes, when you know what you're looking for.
Another way to approach your notes is by browsing. You can create a page with the structure or outline that you come up with, and then fill them with links to blocks in other notes. In here, you can practice a step of progressive summarization and rephrase your notes.
I'll usually just start putting things into Daily Notes, but if a connected set of notes gets too long, I'll make a separate page and add a [[]] link in the Daily Note.
The journal part of Roam, the page-per-day part, is very useful. You write down what you're doing each day, use tags and links to build up a second brain, so to speak.
Let's say, today I'm working on kubernetes. I add a tag for k8s, which is a link to the k8s page, where I have all sorts of interesting links and notes dumped. When I'm on the k8s page, I also get a list of pages that link to the k8s page, which helps me to remember some other subject that might be relevant.
It uses the Zettelkasten Method: https://zettelkasten.de/posts/overview/ and you can also get a lot of value from reading "How to Take Smart Notes" by Sönke Ahrens.
The value also comes from it mirroring your thoughts and experiences, as I said, the second brain thing.
(I'm terrible at explaining stuff, sorry :( I hope I didn't bore you to bits)
It's a wiki like system that helps you to create a second brain of sorts. You write down what you do, and link between lots of different pages, such as "aws" to "ec2" to "vm" to "vmware" to "vmotion". Roam (and org-roam, an Emacs module that I use) shows you what links back to a page, which is incredibly helpful for remembering knowledge and how things fit together.