Gains I'm seeing from my second brain tool
joeldare.com
joeldare.com
fundamentally I believe "taking notes" is the wrong way to think about it. if you "know" everything, then notes serve no purpose.
It's really cool to think that all of this data exists, but I'm not really sure that it's useful. Occasionally I've gone back through my old search history for that one old post that I wanted to re-read, or go through my Spotify listening history to find a song I really enjoyed but forgot the name of, but 99% of that data goes to waste.
Quantified Self [0] is an interesting project to me since it seems to make use of data from all of these disparate sources, but I'm still not sure what the outcome of tracking all of this data is. It seems cool but not useful.
It's also like all the wires I have in boxes and draws at my house. As soon as I throw them out I need them!
Not with gmail you can't.
As of a couple of years ago, gmail search was a crap-shoot. It would consistently fail on some things, occasionally fail on others, and work just fine on cases that looked (to me) to be the same.
Yes, this was on a paid account.
Most of my personal "note taking" is either time tracking entries for Customer billing or emails sent to myself with keywords in the subject line and the notes in the body.
I wish I could get at my phone's (iPhone) browser history, call database, and location services database easily to amalgamate into my "digital life panopticon" too.
I love being able to search over even this limited corpus of data. I can "remember" where I was and what I was doing on a given day pretty easily. I discovered that I can often get "organic" recollection when I prime my brain with a few context details gleaned from the digital corpus. ("I was at xxx site that day, I had lunch at yyy restaurant, and when I got back I looked at these websites... Ah, and now I remember what Bob and I talked about that afternoon!")
I'd love to have audio and low frame-rate video recording on my person during all my waking hours. If I had that, though, I'd keep it completely secret (and use parallel reconstruction if I need to divulge "memories" gleaned from it to others).
But people tend to dislike this idea that one company knows everything.
I personally found the idea interesting, but I was too afraid to ever try it out. The mere idea of a video record existing of everything that's going on on my computer, even if it's never supposed to leave the computer, was too scary for me.
[1] https://apse.io
Hard disagree for a few reasons.
Even with history, sometimes I forget how to look up a paper I saw six months ago. A lot of stuff sits at the tip of my tongue, and I'm unable to adequately describe it well enough to find it again. Or if I can find it, it takes a great deal of effort. I'm pretty sure this problem isn't unique to me.
But even more importantly, writing helps your brain build connections. When you have to analyze, synthesize, and summarize, your brain is actively grappling with, contextualizing, and relating new concepts to the world you're already familiar with. It becomes an active part of your worldview.
Coupled with spaced repetition, note-taking is one of the best tools for learning.
notes have a purpose, but most people that I talk to use notes to basically just record reality to remember details
Yes. Summary in particular is surprisingly mind-expanding.
Also don't forget classifying! Note taking apps for e you to do that, and it can lead to important insights.
I don't do actual note-taking there, I use NotePlan for that, which is just a directory of plain text files on my local filesystem. Automatically indexed by DevonThink.
I just dump everything there, including a regular weekly cronjob to archive my email accounts from different IMAP servers including Gmail.
I use DevonThink regularly and it never fails to deliver (except syncing, which sucks, my databases are too large). I have 25+ GB of data there in all sorts of file formats, from PDF receipts to over 1 million+ text documents including emails, and DevonThink can still find stuff instantly (under 500ms) for any full text search.
I used to think that but the act of taking the note is itself important, as it integrates some of the info into your decision making process.
The indexed database would also be useful, but you have to understand enough to search in the first place.
Recording is not knowing, at best it is memorization of largely useless trivia. Sherlock has a good discussion on this (Sherlock solar system). To know something you have to have processed and at the very least achieved some compression of it.
Notes help with processing and thinking things through, aiding conscious and active understanding.
Unless recordings feed into one's process, they're a waste of space. Sturgeon's Law: The vast majority of what we encounter is junk, much of it even self-contradictory. The more you let into your corpus, the harder the problem of retrieval relevance.
My clippings are actively curated, carefully sized to fit in working memory while also independently comprehensible and guaranteed to have met my minimal standards on factuality. Because I have read them carefully before, I expand my mental canvas but am not slowed down too much by processing demands. The throttling on note growth means an easier time for information retrieval and much fewer irrelevant results to ignore.
As an exercise, look back at bookmarks that are 5+ years old. How many of them still load? Look back at your history of liked videos on YouTube. How many of them have been deleted?
I guess the completeness of your proposed "auto-memorize-everything" solution depends on what style of notes a person writes.
A lot of my notes are annotations or personal commentary that don't exist in the sources of the url text or video.
Here's an example of that type of notes I often take... E.g. I found some links that explain how one can grok "Docker" by going through the learning exercise of re-inventing it from basic os features with homemade scripts. But I wrote my own personal notes (in "##")about the limitations of the explanations in the urls:
## these tutorials explain the verb (runtime) but not noun (artifacts of image file)
https://github.com/p8952/bocker/blob/master/bocker
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8fi7uSYlOdc
EDIT add to categorize different types of "notes" to aid discussion:
(1) notes as memorization aid such as copying facts: a user writes a note that says "1 inch equals 25.4 millimeters" after seeing it on a webpage or something. So the "universal-record-and-index-everything" would help make these type of notes obsolete because one could just skip writing that note down and just recall it later by searching for "inch to mm conversion" in the digital archive
(2) notes as synthesizing/interpreting/connecting/commenting the content. These type of idiosyncratic notes generated by the user's brain often don't exist on the internet so they cannot be replaced by a universal recording tool.
Recording only the inputs doesn't help me much, my notes are mostly always about the part of my brain it ticked off.
A lot of it is "I wonder if this will help me with X" connection points left off for me to follow up later rather than to go back to refer to the conversation in exact terms.
Good notes for me are a way of letting off my internal narrative pick up from there later and carry on paying attention to the conversation I'm actually having right now.
I'm using HPI [0] as a sort of universal API for almost all of my data (manual notes, bookmarks, instant messages, internet comments, etc)
Then I use it in tools like Orger [1] and Promnesia [2,3] which function as my second brain
[0] https://github.com/karlicoss/HPI
[1] https://github.com/karlicoss/orger
Think automatically downloading all youtube videos you liked, all tiktok videos you heart, all tweets you favorite, make a crisp HTML backup of every bookmark you have. It will grab all the videos you "save" and automatically ffmpeg to the resolution of your choosing (in my case x265 720p).
It's a large effort, but one that I think it 100% worth it. People are losing their connection to the past on the whims of a few corporations. It's time to decentralize that.
A swarm of my apps all online, all uploading/downloads the content as people search for it and consume it. No taking it down since there is nothing to take down.
Coming soon!
> much knowledge work involves finding and re-using previously seen information. We describe the design and evaluation of a system, called Stuff I’ve Seen (SIS), that facilitates information re-use. This is accomplished in two ways. First, the system provides a unified index of information that a person has seen, whether it was seen as email, web page, document, appointment, etc. Second, because the information has been seen before, rich contextual cues can be used in the search interface.
Might be worth revisiting their papers to see what they learned.
[1] (PDF of SIGIR paper) https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/wp-content/uploads/...
In practice I don't know how or why it currently feels so unusable.
Markdown in a git repo is so much better than anything else I've tried.
[1] https://foambubble.github.io/foam/ [2] https://roamresearch.com/ [3] https://dendron.so/
It’s a prolog based query language so it took a bit of time to learn but now it helps me stay organized and on top of all the stuff I need to do.
I also just like the fact foam uses pure simple markdown and just uses the first heading as the node title in the graph.
That said, here are the incremental improvements listed from the post in the submission:
- I’m writing more
- I understand my productivity better
- I’m thinking more
- I’m managing my health better
- I’m managing my subscriptions better
- My spelling is better
- I’m tracking decisions
If it helps you, you could frame each section as "The problem is that I'm writing too little, so my second brain helps me to write more", "The problem is that I'm thinking too little, so my second brain helps me to think more" etc etc.
People tend to downplay the "neat" factor in productivity tools--and they can be total attractive nuisances where you play with them instead of doing stuff. But the truth is you do sometimes need something to keep you engaged in the short term while the long-term benefits add up. Wrestling with Notepad works against that.
FWIW, when I try to use Notepad for this, I end up with 150 open Notepad notes that just end up pickling/restoring with the app. I've never thought hard about it, but I suspect that happens because you naturally keep the note open all day, and often the next to refer back, but there's no obvious time to close it.
But for whatever reason it just tends to turn into a huge mess, whereas note-taking apps tend to either optimize to the idea of "everything all at once" or they manage a daily journal scroll for you somehow.
When I started using it I thought about it like a "Second brain" in the sense of it would somehow make me effectively smarter. I imagined referring back to stuff I'd written, building connections, and the notes letting me discover or recall insights I may have missed. Instead, like the author of this piece, I find that most of the benefits seem to come from inspiration and overcoming inertia and I almost never refer back to things I've written in the past.
The inspiration is usually simple stuff, like if someone told you a problem you might immediately react with a solution or question. Same kind of thing happens when you write out problems. For example, recently my wife was annoyed at me because I haven't done a chore I said I would. As I'm just jotting this down into my daily journal I have the obvious "Why don't you take out the boxes now?" question. I answer that now I don't want to do it because she scolded me and I don't want to reinforce her scolding me. As soon as I see those words, I realize that's childish and I go take out the boxes.
It's a realization I might not have confronted had I just existed in a non-reflective state. By typing out what's going I gave myself the chance to make conscious questions and observations which I can then react to. Sometimes they are useful.
Journaling also helps overcome inertia. Left to my own devices I might spend all day on hackernews, Twitter, YouTube, and taking care of kids. When I journal though I document my frustrations with living that way and that helps push me to work on my side projects more.
Further, just the act of writing things out helps me get started. If I have this nebulous idea that I want to work on "an idea" it's hard to actually start doing it. Decomposing a big idea into discrete chunks is inherently productive - it's drafting a plan and thinking through the system end to end. When I've written out a plan I have something specific and actionable to work on and my mind is already in the "Work on X" state.
Note taking has also helped with ideation. Last night I wrote that I wondered whether Spotify would ban Joe Rogan and challenged myself to predict whether or not they would. While I was writing a brief argumentative essay to myself making my case (low confidence they do ban this year) I came to hold an opinion on Spotify the company (long straddle). I was then able to queue up a buy order - which I wouldn't have done had I not been note taking. (Although, whether or not this idea was good for me remains to be seen)
For me it's also a place to dump all those things that you want to say but you don't know who to say it to. So you write it out and realize 90% isn't not worth saying to anyone. But occasionally a tidbit here and there helps in a conversation or meeting and it all seems worth it.
Probably one of the biggest advantages of keeping a journal. I don't have to bore anyone else with my shit.
It's quite simple in Obsidian with the extension "Spaced Repetition":
What is foo? ? foo is bar
I built an entire app around the idea that every note participate sin the spaced repetition queue. For me it has made a lot of difference, as I have managed to internalize (as in put into a practice) a lot of the stuff that I put into my "second brain", for example insights from books I have read, videos I watched or blog posts, etc:
Similar experiences here. I started my analog bullet-journal system 5 years ago, and though it's evolved a lot, continue to use it today. In parallel, I'd spent a few years writing what I call "devnotes" in markdown files on local fs. But they were sporadic and poorly organized. Then in 2020 I tried Roam Research, loved it (backlinks ftw), spent just over a year using it daily, but eventually abandoned it, faced w/ a "choice" between abysmal performance [the offline UX depended on Chrome local storage, and as my graph grew it kept getting worse] and putting my private thoughts in the cloud. Enter Obsidian. Finally! Offline, local fs, markdown, backlinks, plugins galore (eg Excalidraw integration)... it's exactly what I wanted. I've been delighted with it for the last 6 months, and recommend it to anyone interested in "tools for thought", PKM, note-taking, GTD, etc.
I'm a Roam user, although I've tried Obsidian, Bear, Zettlr and vimwiki. I keep coming back to Roam because I find thinking in blocks suits me better than thinking in documents.
You might recognize this as more or less the definition of an operating system, so I suppose I could just say that I want an OS which treats me as the CPU.
<obligatory emacs response here>
https://github.com/JeffreyBenjaminBrown/notes-in-org-format-...
See in particular the passage "send text to a tmux session|window|pane".
In Emacs, `M-x desktop-save` and `M-x desktop-change-dir` will let you save your session state and restore from a saved state. Also handy is the command `process-send-string`. I use it in the below (from my .emacs config[1]) to mark one buffer as the "receiving GHCI buffer" and then send text from another buffer to be evaluated in that one.
;; https://emacs.stackexchange.com/a/37889
(defun mark-receiving-ghci-buffer ()
(interactive)
(setq receiving-ghci-buffer (buffer-name)))
(defun send-highlighted-region-to-receiving-ghci-buffer (beg end)
(interactive "r")
(process-send-string receiving-ghci-buffer ":{\n")
(process-send-region receiving-ghci-buffer beg end)
(process-send-string receiving-ghci-buffer "\n:}\n"))
(global-set-key ( kbd "C-c s")
( lambda () (interactive)
(send-highlighted-region-to-receiving-ghci-buffer) ) )
I made my own application as well at https://leftwrite.io though the focus is more on making notes on websites I visit than plain notes.
I'm still working on it but you can see how to use at https://nivethan.dev/devlog/how-to-use-leftwrite.html.
It's still very much still in progress for documentation but the core features I consider complete and so there won't be any functional changes.
One aspect I would like to get out of it is something like Wikipedia but with no notability criteria or censorship, since each author can choose which edits to include.
https://i.imgur.com/B1dT9M8.png
I'm excited to try these new tools and see improvements.
screenshot: https://i.vgy.me/1Ol8BZ.png
Show HN: I built my own second brain software tool - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29640765 - Dec 2021 (20 comments)
I’ve surprisingly seen health improvements as well.
For instance, one day I’ll write my neck hurts today. When I see that again, I think about why. Then start thinking about posture. I start doing a simple yoga routine. Find one area is super tight. Write it down. I learn my hip flexors need work. Now I’m on that simple yoga routine with some martial arts kick drills and I feel phenomenal!
Mental clarity is greatly improved as well.
The biggest benefit to me is not redundantly thinking about things. When I do, it’s obvious because I see it in writing and can take action.
I tried a bunch of complicated frameworks for organizing. I ended up with as simple as possible.
(From the project readme on GitHub)
I have the exact same issue, not only for projects, but also servers, structures or variables. If the name doesn't clearly communicate the purpose, I can't go ahead. What helps me is settling for an unrelated naming scheme like greek gods or NASA missions (servers), going with concepts, like batch-importer or note-app (projects), or choosing the first generic name that occurs to me, eg. EncodingManager (code structures). The only important thing is a simple path to renaming stuff later on as its purpose becomes clear :)
The only points that the author brings up that I can relate to are "I'm writing more" and "I'm thinking more".
The interesting part is that my PIM is incomplete - I can put things into it very easily, I just can't get things out.
That didn't stop my random note-taking from rising significantly (from 1 note once every few days to 1-3/day on slow days and 30-50 on fast days) after I implemented the note capture bit. Although, even though I can't (easily) get things out of it again, my brain seems to think that I'll eventually find the stuff I write down again - perhaps that's what unlocked the flood of ideas?
<?php
class BasicAuth {
public function __construct($passwordFile)
{
}
public function auth() {
return true;
}
public function hash($password) {
return "hello";
}
}
Yeah, sorry about all that, this thing is very early in it's life...
The users.ini file is a simple ini with my list of users. I put that file in place. I put it outside of the root so that you can't read it. I thought I had explained this somewhere, but clearly I haven't. I need to fix this.
My plan with the name is to pull the first line of the text file, remove pounds and things, and use that as the "dynamic" name. I haven't needed to implement that for myself just yet, so it's on the todo list.
-help us manage our relationships
-guide us to bring us closer together as human beings
-bringing more understanding and options for resolutions
(edit) formatting
But on topics where I am not doing revisits regularly even if to just to light a bulb in my head ("Oh that topic, yeah I remember it"), I don't see much benefit accumulating.
After trying a bunch of tools, i found OneNote to be the least resistant. You can write and put anything anywhere on a page including text, images, files and even draw something. Every page is freeform like an infinite canvas and its all searchable.
My experience with a 'second brain' has mirrored yours. Nice post! Good luck!
There are lots of note tools out there and I'm sure our preferences will each be different. I hacked this one together to work for my particular needs, which I'm not sure I even completely understand. But, the minimalist web based nature of it is making the work-flow work really well for me.