Ask HN: What tools do you use for personal knowledge base and tasks management? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: What tools do you use for personal knowledge base and tasks management?

3 pointssimple102 comments

I've been reviewing Notion templates for Second Brain and GTD style productivity management.

Most of my personal knowledge base is in Notion. I'm leaning towards Tiago Forte's Second Brain methodology of organizing knowledge into actionable PARA categories (Projects, Areas, Resources, Archives) with GTD style task management.

There are several new Notion templates that use the new buttons feature and linked databases to provide a robust personal productivity workflow.

Key features: - Second Brain system for organizing everything - GTD database for managing tasks - Save to Notion web clipper - Integration with Readwise for e-book clippings - Zettlekasten style linking between notes & tasks - Recurring tasks for weekly, monthly, and yearly reviews

With the new Notion features, it seems like the right time to overhaul my entire productivity system.

Please share your experience with Second Brain or another system for managing your work and personal life.

If you are programming literate, I can't recommend plain .txt and .md enough.

Some random benefits:

• Text files make interfacing with GPT super easy.

• You can use Apple Shortcuts and IFTTT to read and write from text files in iCloud or Dropbox.

• In VIM, you can use arbitrary bash commands to edit text. For instance, you can select a bunch of lines and use :!tac to reverse them.

• Text files are easy to backup, and don't lock you into particular vendors.

Example: here's a script I run every morning to spark ideas and preview my day:

  j writings
  cat ~/Documents/tasks/links.txt >> ~/Developer/writings/links.txt && echo '' >! ~/Documents/tasks/links.txt
  cat ~/Developer/writings/waiting.txt 
  cat ~/Documents/tasks/inbox.txt
  cat ~/subscribed_subreddits.csv | shuf | head
  cat ~/Developer/writings/links.txt | gshuf | head
  cat ~/Developer/writings/ideas.txt | gshuf | head
  grep -rHino 'is_published: true' | gshuf | head
  grep -rHino 'is_published: false' | gshuf | head

Thanks suprisetalk. Good suggestion. I generally prefer Notion vs text files because of web clipping and rich media support – images, embeds, videos, etc. But I use rich text files on an encrypted drive for things like taxes, copies of IDs, etc.

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