Comment by kouru225 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by kouru225 | Hacker News Reader

I never understood the purpose of doing the daily note for these apps but I completely disagree with the author. Multiple times now I’ve been writing, gotten stuck, went to go look at relevant notes, and found a note thinking about the issue in a completely different way that I could then integrate with my current form of thought. The fact of the matter is that storage is a bit like expanding your conscious world. You think about things differently depending on context, mood, etc. If you have your thoughts about the same subject from two different contexts, it’s like reaching back into your brain and pulling out subconscious truths that you would’ve forgotten otherwise.

The issue with the daily note is that it doesn’t sort by content. That’s why I just constantly make notes based on topic of discussion. Whenever I have an idea, I take a voice memo on my phone. Then I send that voice memo to whisper AI for autotranscription, and a little script on my server formats it for Obsidian MD. I used to try to write from scratch. Now I realize that writing from scratch is a terrible method of writing.

>I never understood the purpose of doing the daily note for these apps

I mostly use Obsidian for taking notes during D&D (arguably its killer app), but I think "session" notes are a good enough analogue to "daily notes".

To that end, these notes serve as an excuse to force you to list your individual notes in chronological order (which makes it easy to trigger further memories/details that came next), which then prompts you to spin out any specific-enough information into atomic notes, adding backlinks which provide context and organic categorization that might not otherwise be obvious.

I was sort of exaggerating. I do get how it can be a useful process but it does seem like the author had blind faith in that type of organization without understanding the pros and cons of it, and I do think that the cons are way bigger than people seem to think they are. Some of my more rambling voice memos approach a “daily note” style of chronological organization. I’ve tried to create outlines for them but it’s pretty time consuming. Someday soon I’ll try to use ai to create summaries and see where that takes me.

My point was that I think the authors problem is the daily note rather than the note taking app.

Taking notes involves writing, which compels you to structure your thoughts. Centralizing your writing in one place provides ample opportunities for AI/LLM enhancements, like better search, recall, suggestions, etc.

I don't see the benefit of this when you can reach for the internet and find a magnitude of thoughts on the very same issue with a very different perspective. I also think thoughts from others are the only way to adjust your own bias about the issue.

Rather the benefit seems to mostly stem from freeing up mental space by removing whatever the thought was that you want to cling to, and putting it somewhere else that "feels" permanent. That feeling is important because it allows your brain to drop it, rather than feel like you have to continue to think about it out of fear of "forgetting".

It doesn’t help to find different thoughts on the same issue because you can’t relate to the majority of them. When you find out that you, yourself, came to different opinions of the same subject, then you end up having a practical understanding of that POV.

You have to understand where that differing POV connects with other POVs. The bridge between the two is what matters here; not the content.

Why can I not relate to the majority of them? It's a basic feature of empathy.

Relating may be the wrong word. Its one thing to empathize with someone’s pov, but it’s another to recreate it. We all are living, in some respect, in response to our environment. You can empathize with another’s pov but that doesn’t mean you have a full understanding of the ecosystem of thoughts that led them to their conclusions. What I’m saying is that as our environment changes over time, your ecosystem of thoughts change, and if you put those thoughts down at the moment then you can find moments in your past when you, too, came to the same conclusion as other people. That way you can relate not only to their opinion, but to the environment that the opinion was (in some respect) created in response to. You can then relate not just to their conscious pov but to the unsaid subconscious aspects of their pov as well. It allows you to find connections you previously wouldn’t have found. It also has helped me change my perception of myself.

In my experience, going to the internet to get whatever random thoughts a search algorithm turns up for me can feel interesting, but is almost always counterproductive. Other people have different circumstances, different experiences, and while some content on the internet is good, a lot of it is just crap.

Most of the work is in thinking through things for yourself, organizing information, and synthesizing some outcome. Internet browsing is like junk food, and doesn't do a good job substituting for that.

Also, you mention "thoughts from others are the only way to adjust your own bias." I definitely agree with that, but I want to get thoughts from people who I know and trust. If you adjust your biases based on the cacophony of the internet it's much more likely that you'll get swept up in other people's biases instead

One thing I've experienced is I often need to rephrase a concept in my own words and understanding to truly grok it.

An online resource using a lot of context specific phrases, that l'll need to spend time to define and understand individually, just to build up that greater understanding of a topic is a bit of a time sink. It's helpful to have a note on something in one's own voice that helps you return to that frame of mind.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com