Personal knowledge management

updated
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Several systems function in parallel to gather, manipulate, integrate, and archive useful information - and to keep me focused on the “right” things:

  1. Systems (short-term notes and life/task/financial management)
  2. Notes (short-term notes and long-term information management)
  3. Wiki (digital garden, cultivated facts and findings)
  4. Cards (spaced repetition flash cards, internal learning)
  5. Blog (statements, shared learning, and dialogue)
  6. Library (sharing what spoke to me)

Together, these systems help me manage the complexity in my life. It seems like a lot, but it isn’t. I actually try to keep things fairly simple.

1. systems

I use Coda to manage some aspects of my life, and will write about it at some point. I do not touch Coda every day - it mostly reminds me of certain important things that historically I have had trouble keeping track of.

Short-term notes like my to-do list, mentioned in “notes” below, are the part of this that sees daily use.

2. notes

Everyone’s approach to note-taking is different 1 and mine changes all the time.

My general shape is that I have an active notes space, which holds my to do list, scratchpad/intake note, and other daily-use notes (grocery lists, invite lists, etc.)

I currently use Apple Notes as my daily-use, short-term notes app, because I don’t use it for anything particularly sensitive and it is really convenient with my iPhone and Macbook. Preciously, I have used SimpleNote and Standard Notes for this purpose. The most essential feature is that it syncs well across devices.

All of my notes are plaintext/markdown, or close to it. I use Apple Shortcuts and the Obsidian Actions app to add to Obsidian, my main long-term notes app, and pay for Obsidian Sync.

Here are some other notes apps of “note”:

3. wiki

My wiki is here on this website - this page is within it.

4. cards

I write about this on the rules for anki page.

5. blog

Also here!

6. library

It is also housed within this wiki.

Three painted rectangles denoting the end of a path.

  1. Other approaches: 1, 2 ↩︎