This reads like a content farm.... ugh. Re-encapsulates content without any real valuable context.

While the programming part creates a lot of flexibility, the creation of this system seems awfully heavy and kludgy.

I wonder about the long term stability and data ownership, but it seems so heavy I'm already turned off.

Most of this is material I've seen or heard in other forms in the past. It's relatively well reviewed and summarized here though, but it's incredibly dense to try to pull out, unpack and actually use if one were coming to it as a something new.

3 Productivity hacks

• Zen Meditation (Zen Mind, Beginners Mind by Shunryū Suzuki
• Research Process -- Annotations and notes, notecards
• Rigorous exercise routine -- plateau effect

The Zen meditation hack sounds much in the line of advice to often get away from what you're studing/researching and to let the ideas stew for a bit before coming back to them. It's the same principle as going for walks frequently heard from folks or being a flâneur. (cross reference Nassim Nicholas Taleb et al.) The other version of this that's similar are the diffuse modes of learning (compared with focused modes) described in learning theory. (Examples in work of Barbara Oakley and Terry Sejnowski in https://www.coursera.org/learn/learning-how-to-learn)

I've generally come to the idea that genius doesn't exist myself. Most of it distills down to use of tools like commonplace books.

Perhaps worth looking into some of the following to see what, if anything, is different than prior version of the commonplace book tradition:

The Ryan Holiday Notecard System @Intermittent Diversion - https://youtu.be/QoFZQOJ8aA0

Article On Notecard System [1] https://medium.com/thrive-global/the-notecard-system-the-key-for-remembering-organizing-and-using-everything-you-read-4f48a82371b1 [2] https://www.writingroutines.com/notecard-system-ryan-holiday/ [3] https://www.gallaudet.edu/tutorial-and-instructional-programs/english-center/the-process-and-type-of-writing/pre-writing-writing-and-revising/the-note-card-system/

On the difference for writing for one's self and for others. Of course there's also the need to be able to re-decifer one's notes again in the future. It may be best to keep more detailed for your future self as if you're writing for the public.

I like the idea of distance in "communication space" which comes up in the comments. This is related to context collapse and shared contexts which are often too-important in our communication with regard to being understood in the far future.

<small><cite class='h-cite via'>ᔥ <span class='p-author h-card'>Matthias Melcher</span> in Commonplace Book | x28's new Blog (<time class='dt-published'>07/06/2021 11:13:34</time>)</cite></small>

<small><cite class='h-cite via'>ᔥ <span class='p-author h-card'>Matthias Melcher</span> in About | x28's new Blog (<time class='dt-published'>07/06/2021 11:09:19</time>)</cite></small>

I've only run across the German "Gemeinplatz" a few times with this translation attached. Sad to think that this negative connotation has apparently taken hold. Even in English the word commonplace can have a somewhat negative connotation as well meaning "everyday, ordinary, unexceptional" when the point of commonplacing notes is specifically because they are surprising or extraordinary by definition.

Your phrasing of "evergreen notes" seems close enough. I've seen some who might call the shorter notes you're making either "seedlings" or "budding" notes. Some may wait for bigger expansions of their ideas into 500-2000 word essays before they consider them "evergreen" notes. (Compare: https://maggieappleton.com/garden-history and https://notes.andymatuschak.org/Evergreen_notes). Of course this does vary quite a bit from person to person in my experience, so your phrasing certainly fits.

I've not seen it crop up in the digital gardens or zettelkasten circles specifically but the word "evergreen" is used in the journalism space) to describe a fully formed article that can be re-used wholesale on a recurring basis. Usually they're related to recurring festivals, holidays, or cyclical stories like "How to cook the perfect Turkey" which might get recycled a week before Thanksgiving every year.

I like that you've got such a fascinating system. It's very similar in form and substance to one that I use, but which relies on a wholly different technology stack: https://boffosocko.com/2020/08/29/a-note-taking-problem-and-a-proposed-solution/

Some of the value of notes being done and readable in public means that one typically puts a bit more effort into them at the start. This can make them much more useful and valuable later on. It also means that they usually have more substance and context for use by others in collaboration or other reuses.

Short notes are often called fleeting notes which may or may not be processed into something more substantive. The ones that do become more substantive can more easily be reused in other future settings.

Sonke Ahrens' book How to Take Smart Notes is one of the better arguments for the why and how of note taking.

I often find that doing the work in public ups the quality and effort I put into the thing because I know there's at least the off-hand chance that someone else might read it.

Generally this means a better contextualized product for myself when I come back to revisit it later, even if no one else saw it. Without it, sometimes my personal scribbles don't hold up when I revisit them, and I can't tell what I had originally intended because I didn't flesh out the idea enough.

based on Notational Velocity and nvALT

nvALT 2 is a fork of the original Notational Velocity with some additional features and interface modifications, including MultiMarkdown functionality. It has been developed by Elastic Threads (David Halter) and Brett Terpstra, and made available for free (donations accepted).

Notational Velocity is an application that stores and retrieves notes.

An interesting tool for taking notes from Jeremy Ho. Designed with Roam Research in mind.

The Eloquent tool is available to install! Capture ideas in-context with:<br>• On-page highlighting<br>• Nested bullets<br>• /snippets<br>• [[braces]] and #tag syntax<br>Quick capture is a hotkey away. Bonus hotkey sends your highlights/links to @RoamResearch pic.twitter.com/vLLbPX4zwW

— Jeremy Ho (@jeremyqho) July 21, 2020

I wish it could save data as a local text or markdown file so it would also be easier to use with Obsidian or other note taking tools. It's similar in nature to the Roam Highlighter extension.

Details at https://www.notion.so/Eloquent-Resource-Center-72f95c2a71d34c5181e4907edf7a96e1

For this panel I think it might have been useful to have someone like Maggie Appleton participate for her perspective with respect to some of the history, design, and even anthropology of this space.

Anne-Laure Le Cunff might have been an interesting participant for her leadership and writing on use and UI as well as thinking about "why" note taking.

I'd also nominate Argentina Ortega Sáinz for her work on academic integrations of Zotero with tools like Obsidian.

Perhaps worth noting when revisiting this topic next year? cc: @dwhly @nateangell @hypothesis

A privacy-first, open-source knowledge base

Logseq is a joyful, open-source outliner that works on top of local plain-text Markdown and Org-mode files. Use it to write, organize and share your thoughts, keep your to-do list, and build your own digital garden.

Note taking/annotation tool discussed on day two of I Annotate 2021.

Note taking/annotation tool discussed on day two of I Annotate 2021.

<small><cite class='h-cite via'>ᔥ <span class='p-author h-card'>I Annotate 2021</span> in I Annotate 2021 | Program (<time class='dt-published'>06/19/2021 16:10:21</time>)</cite></small>

Bookmarked on 2021-06-20 at 7:19 PM

Write and cite, research and re-search, and never get lost in Databyss. Welcome to your new word processor.

Ran across this in the closing party session of IAnno21.

I've seen this pattern. I suspect some of the issue is having a clean, useful user interface for actually using the thing instead of spending time setting it up and tweaking it.

Synopsis of two different methods for creating a Zettelkasten in Roam Research:

• page based method
• block reference method

Nothing earth shattering here, though one must wonder about import/export of notes into other potential useful systems.

Nothing dramatically new here.

Innos seems like an interesting note taking app in the vein of Obsidian, but the lack of ability to own the raw data is a deal killer here for me.

Dissonance of juxtaposed ideas, and particularly those just at the edge of chaos, can be some of the most fruitful places for learning.

Attempting to resolve these frictions can generate new knowledge.

This is what commonplace books are meant to do. Record this knowledge, allow one to juxtapose, and to think and write into new spaces.

It's also important to look more closely at things that don't cause dissonance. Is it general wisdom that makes them true or seem true? Question the assumptions underneath them. Where do they come from? Why do they seem comfortable? How could one make them uncomfortable. Questioning assumptions can lead to new pathways.

An example of this is the questioning the final assumption of Euclid (the "ugly" one) which led mathematicians into different geometry systems.

One of the toughest parts of note taking systems can be moving from one to another, particularly digital ones, as the technical overhead is almost never easy and typically requires a huge amount of work. Wouter's description here may seem facile, but I'm sure it wasn't simple, not to mention the fact that he's got more facility with coding than the average person ever will.

I do like the idea of basic text or markdown files that can be used in a variety of settings with relatively easy wiki mark up.

Of the systems I've seen, this seems to be the most portable format, but it also requires software that supports it at the base level, but which still provides search and other useful functionalities.

Early versions of annotations. Sad to realize that most of them likely perished.

Interesting to think of this problem of note taking actually coining the phrase "scrap heap".

I love all of these various topics.

http://www.verzetteln.de/books/monographs/4_paper/

I was just about to ask you what your system looked like Michael, but then I realized that you've tucked many of them into Hypothes.is at https://via.hypothes.is/https://www.zylstra.org/blog/2020/11/100-days-in-obsidian-pt-4-writing-notes/

Ton delineates his ideas between notions, notes, ideas, and work notes. It's not too dissimilar to the ideas others like Maggie Appleton have written about various smaller pieces being built up from small "seedlings" into larger evergreen pieces within a digital gardens framing.

I do like the idea of emergent outlines he notes over Ahrens' speculative outlines.

I love the phrase "elephant paths" (the correct translation?) for maps of content.

I also like the idea of having a set up for doing digital captures of physical notebook pages. I'll have to consider how to do this most easily. I should also look back and evaluate how to continue improving my digital process as well.

In the attached YouTube video Dan talks through his post as usual, but he has the added bonus here of showing a split screen of his annotated copy of the book with his Obsidian notebook open. We then see a real time transcription of his note taking process of moving from scant highlights in the book to more fleshed out thoughts and notes in his notebook. We also see him cross referencing various materials for alternate definitions and resources.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8HBL-c_nXXQ

Others on the page here (specifically Dpthomas87's A, B, C) have done a great job at outlining their methods which I'm generally following. So I'll focus a bit more on the mechanics.

I rely pretty heavily on Hypothes.is for most of my note taking, highlights, and annotations. This works whether a paper is online or as a pdf I read online or store locally and annotate there.

Then I use RSS to pipe my data from Hypothes.is into a text file in OneDrive for my Obsidian vault using IFTTT.com. I know that a few are writing code for the Hypothes.is API to port data directly into Roam Research presently; I hope others might do it for Obsidian as well.)

Often at the end of the day or end of the week, I'll go through my drafts folder everything is in to review things, do some light formatting and add links, tags, or other meta data and links to related ideas.

Using Hypothes.is helps me get material into the system pretty quickly without a lot of transcription (which doesn't help my memory or retention). And the end of the day or end of week review helps reinforce things as well as help to surface other connections.

I'm hoping that as more people use Hypothesis for social annotation, the cross conversations will also be a source of more helpful cross-linking of ideas and thought.

I prefer to keep my notes as atomic as I can.

For some smaller self-contained things like lectures, I may keep a handful of notes together rather than splitting them apart, but they may be linked to larger structures like longer courses or topics of study.

If an article only has one or two annotations I'll keep them together in the same note, but books more often have dozens or hundreds of notes which I keep in separate files.

For those who don't have a clear idea of what or why they're doing this, I highly recommend reading [[Sönke Ahrens]]' book Smart Notes.

I do have a handful of templates for books, articles, and zettels to help in prompting me to fill in appropriate meta data for various notes more quickly. For this I'm using the built-in Templates plug-in and then ctrl-shift-T to choose a specific template as necessary.

Often I'll use Hypothes.is and tag things as #WantToRead to quickly bookmark things into my vault for later thought, reading, or processing.

For online videos and lectures, I'll often dump YouTube URLs into https://docdrop.org/, which then gives a side by side transcript for more easily jumping around as well as annotating directly from the transcript if I choose.

I prefer to use [[links]] over #tags for connecting information. Most of the tags I use tend to be for organizational or more personal purposes like #WantToRead which I later delete when done.

When I run across interesting questions or topics that would make good papers or areas of future research I'll use a tag like #OpenQuestion, so when I'm bored I can look at a list of what I might like to work on next.

Syndicated copies: https://forum.obsidian.md/t/research-phd-academics/1446/64?u=chrisaldrich

I suspect that this could be modified to work with [[Obsidian]] and other related note taking tools.

Well interlinked notes increases their future expected value which in turn gives one more reason to not only take more notes, but to take better notes.

This is a major problem of most note taking applications. Having the ability to inter-link one's notes in ways that allow one to revisit, revise, and rearrange them is incredibly valuable.

too many people forget this simple fact

I'm already doing this same sort of thing in my TiddlyWiki and simply using tags to distinguish the sources, books, etc.

This is a reasonable synopsis for why to keep a zettlekasten or commonplace book and how to use it to create new material. It fits roughly in line with my overall experience in doing these things.

Getting data into any of these note taking tools quickly always seems to be the most difficult part of the process.

This is where bits like version control of academic documents can be incredibly valuable!

See: https://boffosocko.com/2014/09/17/revision-control/

I do much this same thing, however, I'm typically doing it using Hypothes.is to annotate and highlight. These pieces go back to my own website where I can keep, categorize, and even later search them. If I like, I'll often do these sorts of summaries on related posts themselves (usually before I post them publicly if that's something I'm planning on doing for a particular piece.)

I can easily see some extensions for using Hypothes.is here.

• Cornell Notes
• Reviews notes
• Flash cards for spaced repetition
• Notes for building memory palaces

I've been trying this sort of thing out with a TiddlyWiki for a while and have got a reasonable sort of workflow for doing it. The key is to reduce the overhead so that one can quickly take notes in a manner that interlinks them and makes it seem worthwhile to come back to them to review and potentially reorganize them. Doing this practice in public has a lot of value as well. I'll have to come back and look at some of how this was built at a later time.

Alright, I think I may now have things set to use an IFTTT applet to take my Hypothes.is feed and dump it into a file on OneDrive.

The tiny amount of clean up to the resultant file isn't bad. In fact, a bit of it is actually good as it can count as a version of spaced repetition towards better recall of my notes.

The one thing I'll potentially miss is the tags, which Hypothes.is doesn't include in their feeds (tucked into the body would be fine), but I suppose I could add them as internal wiki links directly if I wanted.

I suspect that other storage services that work with IFTTT should work as well.

Details in a blogpost soon...

Testing cross-linking:

See Also:

• [[Obsidian]]
• [[Hypothes.is]]
• [[note taking]]
• [[zettlekasten]]
• [[commonplace books]]
• [[productivity]]

hat tip to Hypothesis, for such a generally wonderful user interface for making annotating, highlighting, bookmarking, and replying to web pages so easy!