Productivity, information management and retrieval

[HexagonalCircles]

Preface
This new topic is primarily intend to kickstart discussion of doing meaningful things on the computer with intent, purpose. Thus escaping the hedonistic tread mill and entering a 'search, complete, document' loop (yay).

When I have some free time and I spend it on my computer I often ask myself 'What should I do?', 'Where do I put this?'. I ask these questions when I encounter either one of three 'problems':

• I come across new information and struggle where to put it. (such as a cool neovim package)

• I come across some interesting media. (such as a specific variant of a copypasta)

• I decide that I must do something and I struggle to remember it thus causing me to have a bunch of open tabs. (such as a time sensitive task to update a system on a certain date)

These 'problems' are especially evident when dealing with anything software related such as privacy, security, coding as one struggles to catalog all the potential tools let alone reaching mastery with them. I intend to share some solutions I started using and some general workflows that I hope can be implemented in lots of different ecosystems.

Solutions

For the first problem the solution I found most appropriate was a tree-structure with a 'Cache all the things' workflow. The tool used there is called dendron (greek for tree), sadly it's tied to vscode so naturally I started writing a port for emacs. Though I think that the 'Cache all the things' workflow can be implemented in any note-taking app. Also using a tree-structure for anything other than this does not work well it's janky the aforementioned dendron has a tutorial on how to use it for journaling (bonkers). Lastly there are lots of red-herrings when it comes to note-taking so be wary, most techy people do not need a zettelkasten or obsidian.

Second media management this one's a bit trickery as I haven't quite figured it out. The tool I see most often used is a something called hydrus. I find the UI unintuitive, it has a lot of features I probably won't use (it violates the unix philosophy tenfold). So instead I opted to tag my files, using a simple naming scheme original-file-name_tag1-tag2-tag3.png. Then I search for it using typical unixy commands usually piping find into grep. For example

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find ~/media | grep terry | grep dance

This should yield videos of terry dancing. Though I will reiterate that I'm still new to 'media management' and I've seen more elaborate setups where more cli commands are used as well as music being organized like this in addition to memes and videos.

Last but not least managing tasks this one is actually pretty straightforward I use a gtd package. If you've never heard of it before it stands for 'getting things done' there's a book of the same name (by David Allen) where he lays out this method. I'll quickly recap it here as you can implement it with simple unixy tools though you could use a vim or emacs plugin which I do or use the vanilla editors too.

1. Capture, write done something (buy milk)
2. Clarify, revise the previously capture item (buy low fat milk)
3. Organize, is this a habit, a task, a part of a project or do I do this right now?
4. Engage, complete the aforementioned item

Thank you for reading internet wayfarers! I hope that I successfully kicked off discussion and or provided some insights.

PS: I really like how slow paced and 'valve time'y this forum is
PPS: rate my writing 'skills' XDddd, though if you had trouble with the wording please do tell me I haven't written anything in a while (excluding short texting) and I got self-conscious *hugs and kisses* XOXO

[masayuki]

I have an infinite todo list perpetually open in a tmux pane under vim of things I want to do / learn. When I sit in front of my computer its often as simple as picking a line and running with it.

As far as information storage and retrieval, its something thats been a struggle. I used to try to just do file/folder tree structure, but that become unyieldly. I went down the obsidian extension rabbit hole. emacs org mode. And many other wares inbetween. Ultimately I ended up utilizing a personal mediawiki instance.

Its always fun to go down a wikipedia rabbit hole, hyperlink to hyperlink. Its just as fun to make articles and link information together. Very low friction. It has a weak ecosystem as far as extensions go but everything ive wanted ive been able to write myself so far.

I very much need to explore a tagging system, it would be great even just for music. my file names are long enough as-is though, itd need to be something that uses id3 tags or something.

[HexagonalCircles]

Gentlemen it is with a great bittersweet feeling that I inform you the best note-taking system is the UNIX filesystem. All that trying all that feeling lost for weeks, months dare I say years. Was for nothing maybe it was a mix of FOMO, thinking that everyone else is getting ahead of you by using some new obsidian plugin or whatever. I'll provide my reasons for it now but I must mention that it is extremely clunky but it works.

• it works with all file formats
• it supports nearly all if not all abstractions (trees, tags, wiki style links, lists)
• it being unwieldy is a feature, you can easily readjust by adding more trees, tags anything

After reading this blog post I realized I had a problem not with any particular note-taking software but with the filesystem. Because in practice a note-taking app and a filesystem do the same thing(s). I also realized that the issue with nearly all note-taking apps was that they made you think in one particular way (trees, tags). For example for the longest time I wanted a note to the effect of "good linux distros" or something like that, any kind of list. And what I'd do was I'd make a note and I'd write "gentoo, alpine, artix" and I'd link them to their respective notes. This was a bad way of doing a list because I'm working around a wiki style links note-taking app, not to mention that it was practically impossible to find. Now what's wrong with the filesystem? its clunky and if it were better we would be using it rather then searching for the ideal note-taking app but it supports all the aforementioned abstractions so almost every if not every note-taking app is a subset of the filesystem.

a simple zettelkasten in the UNIX filesystem
below is an example of a zettelkasten, you can use grep -r or ripgrep to search for backlinks. If your not using a markdown-like file format you can stick paths to files at the bottom or top of the file (any kind of metadata really). As for the name most note-taking apps use the date so you can do a $(date).md though it really doesn't matter that much.

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1. mkdir zk
2. cd zk
3. vi a.md
4. vi b.md
5. grep -r "a.md" zk

a tree in the UNIX filesystem
here we are treating the geometry directory as a 'node' but it is more flexible then a node in say dendron because we can include (via soft or hard links) lists (other directories, for example a directory containing resources on geometry). If we were to emulate this behavior in dendron we'd need to make a note about a particular resource link to the note in another note containing a list of geometry resources and finally link it to the geometry note. This is where the filesystem shines more on that below.

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1. mkdir tree
2. cd tree
3. mkdir -p mathematics/geometry
4. cd mathematics/geometry
5. vi geometry.md
6. ln -s ~/path/to/geometrybooks .

a simple rule of thumb to determine whether a note-taking system is good or not is to see how well it does transcluion nearly all of them fail at this. The filesystem is quite good at this. You can have notes at multiple paths so instead of searching for a particular note in one spot it'll show up in multiple relevant contexts.

and a final note you can use the filesystem for just a zettelkasten but you can mix and match and create one mega huge note-taking monstrosity avoid doing that while your still playing around with the filesystem as a note-taking app idea.

Second place goes to this emacs package https://github.com/ahyatt/ekg.

PS: I plan on posting more tips and trick if I figure them out using the UNIX filesystem for note taking is quite open-ended so there is a lot room for exploration and improvement. (for example i have no idea how to go about making a graph in the filesystem)

[HexagonalCircles]

I have an infinite todo list perpetually open in a tmux pane under vim of things I want to do / learn. When I sit in front of my computer its often as simple as picking a line and running with it.

There are so many things that I wished to do at some point that I haven't. Sometimes I ask myself whether I'll do them at all or perhaps time will catch up with me. I feel like the simplest little tiny things take at least 2 hours to do. (For example this reply took me about 30 minutes)

As far as information storage and retrieval, its something thats been a struggle. I used to try to just do file/folder tree structure, but that become unyieldly. I went down the obsidian extension rabbit hole. emacs org mode. And many other wares inbetween. Ultimately I ended up utilizing a personal mediawiki instance.

Its always fun to go down a wikipedia rabbit hole, hyperlink to hyperlink. Its just as fun to make articles and link information together. Very low friction. It has a weak ecosystem as far as extensions go but everything ive wanted ive been able to write myself so far.

I think I found what works for me though I don't know. I've gone down so many weird rabbit holes and found unique versions of a copypasta/meme/whatever that I wished to save. I can't even being to list the weird things I've seen just from wikipedia. Maybe having access to all this information is unnatural maybe there are health side effects. I've always felt that it is natural to explore something related to what I'm interested but hey here we are in a world that encourages specialization. No country for renissance men.

Since college I haven't had the energy for anything I feel defeated and without passion for anything. Sometimes I still get lost in a book or a story but I feel a lot less creative.

PS: and on top of all that there are infinite distractions ready to sap away your days, weeks, years. They are akin to a kind of muzzle