Welcome to the PKM weekly newsletter. My goal is to round up good resources in the PKM space so you don’t have to.
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Bigger Ideas
Platform agnostic ideas that may help your PKM process. They may feature a software, but I think they apply to more than a single platform.
Vicky on using templates in your note taking process. It’s focused on Obsidian, but the template ideas can apply to any software.
Jeffery talks about Inspectional Reading. This idea is from How to Read a Book. Back in 2021, I talked about Syntopical Reading which is also out of the book.
Matt Ragland talked about Building a Second Brain. I’ve got an hour-long video coming of processing my notes on the book. Watch for that in the next week or so.
Eric also took a look at Building a Second Brain.
Scott talks about extracting material while reading. While I hate the term, his idea of the “neo-intellectual life” is interesting. I’d love to read/write/video as my main thing.
Darin answers 5 questions about Zettelkasten.
I took a look at Building a Second Brain by Tiago Forte. This week I’ll have an hour-long video of processing my notes in the book.
Implementing Building a Second Brain in Obsidian.
I like this suggestion of putting a tab at the footnotes section of a book so you can refer to it quickly when you see a footnote you want to track down.
Interesting discussion on interlinking notes and hierarchy. Does get a bit heated, but nothing crazy.
Tips for taking notes as a CS student.
What about a note-taking device that has no internet connection?
Do these note-taking apps even help? This is related to Remnote but it’s a good question.
Some thoughts on a slip-box and Zettelkasten.
Some suggestions on good forums for talking about taking notes.
Something Interesting
Because we’re all lookin to expand our minds a bit.
This was an interesting article on how rating systems at work are self-exploitation as we try to get higher rankings. It relates to this other paper which talks about given different inputs a knowledge worker should get a different output as things are filtered through their own unique ideas and notes. The paper also extends to corporations using our “digital copy” as a monetization source.
I’ve always admired Cory’s sharing of his mental health journey. This is an article about the burnout he suffered. I note he is only working 20 hours a week and not sure he could go back. I only work about 25 – 30 hours a week for “others”. The rest of my time is for my own creative pursuits (YouTube, writing). Sometimes I don’t even feel like doing that and just go for a ride. I think we work way too much and would all benefit from pulling way back.
This was an excellent video on self-care. Just like kayaking is self-care for the poster, cycling during the day is self-care for me.
On being busy and taking a step back from social media. I’m also taking a step back from it lately.
Software
Here is a Github repository with scripts for DEVONthink automation and you can find an interview with the owner on the DEVONthink blog.
Shu gives a tour of Napkin, which uses AI to help with your notes.
Collaboration is possible in NotePlan, but it does require a working knowledge of Git.
Some love for Google Keep as an underrated tool.
Remnote
We may see a beta of the iOS app as early as next month?
Craft
An easy way to tag documents in Craft. Yes, there are no “tags” in Craft though. The suggestion is basically my Tagnotes idea.
Mac Power Users took a deep dive into Craft.
Here is an odd photo bug in the free version of Craft.
Marshall took a look at customizing your documents.
Obsidian
How Darin sets up Obsidian for Zettelkasten. Darin also did a great video for an Introduction to Zettelkasten.
Santi showed a decent way to figure out which folder a note is in.
Sergio showed off how to use Templater.
If you’re looking for a starter vault, check out the Obsidian Starter Kit.
An Obsidian Habit Tracker you may actually use.
Roam
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