Rethinking my PKM part 5: How do you organize your notes?

🚀 Cohort 10 starts on 24 August 2024. 📔 We will process Simple Marketing for Smart People into a Book on a Page

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This video explores the different ways you can organize your notes regardless of the note-taking application you are using. In the video, I make reference to TheBrain which I used for almost 2 decades, to my short 1 year flirt with Roam Research, and Obsidian the system I'm currently using. The objective of the video is to provide you a frame of reference when assessing your current note organization style and deciding on the style you want to evolve to.

00:00 Introduction
00:45 The ingredients we all cook from
01:15 We shape our tools and our tools shape us
01:48 PKM personalities by Tiago Forte and Nick Milo
03:12 Introducing the different ways you can organize your notes
03:40 Random mess
04:50 Daily Notes first
06:05 Content first (atomic notes)
07:30 Context first
08:18 Zettelkasten
10:35 Action first
12:08 So what?
16:10 Closing remarks

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Links
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[MaxwellBuba]

We first make our habits, and then our habits make us. Good Quote.

[mariuspretorius]

Thank you, for sharing your thinking process about note organization - and your personal development. It helps to clarify one's own thinking. Often there is a presenter that champions one of these approaches and convinces you that it is the only approach. Then you see a video from another presenter that convinces you in another direction. So, I appreciate this "neutral" overall view of all the different approaches.

[mikemansour]

I admire your work so much, The Diagrams, The Addons, the Value, and your way of presenting it, this has way more value than paid content available, can’t thank you Enough ّ

[sanzharedu]

This is my favorite overview of how to view PKM so far. Provides good compare and contrast highlighting merits of different approaches and helps understand the differences. Thank you!

[hotepstories]

Very helpful. Especially that you explain why a specific approach did or did not work for you. It helps a lot to assess whether I would be affected the same way. Also very helpful the way you share your plan for the upcoming way you plan to organize. Thank you very much

[bagheera]

Mr Zsolt, you are amazing. Thank you for existing in this world. I view your work as a modern day Tim Berners Lee. Even now, youve reached and helped so many people in the obsidian community not just thru excalidraw but by taking the time and effort to share your thought processes. As someone in the property development field using Obsidian to manage my life, health and work, you’ve been tremendous. Just wanted to say thanks

[rodking]

Excellent presentation, Zsolt. Thanks for sharing.

[cloud]

Your visual note taking approach is very appealing to me. I wanted to say thank you for such a well put together high effort video, take care!

[taolaoworld]

Thank you for sharing about 30 years of note taking.
I find my self struggling with tools. I have tried take note using notebook (with a lot of them), google doc, confluence, apple's note, notion and the most recent is obsidian. This is the only software that give me the hope that it would be the main note taking tool for next decade.

[OttoVanluchene]

The past 1O years I've been looking for the right tools for note taking, with Obsidian I found it.
Now I'm 2 years in looking for the right note taking system 😁

[ademenchuk]

Brother, your visuals helped me a lot! Great work!

[Mikarevival]

Great Job with your Video! You are an inspiration. I used atomic notes with my Synology Notes (I started 3 years ago). There was no way to link notes. I worked just with tags. I am a technician\programmer for a POS (Point of Sales) Company and I take notes about the workflow of programming or errors and fixing those errors. I am obsessed with Screenshots (for those who also are, I suggest Screenpresso. This is no advertisement. Just what I am really enjoying. I tried so many tools. My first was Lightshot. Just a little few functions. Not enough for me. A great alternative what I also used is Greenshot) and I use those in 80% of my Notes. I switched 4 months ago to Obsidian. Another world. I am really enjoying it. There is a lot of work to do and a lot of time is involved, but the satisfaction of finding related topics and thought has no describable value. I am still an "Atomic" guy, but I am more and more in to Daily Notes with links to the topics of that day. It means that I start with the daily note and I move on creating a separate note on the topic if there is more information about it that should be saved and remembered. Taking notes at this level can really change the way to live and, yes, you never stop to evolve. Keep doing your great work and take care. M.

[JakeWoken]

Awesome explanation! Very clear. I'm settling on a mix of PPV with Topic-First in Obsidian. Great for productivity and building a second brain.

[forrestrperry]

Excellent video. Really like your deep-ish dive into how not just to conceptualize but also visualize a variety of note-taking systems, especially the hybrid ones of your own devising. Thanks also for your Excalibrain videos. I recently re-watched them—closely—and finally have Excalibrain set up to my liking.

[llmn]

This video finally sorted out all that ton of information I've watched on this topic in my head. Huge thanks.

[YannyKo]

Now I understand that what I've been doing are Zettelkasten Topic First while using different colors for the Action First system, without even knowing it. Thank you for this!

[ricabude]

Man... I really enjoy your diagrams and delivery style, but the random sticky note system of your friend is "miraculously" hilarious 😅😅😅

[raphaelmosaic]

This video conveys so much interesting knowledge in a clear and visual way, its crazy - backed it up as the number one video to share if someone wants to deepdive into PKM!

[paulahunt]

I lovevyour videos because engqges all the senses, visual, audio, written. Etc

[peetung]

Amazing summary. Thank you for sharing your year's worth of experience!