Thread by @theBuoyantMan

The last two weeks, I have been going into the rabbit hole of note-taking and productivity tools for creating a structured workflow for my learning. This will be a thread on whatever I have uncovered, with things I find amazing about these tools, and things I find lacking.

While a few dollars here and there might be good for US based people, paying few dollars per month for different tools per month adds up for Indians. So I don't wanna pay for any tool and I have explored pretty much everything to set up a with whatever free tools are available.

If you haven't gone through it yet, check out @fortelabs blog on the PARA method for productivity, and the concept behind Building A Second Brain (BASB). While this may sound fancy and complicated, if you really get down to it, it's a way to avoid cognitive overload essentially.

This is also a system where you build an efficient search/storage system for managing your personal knowledge. Doing this, for things that you regularly do, you'll go from spending 2-3 hours on google to spending 5-10 mins with this system to find content/knowledge.

First, you need to filter out the content you consume and retain only the highest quality, timeless, useful information. So, instead of clipping everything from web and putting it on your notes, you need an intermediary where you could filter information/content.

Best apps to do this - @instapaper and @Pocket

Both have similar functionalities. But, instapaper allows only 5 free highlights/notes per month. Pocket allows 7 free highlights per article. You can just use either of these platforms to add whatever content you want to consume.

1. Instapaper has weird formatting issues with respect to several websites, while pocket's formatting is much neater.

2. Instapaper has a folder based organizing system. Pocket has tags based organizing system. Pocket edges out in this as tag based searches are powerful.

3. Instapaper highlights are synced across platforms. Pocket wise, I found that the highlights/notes are synced between web and android app. But macbook app didn't show the highlights. Instapaper doesn't have a macbook app (only ios, android i guess).

4. Both instapaper and pocket have an archiving facility.
5. Instapaper has a speed reading feature while Pocket has a text to speech functionality which is quite good.
6. This is where instapaper edges out - IFTTT has more actions based on instapaper, only one based on Pocket.

So, essentially what you do is, you import whatever you're interested in reading - sort of like bookmarking, into instapaper/pocket - categorize with tags/into folders. Then, amongst the articles you import, maybe like 2-3 out of 10 will be worth keeping for long term in full.

You export those articles with highlights onto your note-storing system and categorize into proper folders with tags. Then you archive these on instapaper/pocket. The ones that don't make the cut, you export only select highlights onto your notes storing app.

Now, since instapaper and pocket does limit the highlighting abilities, we look at possibilities outside of these apps to highlight/annotate on web. There are many options. @getliner is paid. Can't make more than 5 highlights per article. I found 3 beautiful open source options.

hypothes.is - this is a pretty simple and slightly arcane looking open source web/pdf annotation tool/extension. You can export the highlights, but the formatting is ugly even before export on the highlights page.

Two better alternatives are - KONTXT and WorldBrain MEMEX. They get the job done, highlight and annotate/comment/add notes to anything on web. You can then look at the highlights in context or as a separate page and essentially use web clipper to clip the highlights for storage.

In this example, I used WorldBrain MEMEX to highlight stuff on an article, and used evernote webclipper to capture the entire article. The highlights are preserved.

MEMEX is a better alternative for me as i can use storage locally or through Google Drive/Dropbox and don't have to buy anything. Kontxt stores online and syncs I guess. You pick and choose, play with both and keep what sticks for your purpose.

So, when you find something that makes you go "aha!" - that's what you highlight. These things over time make for proper remembrance and easier recall as you revisit and review notes for different purposes (when you have to do a presentation or write an essay or whatever).

So, the two hands down worthy note-storage apps are @msonenote (OneNote) and @evernote. I am personally leaning towards OneNote (due to my love for MS products) - but Evernote is a clear winner of all the apps present now.

I am not mentioning @NotionHQ here because it's more of an organization, productive task and project management app. You can surely take notes and all, but it's better to keep Notion a cleaner workspace of sorts where your final output is put together.

There's @RoamResearch that can double down as a knowledge management system for storage and research, but for people to use it, they'd have to have as much wider integrations like evernote has (and cross platform presence). Roam is still nascent, long way to go.

Following are some glaring issues on @evernote.
1. No archiving feature. You can't archive all notes into a pre-defined archive folder and keep your All Notes folder clean with current items.
2. No ability to check out just the annotations and highlights in a particular note.

If a note is pages long, you don't wanna read everything or go through the entire note for highlights/annotations. Being able to quickly pull the annotations would be very helpful.
3. No double backlinking feature. Takes manual effort. You can use tags - but not exactly like it.

4. Memory limits and per note limits on the free version (OneNote is in essence almost free, you pay only for OneDrive storage if you exceed free quota).
5. Only 2 devices can be used in free version. Good enough for most people.

OneNote is hands down the best note taking & storing app for students and learners. It has a fluid interface, and an intuitive - school notebook kind of a hierarchy. Definitely very helpful for students, but again very similar to evernote only. I'd go with OneNote.

There's this app called ReadWise (paid though after 1 month trial, but if you invite your friends, you both get 1 month extra) that syncs highlights across instapaper, pocket, and other apps. Check it out too. That could be useful also.

For those who are kindle fans, you could essentially use SEND TO KINDLE chrome extension or bookmarklet to send articles to your kindle. If you use instapaper, you can send your select articles or all unarchived articles to kindle as one book like doc of sorts.

Using this you can create collections on your kindle app like stacks on evernote and put these into the folder structure. Kindle has a brilliant highlight/annotate feature - which you can export as html too (if you need to import into evernote or something else).

You can look at all your highlights in the "notes" section of kindle app's library (within each book/doc). The interface is cool too. So, if you're using evernote only for storage, you can look into kindle and kindle app. But this doc management is only available on android/ios.

On pc/mac, you'd have to essentially convert the articles to mobi/pdf format and open them on your desktop (but it won't be synced across devices. You can have it only on your desktop - which is a bummer).

So, once you have filtered through content and brought only highest quality content - structured and organized onto your note-storage system, you can then use this in the process of creation, whatever it is - be it videos, blog posts, or for personal reference in a task.

Let me know what your personal knowledge management workflow is like, and what tools you use - and how you structure your life/work around it. If i have missed any amazing tools (free/opensource) please do pitch them in the comments section here. :)