Over the last decade I have been on the search for a software stack that augments the work that I do as an intellectual (someone who plays with ideas). I have landed on @RoamResearch. Thread of how I got there 👇 and let me know your thoughts on the Roam.
I have implemented and experimented with all the major players - Evernote, DEVONthink, Bear, Notion, Ulysses, Dynalist, nvAlt, etc. But couldn't find the right one given what I needed.
My best analogy representing my use-case is the tradition of the commonplace book - somewhat in a resurgence as of late. But as a historian, the value of this tool is clear.
See @DrewCoffman 's wonderful video on Leonardo Da Vinci's journals as a glimpse into this kind of record keeping.
All the aforementioned tools are great pieces of software. Each of these applications bring forward an argument for how knowledge work should or could be done from within their software.
Yet my needs were apparently a unique aggregation of features. I needed the ability to connect disparate thoughts, but also allow for easy travel through those connections.
One feature, [[wiki-linking]] caught my eye early, as I saw great value in the varieties of assumed knowledge that was behind each sentence, paragraph, and note in my commonplace. Early on it was nvAlt and Evernote, then DEVONthink to fulfill my PKM needs.
DEVONthink introduced the idea of the [[wiki-linking]] into my workflow in a significant way. If you are a macOS user, and haven't tried DEVONthink, you are missing out, despite its quirks. This "everything-bucket" piece of software changed everything.
I had played with Evernote in college in the early 2000s, but I only used it for text notes and web capture. DEVONthink was another animal all together. It demonstrated how files, notes, and utilities could be effectively integrated into a single piece of software.
Most importantly was DEVONthink's wiki-linking feature. Wiki-linking was that core networked thought functionality that I needed for my digital commonplace book, but for my use-case DEVONthink had two problems.
First, I needed to connect notes, ideas, tasks, projects, and files together in a coherent way that could easily be traversed and built upon.
Wiki-links were great, but it was still difficult to navigate my digital brain in any capacity for thinking and creativity. It was too slow and cumbersome in linking items and traversing intellectual avenues. It could be done, but not well enough.
I quickly realized that DEVONthink was a wonderful everything-bucket, but not the most efficient note-taking and sense-making tool. It was unable to really become my full-time commonplace book.
The other problem was that as a college professor, my non-traditional teaching style demanded that I have items from my everything-bucket, particularly my notes, on-demand while teaching.
For context, my courses are organized around [[Project Based Learning]] and [[Socratic dialogue]]. The latter, in particular, needed some digital augmentation.
As it turns out, even though I have been studying history for well over a decade, I don't remember everything - nor do I believe I should. This is where my commonplace and linked notes became so valuable. I needed the ability to traverse my digital brain with ease on demand.
I teach carrying my iPad, where it doubles as my digital white-board and digital brain. When students have questions, I need the ability to access any piece of data, evidence, or suggestion. talk.macpowerusers.com/t/text-editor-…
DEVONthink, however, couldn't provide what I needed. I am iPad first, DEVONthink ToGo's lack of support for wiki-links sent me searching for another piece of software where I found Bear. A wonderful piece of software, well designed and effective.
Bear had some advantages, including wiki-links and live updating of note titles across your digital notes. But Bear too, had a separate set of shortcomings, namely no full-text search or easy navigation between wiki-linked notes. Every software lacked another congruent feature.
And while I ran through a slough of possible candidates - a return to Evernote, then Dynalist...Bear was the best for iPad and my predilection for aesthetically pleasing software.
This was the moment where @RoamResearch entered my software stack and solved most of the friction points remaining in my workflow. Most of the growing list of pain-points were wiped away simultaneously while introducing several adv that did not come to my attention.
Roam had wiki-linking, but also provided a means to remix ideas, thoughts, and resources for creativity. As it turns out, wiki-linking wasn't the feature where I realized the most return on investment.
Navigation through back-links and browser navigation, block structure, block transclusion, and block queries were far more transformative in augmenting my thinking.
With @RoamResearch any idea or thought could live in multiple places and become a component of new ideations and intellectual constellations. And while many will argue that Roam's features could be replicated, that's true, but in the same configuration??
Roam became my [[Commonplace Book]]. It is where I record my thinking, work through problems, and store intellectual tidbits and knowledge.
Importantly, it is not an archive or simple repository of knowledge. It is a living space that records my thinking over time, molding to my thought processes and augmenting my brain's natural advantages and disadvantages.
