Not b/c it’s the prettiest (I am guilty here), not b/c it’s polished (...guilty), but b/c even its rough foundation has been the glue to hold together my disjointed, segregated, and ambiguous digital and anlogue life together. It is truly a #spiritualgeography
It spurred me into a huge expression of my own thinking in public. overcast.fm/+eXzsqlfWY
But here we are again. On the cusp of an API in a tool that has changed so much of my work. And unfortunately it has started another cycle of permiscuity.
The API means that the diverse set of tools that I use in my digital life can finally become one. My teaching, my thinking, my data will finally have a platform in which to become a tool on its own - a manifestation of the ‘work’ that I do on a daily basis.
Well on to another collection of applications that just didn’t really fit into the workflow because of their limitations and those of @RoamResearch. Of course at some point I need to 🛑. But what if each iteration is a dramatic improvement on the last?
So, if you follow, yes...back to a deep dive into @devontech DEVONthink. It has been the most constant tool in the last several years. It pairs well with Roam. It is the most powerful tool of its kind. But with Shortcuts support — its on!
With formal, native shortcut parameters. My offline and “out-of-Roam” workflow just went into hyperdrive. I can interact with the rest of my tech stack through voice - capture text, PDFs, web pages, files of all types, with the iOS/macOS share sheet and my voice.
All my prior shortcuts had been bound to text only. No longer. Let the integration between DEVONthink and Roam begin. The logos are very complimentary. I will share my workflows eventually (I know I always say that). But sharing in public can be hard sometimes.
I don’t know where all that came from.......🤔
(Warning: Dark Reflections after hitting send) -> Perhaps this is me trying to avoid thinking about this shitty year we are having. COVID, Fires (California and everywhere) and now #NotoriousRBG.
A little piece of comfort: maybe nobody will read this since it’s midday in the middle of the pacific. 😁
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My PKM journey has been one of significant pedagogical trials and tribulations. I detailed much of it here: roambrain.com/roaming-in-the…
The TL:DR - it began as a search for a single tool to manage my pedagogical development as a college instructor and the curriculum I was developing for the 6 courses that I taught.
#AdviceFromARoman Continuing the "advice" column that I started some time back regarding how to best utilize @RoamResearch for your knowledge graph. The TL:DR, every block or block-tree should have three elements associated with it. An ENTITY, a TYPE, and of course its CONTENT.
What do I mean? Fundamentally, Roam "search" is a very different paradigm than other consumer writing/notes applications. Well, I am not going to explain how Roam works behind referring to my prior advice tweets about tag/page ref inheritance.
Importantly though, exploiting Roam's search workflow requires you to recognize that the power is in page refs (and "tags"). But because Roam is so flexible to the point of being agnostic in this regard, one must build with search and discoverability in mind.
A word of advice #Roamans. One of the great virtues of @RoamResearch is its flexibility and efficiency in capturing the chaos of life. Yet one of its largest hinderances to its success as a tool is its users’ behavior. There are several ways that we might better manage our graph.
One such way is to avoid page ref clutter. Two strategies. First, if you use templates (particularly daily), and you don’t end up capturing anything under a page ref - **delete it** - it will only clutter your graph, query results, and contribute to page bloat.
Similarly, if you use {{queries}} on your daily page - **delete** them as a shut-down routine. They are pointless beyond the day at which you use them. Or, as I have done, create a dashboard page containing the desired queries and use #roam42 SmartBlocks to dynamically update.
#RoamCult For new users who are like, "why is building a table or Kanban board so odd?" They are designed to take advantage of @RoamResearch's hierarchical relationships. Cells in a table row and Cards in a Kanban column are related. Use that to your advantage.
For example. Take a table. You can query for example for any value {a, b, c, d} in relation to "Item 1" since they are in the same hierarchy.
Similarly, for a Kanban Board - though constructing one is different {a, b, c, d} are still related to "Item 1." HOWEVER, as an advantage, in a Kanban board, block "a" is NOT related to block "b" outside of that fact that they share a parent.