Thread by @LauraRuis

Some of the best #advice I got early in my PhD was from @rockt urging me to set up a good note-keeping system. 1 year in my notes have helped me in so many situations! It took a few iterations, and I'll share the things that were most helpful for me personally here ⬇️🐊 1/13

Everything below I use @obsdmd for. I love how it's simply a markdown editor and file-structure visualiser at first but you can add all the plugins you need to make it ever more complex.

I fill out the same note template for every paper I read. It asks for metadata, content tags, a personal brief thought about the paper, etc. I make sure to write a tl;dr in my own words after reading. DM me if you want the template :) (it adjusted from @y0b1byte's template)

I have a separate folder for important short ideas. These are standalone notes that can refer back to multiple papers or none at all.

E.g. a note titled "LLN":
"The law of large numbers is the most important theorem in ML; it allows estimating expectations by sample avgs. We use it in max likelihood est. The law says that if we have independent data from a source, we can recover properties of the source."

Another ex.: "Lots of current theories of human learning converged to the hypothesis that it operates over probabilistic, program-like representations. An example is how children learn numbers. They learn 1, 2, 3, in turn, and at some point immediately acquire the entire system."

With these notes I keep sources, tags, and links related to the idea. Check out @spiantado's work for more on this last note :)

Then I have a project notes folder where I keep less structured notes about specific projects (or courses or reviewing). Those can link back to paper notes and standalone notes and are generally a bit more messy.

Every day I spend 30 minutes at the end of the day to do some upkeep. Transfer random links I sent to myself to separate reading lists, clean some of the metadata, polish some stuff in project notes sections and move to standalone notes, etc.

Every day of course means 2 or 3 times a week come on guys my work ethic fluctuates like the #BTC price

Finally, I keep a pdf of every paper locally so I can refer back to the specific version I read later. Tip from @LakeBrenden!

That's it! I converged on this system after many iterations (only recently added metadata from which I generate metrics with the `dataviewjs` plugin). The most important thing was taking all the advice and constructing something that works day-to-day for me.

Also, get yourself some great mentors because it's priceless :)