There are few tools that can change the way you live your life. Having self custody of your assets and being your own bank certainly changed many lives. The tools I present today may not change your life to the same extent. At least they will change the way you write and take notes. For an example, I have switched my writing activities to Logseq and Obsidian. I don't have a heavy preference towards either and the files are interoperable. I don't have to change anything when I want to publish any of my articles.
Start With A Pitch on Personal Knowledge Management
I'm not writing about note taking. I rarely take notes and prefer to memorize things when possible. Logseq and Obsidian are capable of taking notes. That is a beginning of a rabbit hole that can augment your life. I know many people who take notes and not much ever comes out of their notes. Most people cannot even find important details out of their notes.
Go Back to The Mother of All Demos
The ideas are made a reality goes back to a demo that was conducted on December 9th, 1968. Some would trace the aspirations even further into the past. Click the title and check out what was in the demo and how # Douglas Engelbart envisioned the future of collaboration and knowledge management. It makes 2007 iPhone presentation b Steve Jobs look like a minor event. For an example, the NLS Demo demonstrated the following.
- The Mouse
- Word Processing + Document Editing
- Copy/Paste
- Organizing Digital Information
- Hyperlinks (Internet is Made of These)
- Real Time Collaboration
- Video Conferencing (Zoom in 1968)
- WYSIAYG (What You See Is All You Get) Paradigm
It is Obsidian + Logseq
Logseq is released under AGPL licence which is the strongest form of open source licences I know. Google had to say this about AGPL:
The primary risk presented by AGPL is that any product or service that depends on AGPL-licensed code, or includes anything copied or derived from AGPL-licensed code, may be subject to the virality of the AGPL license. This viral effect requires that the complete corresponding source code of the product or service be released to the world under the AGPL license. This is triggered if the product or service can be accessed over a remote network interface, so it does not even require that the product or service is actually distributed. Because Google's core products are services that users interact with over a remote network interface (Search, Gmail, Maps, YouTube), the consequences of an engineer accidentally depending on AGPL for one of these services are so great that we maintain an aggressively-broad ban on all AGPL software to doubly-ensure that AGPL could never be incorporated in these services in any manner.
Obsidian on the other hand is partially closed source. The developers are trustworthy and they want to make sure they can monetize their work by keeping Obsidian closed source. Logseq may throw a wrench in that plan. I do not think Obsidian is doing anything nefarious like Big Tech. If you are dealing with anything sensitive, it is better to stick with Logseq.
Learn Some Tips and Tricks
Most of my readers are already familiar with markdown. With some linking between notes and using hashtags you can build your own private internet with all the information you need. That is already amazing. I know you are going to go through settings and customize the app with at least some themes that are going to me create a more pleasant UI/UX. Then there are the added plugins and tricks that are multiple rabbit holes on their own.
Learning Logseq = Learning Obsidian
Most of the knowledge is transferable. I find Obsidian better when I want to focus on long term content creation. I have even been trying to learn Vim. Both tools allow Vim keybindings (Logseq require a Plugin) for those who have been fans of writing on Vim or Neovim.
There are some special tools that will be exclusively available on one app. Since the files are saved in open sourced file formats, there is easy interoperability for your notes and whiteboards. You do not have to even export your work in many occasions. Simply opening the file with a different app will do the trick.
Business Owners and Entrepreneurs Have Many Advantages With PKM Apps
I have spent only a small amount of time on the plugins. There are enough tools to spend weeks learning and absorbing. If you think you have a specific use case, it is best to search around and see if Obsidian or Logseq can get the work done for you for free.
Nicole van der Hoeven Offers a €200 Course
She has more in depth content on Personal Knowledge Management than any other person I have come across. The price is several times higher than what is being charged for an Office 365 course. If there wasn't sufficient demand, the course will not be priced at €200. She has dozen of free videos on YouTube to get a taste of her content. You may not even need to take the course to fulfill your needs.
Get Started Now!
Only mastery is difficult. At some point you are likely going to have to write few things down. Instead of a regular notes app or suing LibreOffice/Office 365, try out Logseq or Obsidian which are available on virtually any platform where you would be taking notes. If you can think of a plugin or improvements, there is likely someone already working on it or it could already be a thing (such as AI on your notes app). Let your curiosity become your teaching guide. The free resources available should be mostly sufficient.
If you ever found a better alternative, the migration process would be either extremely easy or unnecessary. Depending on how you have taken your notes so far, it might be possible to open them on Logseq or Obsidian already. Pandoc is an open source file converter written in Haskell that can become very useful if file conversions are necessary.
Best of Luck!
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