PKM Weekly 2024-07-28
Hi Everyone,
The Olympic Opening Ceremony. WOW, I hope you, your families and loved ones were not too traumatised and managed to get a good night’s sleep after that. Enough said, I think. After a week in the Southern Hemisphere where the temperatures were a lot cooler, I am back in the sweaty sand pit but with me I bring some interesting developments from the world of personal knowledge management.
This week we have updates from:
CAPACITIES
Capacities released their mobile app and this has been very well received. The Product Hunt launch was also a success, with Capacities reaching #2 Product of the Day! In addition, some more good news, “We’re working on some pretty cool stuff at the moment, looking forward to the next releases!” Cannot wait to see what the devs are cooking up for us.
Capacities vs. Logseq – Which note-taking app is best for you? Let us help you work it out!. Capacities team recently published this article comparing the two apps. Capacities and Logseq are two networked note-taking apps. They allow us to make associative links to related content in order to build out an understanding of the information we’re working with. This is a great way to work with knowledge as it represents how our brains work. This article aims to give you some insights and a rough understanding of how Capacities works compared to Logseq. It should provide the information you might need to decide if Capacities may be the better choice for you. The article covers a number of things including.
decision fatigue and the benefits of a structure
how we handle (back)links and tags
object-based note-taking
daily notes and calendar
outliner mode, paragraphs and more
export options and portability
data protection and offline mode
Better AI models and more budget: We’ve updated the small AI model from GPT-3.5 Turbo to GPT-4o mini. This model is faster and more accurate. On top, we increased the budget for all AI models. From now on, you can use the GPT-4o mini model around 20 times as much as the GPT-3.5 Turbo model, or the GPT-4 model around two times as much as before.
All in all, a very good and productive week for Capacities. Mobile app works like a charm. Quick to open, and input notes, but also just as quick to find something. I find having that bit of structure to my notes and things being placed in an Object, means that I know where to look to find what I need, or can use the search to refine where to look. Availability of using the cheaper AI model is also a plus, even though I like to limit the amount of AI I run on my notes – after all, I want them to be mine. Onwards and upwards for Capacities it seems!
TANA
Tana has been a little quiet of late. Given that it is the holiday season, and they are hunkered down developing the mobile app, this does not come as a surprise. Having said this, it would be nice to have some sort of idea when a few key things will be released. Reading Tana Slack, I get the sense of growing frustration by the users. Lack of a roadmap, mobile, offline, some basics being off, removal of key features to update them – all seems to be leading to some frustrations. Let’s see what Tana does to turn things around. In short though, if you have been away the past couple of weeks, you have not missed much.
Tana have included a new page showing the Recent Tana Community videos. You can access this from here. Some interesting and useful videos, so definitely worth checking out.
If you feel guilty for not reviewing your notes this is for you – If you struggle to review your notes this is for you: The guilt you have for not reviewing your notes is holding you back from a consistent knowledge building practice. I know all the gurus tell you that you should be reviewing your notes on a regular basis. And I tried that for years. I tried to be the good girl who read a book from cover to cover and then sat down and processed every single note into neat categories. And when I inevitably fell short of that idealised view of perfection… I fell into a guilt spiral.
Although I still think Tana is great and has a lot going for it, to me it feels like it has lost being the poster child of PKM / sensemaking / note taking. There is a sense of silence from the devs and community and a limited number of new content being created (likely due to the doors still being closed). I am sure a lot of this will change once the mobile app comes out, but I think fundamentally it has shown that when you offer something for free and then start charging for it, users will likely move on unless you have a very good offering that people cannot resist (a repeat of what happened with Roam Research). Only time will tell.
LOGSEQ
As a reminder on the DB Version, “First there will be a closed beta with our group of 20-25 alpha testers (all people from the community), so the amount of feedback is manageable and the devs can more easily zoom in on individual issues. After that there will be a public alpha. Besides, that web version is so trimmed down from what will be the closed alpha, that it doesn’t make sense to give feedback on it. So much has already been added that’s just not available for public use yet”
An interesting comment from Snapdragon in Discord: “I think Logseq’s out of the box user interface “makes sense” for some of us, like me and you. Which is why we prefer it, while for others, they may prefer other note taking styles, like Obsidian, Apple Notes, etc. As much as I love Obsidian and praise how far they’ve come, I personally can’t bring myself to use the app daily. I’ve tried tinkering it fit my needs through bunch of customisation, but that hasn’t helped so far either. I’m not sure why, but I just prefer the note taking style of Logseq, Roam, WorkFlowy, Tana, and others alike better, they make more sense for my brain it seems.”
Logseq: My Experiment in Productivity – In this video, I dive into the challenges of digital note-taking and how I’m trying to improve my system using Logseq. I share my experiences and experiments with different methods, including insights from others and the “Second Brain” concept.
The Logseq DB version is taking shape and should add a lot of functionality to the app. My only fear is that so much has been put on the DB version that it could be a pivotal moment for Logseq. Get it right (and release it soonish before people get bored) and you will have a gold mine (offline, quick, works through a browser, PDF annotation, video timestamps, secure etc,). But the flip side is, given that most comments are answered with “wait for the DB version”, if things do not go as planned, we will see things kicking off? The proof will be in the pudding. mmmm pudding.
OBSIDIAN
Danny shares with us why he is not using Obsidian as much as he previously was.
A Custom Obsidian Theme To Feel More Reflective. In this walkthrough, I’ll be guiding you on how to install the Soft Paper theme in Obsidian that helps you ignite your creativity. A great Video by Nick Milo.
OP posted the below – After using Obsidian for 3 years – have only just realised this! Thought I would share in case anyone else was in the same boat.
I feel like Obsidian is the marmite of PKM. You either love it or you hate it. You can get lost in the world of tinkering and not actually get things done, or you can be a powerhouse and take on the world with your knowledge. It is interesting that some of the things being mentioned by Danny in his video are reflective of where things are going. Is it actually useful to hoard all your information to yourself or should this be share with other people so that everyone can benefit.
NOTION
I Used Notion Sites to Create a Website but It Let Me Down by Danny Maiorca – There are many ways to build a website and Notion Sites is one of the easiest. However, my experience with the service wasn’t great. I’ll tell you why and explain whether you can benefit from using Notion sites yourself. I Used Notion Sites to Create a Website but It Let Me Down (makeuseof.com)
The Ultimate Notion Reading Tracker (stats, series, quotes, challenges, & more!)
Notion – do we need to say any more. The difficulty with Notion is finding updates that are actually useful. Everyone and their goldfish have jumped on the Templates band wagon and trying to make that quick buck.
REMNOTE
Fireside Chat #002 – We’d love to see you there, so if you have a moment, please stop by! The topic as of now… is still cooking. https://discord.com/events/689979930804617224/1266896592829419563
A great question: Using Remnote without the flashcards – I just wanted to hear people’s opinions on using remnote without the flash cards. i’m not a student, I just want an app which works offline, for my long-form writing and also PKM. Remnote seems to fit the bill perfectly. And a great response: It’s true we’re currently emphasizing and focusing on learning. I believe deeply that it’s better for your notes tool to deeply solve a single use-case before we expand too much to focus on others. We think learning could be dramatically easier, so we’re building a number of flashcards and knowledge-base features to support this learning process. We have a lot of professional users as well. Personally, I started using RemNote while I was in undergrad, and now am working full time on RemNote – yet I still use the tool hours per day in my professional career. Some of this is still flashcards & learning, but the majority is broader note-taking, todo-management, brainstorming, etc. Our core notes-graph is extremely flexible, which lets you use it for almost anything. We’re constantly pushing to get the core experience faster and more polished as well. So, I’m biased, but I think RemNote is great for non-students. A fair number of users use the tool heavily, but never touch the flashcards – that’s totally fine, and I think it’s still making their lives a lot easier!
Sorry for that slight wall of text, but I thought it would be useful to share. I sometimes ask myself the same thing. Remnote is a quality app but so geared towards students that I ask myself can a professional use it – seems yes.
Productivity Thoughts
I recently tried something new to create a video on my thoughts on Personal Knowledge Management PKM: Benefits, Pitfalls & Future Trends. Would love to hear your thoughts.
Stop Procrastinating With Note Taking Apps like Obsidian, Tana, Notion, LogSeq, Heptabase…Tom at the Paperless movement shares how to avoid the pitfalls of personal knowledge management and turn your PKM into a productivity powerhouse.
That’s all for this week. Thank you very much in advance for reading and I look forward to bringing you more PKM news next week.