It looks like I've linked you here myself. Linking people to a blogpost I wrote is often a bit akward, especially at work.
I likely shared this blog in an attempt to further a conversation. Usually the post does a better job at succinctly sharing information than I could by talking.
In any case, I hope me sharing this post doesn't come across as humblebragging, that's really the opposite of what I'm trying to achieve.
Thanks for reading!
Even with the web at your fingertips, it takes time to research and combine information in a way that makes sense to you or that is relevant in your current context.
I’ve learned that the ability to quickly retrieve summarized and contextualized information, is a large part of what people mean by “having experience”. For most of us flawed humans, that’s impossible without keeping notes.
I started building my own personal knowledge base about 5 years ago. What started out as some loose notes, has now amounted to over 1500 notes on all sort of topics. Given its size and how it’s a crucial part of my personal and professional life, I sometimes refer to this as my digital brain. Without it, I’d definitely feel somewhat lost.
Maybe some day I’ll be able to consume its information through a direct-brain interface 🙃
Most notes fall under one of the following categories:
I do not store general administrative paperwork (e.g. invoices, paper records, etc) in my digital brain, as I only need to reference that seldomly and adding them would only clutter things. I have a separate paperless workflow for that.
I do still use physical paper scratchpad to jot down notes, mostly during meetings or for daily to-do lists. However, those don’t live longer than 48 hours, usually much shorter. If important enough, I’ll take time to transcribe things into my note-taking app.
I organize my notes hierarchically by topic, with the top-level folders being Personal, KB (Knowledge Base) and Work. Organizing things is forever a work-in-progress.
I had tried many different note-taking apps (incl. Evernote, OneNote, Quiver, Bear, StandardNotes, BoostNote and more), when I discovered Notion about 18 months ago.
For me, it’s been one of those tools that I love so much that I actively promote it to my colleagues and friends.
Here are some of the reasons I like Notion: