Tools for Thought

11 Apr 2024 ⋅ tech, note-taking

Tools for Thought: Intelligent Note Taking at the Speed of Articulation

A discussion of the various ‘tools for thought’ apps, used for things like note-taking, personal knowledge management (PKM), graphed bidirectional idea linking, zettelkasten, etc.
These deliberations are also my efforts to craft a CS & Math Engineering Note Taking System for College
I recognize the most popular and upcoming apps and which ones shine in certain use-cases.
This essay is long and highly opinionated.
This essay has been a work-in-progress for a long time and it’s one of my best pieces.

A list of the apps

Obsidian, Notion, Anytype. These are the main ones.

There are others: Google Keep, Evernote, Simplenote, Reflect, Capacities, Noodle LMS, Remnote, Joplin, Standard Notes, Logseq, DayOne.

What I want

I want a place to house all my writing. What do I wish to write exactly?

Write in a personal journal.
Write essays.
Academic notes on Math & CS mostly, and anything I study and research.

Based on experience, here’s what I think about the dream app

Aesthetics and UI/UX matter. The environment such should be conducive to writing, creating and building connections.
I am not interested in a Personal Knowledge Management like a Zettel-Kasten system. I did try it. I don’t want to write about everything - every thought and task. Secondly I don’t want to link everything together in the PKM fashion. Tending to my notes like a librarian or gardener isn’t for me. Frankly, it sounds way too draining, and requires a certain level of intellectual autism which I haven’t achieved.
Project management systems and note-taking software don’t overlap. If you have to manage projects, use dedicated productivity software like calendars and tasks. Use note-taking software designed to beautifully house your thoughts. My ‘projects’ are aspects of my life that I’m working on, and I work that out in text itself.
Adding to the second point, I believe that most notes don’t deserve to be fragmentised. What could’ve been one file - making it ten and watching a graph is not helpful. The benefit of connections is to get meaningful information through patterns. Here I have a revolutionary suggestion - Link words with words, not files with links.
Every productivity app company these days seems to embrace the phrase “second brain,” as in “make X app your second brain.” One of my big takeaways from using Monocle on a daily basis for the last week has been that no single app can be my second brain. There are going to be parts of my life that are inherently spread out across different apps. For example, there’s a huge amount of knowledge sitting in my email inbox and my blog, and there are some things I only remember because I tweeted about it once, or recorded in a quick journal entry. There are ideas saved in text messages and contacts. “Notes apps,” it turns out, are not the only places where knowledge lives. And a true “second brain”, or whatever you want to call it, needs to recognize that and let you wield its magic over all of your digital footprint.

Rant on Notion

Notion is fairly excellent. For what it’s worth, it delivers on what it promises. Notion has built a narrative and it follows it strongly. Notion has two main usecases.

One is note-taking. Here it works because Notion looks pretty. It’s UI is aesthetic and conducive to writing. The second would be project-management. Here is where it has databases, that I believe is a polished feature built on real-life action. One can build dashboards, trackers, productivity management.

It’s collaborative, customisable, things can be accomplished.

Here’s the thing. Notion has always maintained using an Electron-based web app. The mode of operation is online. Without the internet, Notion is so incredibly crippled. It’s minimalistic Word online. Many pages even cached don’t open, any file embeds don’t work and the entire package is not worth it.

It’s tough to imagine such a rounded app, but it all goes outside the window when you are out of the convenience of having internet.

It calls itself to be the all-in-one-app. Would I want a slow, online-only interface with with slow access towards all my notes, todos and databases?

Then, after using Notion for a while, one should come to the conclusion that pretty dashboards != productivity.

I believe that for what my notes are worth, they shouldn’t be in a web app which fetches from servers.

People should not be tranced by the building blocks of Notion, as you might be tempted to build dashboards all the time.

With that said, I did learn to use Notion proficiently and I cook stuff simply by looking at a template image. I’ve used it extensively and it does work, with the premise of being online and everything that comes with that.

I started out my note-taking journey on Obsidian. Along the lines, I realized that networked knowledge isn’t that important to me (I was in high school, and you really don’t need that sort of thing), and I switched to Notion for project-management and writing.

It was great for a while, until I imbibed everything about the app. I wanted more features, and I wanted more performance. I fought with the app, but going through update release-cycle after update, I realized that they weren’t going to change.

Notion wanted to establish themselves as the best online productivity software. They did everything to make that a reality. At this point, I gained more respect for their mission, use their service for however-much it’s worth. They successively increase their engineering manpower on AI, over other asked-for features.

I am not going to even try to use Notion for academic notetaking. Maybe it’s because I’m not an English major that I can’t consider this as a possibility, so it is what it is.

Imagine being a CS major, learning about fundamentals, working with chad Linux and OSS software, being close to the operating system, and storing your CS notes in a closed-source cloud-first webapp. Couldn’t be me.

Notion is fine for tasks, but it absolutely doesn’t come close to dedicated task & calendar apps in terms of erasing friction from user workflow. The best way I can describe it is that in task managers, tasks ‘pop’ out. In Notion, they’re another block.

Rant on Obsidian

I find Obsidian just excellent (Mostly).

It has all the right things. It nails all the boxes for writing and note-taking. The versatility fits me.

It looks just right too. I’ll attach an image of what my setup looks like.

My Obsidian space. Minimal theme, Inter font.

One thing I can’t stomach many a times is the sync. Instantaneous sync is one of the jewels of the age that we live in, and I wish to enjoy it too.

Forget that, even regular sync is not something I see in Obsidian properly. Maybe it’s not much of an issue for others, but the only times I’ve moved off Obsidian, is for the sync.

I have always found the most reliable solution is to drop your Obsidian folder in OneDrive or Dropbox. On all desktops in the sync chain, have the clients installed syncing everything. For mobile devices, use Autosync or Foldersync, connect your cloud storage with this app, select your folder and sync (official clients don’t work like a syncing service, just to download, upload and view your files basically).

I’d prefer this over Git for two reasons

Git plugins don’t work on mobile. Although if they did, it would’ve been efficient.
It’s just not as fluid as I’d want. The workflow would be acceptable for just backing up, but syncing across devices where you want to use both to work, nah. I’m also very familiar with Github and have tried this, it’s mobile that really bugs you. If you’re allergic to other cloud services, you can make your own script that does everything when you run it (mine), and use Termux on mobile with git. Your prerogative.

I’d prefer such a custom solution over Obsidian Sync because it’s too expensive and doesn’t make sense for me.

Also, why Dropbox or OneDrive? Because they are the ones that support differential sync. Here I’d not recommend Drive or iCloud, but if you already use them, you can still make it work.

I have a lot more to say about Obsidian, but I will cover it while comparing with Anytype.

Rant on Anytype

Anytype is an interesting, novel and so far, the best implementation of the whole note-taking and project management tool I’ve seen. It takes the best of the main apps around, and introduces them in a free & open-source service. You really do own your knowledge base.

The paradigm that Anytype follows is that it is open and infinitely customizable.

Obsidian is technically speaking, closed-source software.

Yet, Obsidian supports user-created plugins that use JS to actually alter app functionality. Anytype doesn’t support anything of the sort.

The storage of your knowledgebase in Obsidian is bloody simple. It’s markdown files in folders on your computer. Anytype doesn’t reveal the working directory of your files, and it supports more things than simple markdown, making functionality dependant on non-standard formats.

Guess which one is actually ‘open’, ironic…

My learning is that it is possible to use an ‘everything’ app. Either you do everything in a sloppy fashion, or you can make everything excellent, but it quite hard and the effort is not worth it. Note the latter observation. It’s possible, but the effort along the way was not worth it.

Sure, Obsidian has plugins that Anytype doesn’t, sure it has a working directory that is visible to you, but those lacking features are on the roadmap for Anytype. Sure, it will take six months for feature-parity, and while that IS a dealbreaker in the present, let’s explore deeper:

What exactly is the fundamental difference between Obsidian and Anytype?

Anytype are promoting themselves as the ‘everything app’. What I feel is that, while creating something big, a network of concepts interlinked together - an investigation, a project, an undertaking.

When I am starting to create something on Obsidian, the paradigm is top to bottom.

Take a binary tree; On Obsidian, I start my way on the root node, and work my way down to the leaf notes.

In practice, Anytype feels different. You have to take care of surface-level intricacies in the beginning of your project. I have to visualize and think about how the fundamental-building blocks of my project work, when I am starting out. Anytype feels like a bottom to top approach. Guess this is what it takes to be able to do everything.

I suppose what I’m saying is, if I want to use Anytype how it’s made to be, I have to do ‘Object-Oriented’ stuff. Define the class and it’s objects, it’s methods and data members.

I want to focus on the big picture.

In Anytype, when making a set, I have to think of the base-object. I have to look at exactly how I want my template to look like. I have to consider the relations I want my objects to have. Tags, by-far one of the most important ones, isn’t an object. It is only there for filtering on a set facepalm.

Why are there two different ways of linking objects to each other? One is through @, and the other is /link. The UI/UX of both are also different! One occupies an entire line on its own, it’s smaller in text-height, and the other is the normal way! Linking a page stops when you write a space.

When it comes to object types, I don’t find it suits my purpose. I find myself constantly wanting to change around types, like page, note, book and the relations that they come with.

Anytype’s over-engineered and intricately-designed paradigms, with the premise of a P2P, Local-first, Secure tool for thought; crumbles. Perhaps this works for other people, but it doesn’t scratch my itch the right way.

Why should I know what is a file going to be - a ‘note’ or a ‘page’, before I start writing it?

A user interface designed with abstraction speaks of intelligence.

I do not wish to be the architect of my thought. I wish for it to flow freely, and watch and the bricks, the piers and the embellishments converge, as the palace of my thoughts is erected.

I yearn for a staircase where each step spirals outward, freeing me from the burdensome care of its stringer, propelling me effortlessly toward loftier realms where grander vistas await.

Link words with words, not files with links.

The mind is not a perfect recaller of fact, but it makes links better than it stores information. Allow it to do that.

Even while I am using Obsidian, I don’t fragment ideas into smaller and smaller files, all interlinked together as my Wikipedia. Create large documents, write utter thousands of words, and watch the cornucopia of thoughts emerge.

Don’t write for the graph. Write as if everything revolves around your mind, your will and your agenda. Your will is the seat of the operation of your thoughts, and as you translate this thought onto a digital interface, you will want every single pixel to serve you, not some graph.

Disable the graph for all I care. Enable it when you amass a certain size, or when you don’t condition yourself to check the size and connection of the graph on each edit.

My key point is, for producing ideas, your brain could lead the stride of emergent understanding from your notes, rather than dividing and categorising everything and watching patterns in the graph grow.

Obsidian is powerful but hidden. I wish I could say the same about Anytype, but I can’t.

Notion’s overall page structure and working is well-translated in Anytype, and the app genuinely looks beautiful, something I can also say about Notion’s appearance. It also is the best rival to Notion’s databases.

The fact is Anytype has nailed sync. E2EE, P2P, Local-first. The holy trinity; and they open-sourced it. Anytype has some really cool ideas, and if I ever had the chance, I’d love to contribute to the software.

I’ve found it personally doesn’t work for me. I was expecting something radical, and I dramatised the narrative of it’s system not suiting my use. I just need more of an abstracted interface.

I can’t wait for them to play catch-up and destroy the current leagues of note-taking software.

I’m going back to Notion for project-management & databases, Obsidian for notes & research, and a separate app for tasks & calendar and productivity.

Resources trying to make Obsidian fit my ‘notes’ usecase

Obsidian works for me for writing. It’s genuine customisability makes it a powerful medium enabling agency.

Here’s a snippet from The Sephist which I liked, going over this topic.

A tool is something that takes an existing workflow, and makes it more efficient. A nail is an efficient way of holding pieces of wood together; a to-do app is an efficient way of remembering your responsibilities. A medium, on the other hand, gives us new agency or power by which we can do something we couldn’t do before.
As with any dichotomy, there are grey areas. Powerful, effective tools can become mediums and enablers too. The graphical computer user interface wasn’t just a better way to write scientific simulations or data processing systems – it also became a new medium for creative work. Programming languages began history as a more efficient way to store and maintain punchcard programs, but a half-century of innovation has made it a medium for expressing programs that couldn’t be written before.
Despite the renewed focus I see in the community of people and companies trying to build better tools for thought, I think much of our work is still confined to tool-making. That is, most of our efforts are about creating more automatic, more efficient ways to do what we already know how to do – spaced repetition, Zettelkasten, journaling, and so on.
Building a tool is a relatively straightforward affair. We can look around at existing workflows and needs that people have, and design some set of features around the workflows and needs that we observe.
However, to build an enabling medium that’s more than a single-purpose tool, it isn’t simply enough to look at existing workflows and build tools around them. To design a good creative medium, we can’t solve for a particular use case. The best mediums are instead collections of generic, multi-purpose components that mesh together well to let the user construct their own solutions.

What I’ve been planning for a while is a Math, CS, STEM based all-out note-taking and wiki. What I have so far is a bunch of links. I’ve gone through them and extracted as much as I needed to. You can have a look.

Published in [tech, note-taking] ⋅ 11 Apr 2024
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Tools for Thought

A list of the apps

What I want

Based on experience, here’s what I think about the dream app

Rant on Notion

Rant on Obsidian

Rant on Anytype

What exactly is the fundamental difference between Obsidian and Anytype?

Why should I know what is a file going to be - a ‘note’ or a ‘page’, before I start writing it?

Resources trying to make Obsidian fit my ‘notes’ usecase

Other things I've written

Select Theme

A list of the apps

What I want

# Based on experience, here’s what I think about the dream app

Rant on Notion

Rant on Obsidian

Rant on Anytype

# What exactly is the fundamental difference between Obsidian and Anytype?

# Why should I know what is a file going to be - a ‘note’ or a ‘page’, before I start writing it?

# Resources trying to make Obsidian fit my ‘notes’ usecase

Other things I've written

Based on experience, here’s what I think about the dream app

What exactly is the fundamental difference between Obsidian and Anytype?

Why should I know what is a file going to be - a ‘note’ or a ‘page’, before I start writing it?

Resources trying to make Obsidian fit my ‘notes’ usecase