Personal Knowledge Management (PKM) tools

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“Knowledge is not power, Knowledge is only potential power. Action is power” - Tony Robbins

Personal knowledge management system

Personally, if I had started my personal knowledge management system sooner in my life, things would have been a lot better. I could have saved a lot of time with learning. My understanding of different things in the world would have probably been a little better. Ever since I started using these nodes in my self-education, I have seen noticeable improvements in not only my reading quality but also in my writing quality.

A good note taking app

A good note taking app should support

  1. forms links - allows you to connect notes. That means you can connect ideas and form new ones and keep your knowledge somewhat arranged.
  2. offline use - allows you to use it offline. That means you can use it wherever you are. You don’t have to rely on having an internet connection.

Personal Knowledge Management (PKM) tools

While it is important, I should not get distracted by lofty promises of a “second brain” that magically does my work for me when it comes to taking notes and accumulating knowledge. Valuable notes are the product of my rigour and discipline. I should focus on the one brain I have. Whatever extensions to it will follow from there.

  1. Org-roam
  2. Roam Research
  3. Notion
  4. Dendron
  5. Logseq
  6. Obsidian

Benefits of org mode over obsidian

https://www.reddit.com/r/orgmode/comments/1by0hck/benefits_of_org_mode_over_obsidian/?rdt=54137

The main shortcoming of Obsedian was that was because I use Emacs to edit my org mode files and Emacs is extremely extensible and programmable in that many operations and features can be implemented and customised to your liking within your Emacs configuration file. Obsidian is a close sourced electron app. With this came many limitations for me. For example, vim keybinding support was nowhere near as well implemented as in Emacs.

Additionally org mode offers a range of export features (the most useful perhaps being to write literate configurations using various code blocks to generate a code file). Org mode is also great for project management. I don’t feel like obsidian does these features as well as Emacs with org mode.

Org-mode is the grandaddy of the current wave of tools for thoughts apps. With a few extensions it supports a majority of use-cases of the others.

I tried using logseq and obsidian and it was too much of an uncanny valley, none of the features they offered were so important I wanted to retrain my workflow & try to port my old notes. This might be very different if you’re new to the space.

Org-mode strengths— org-babel, file export, emacs integration, org markup itself

Org-mode weaknesses— mobile sync & editing experience, graphical integrations, no useless force directed graph widget

Logseq is not out of the box compatible with org-roam. You can make it compatible but it will take some effort. At the moment logseq development with markdown and org support is stopped because there is a heavy development of a database based logseq ongoing at the Moment, which will be the way logseq goes in future. So there will not be a compatibility between logseq and org-mode in forseeable future.

Some open source alternatives to Obsidian and org-mode for notetaking are:

TiddlyWiki

It is open source and it is very flexible. You can find a lot of plugins for it. I use for example Projectify for my Todo list. A Wiki consists only of one HTML file which can be opened edited in any web Browser. Although using TiddlyDesktop and Tiddloid makes it more convenient. For unlocking the full potential of TiddlyWiki there is a learning curve. A benefit would be, if you already have some knowledge in programming HTML and Java.

Todo.txt

Very simple syntax for your todolist. It can be opened, edited and entries searched and filtered with any text editor because it uses the file format “txt” . The file format is very futureproof in my opinion. For convenience I use the program Sleek on my Desktop devices and Markor on my Android phone. If you need some Wiki thing you can combine it with Zim-Wiki. It also uses txt files.

At the end you have to try out which fits your needs best. I must admit org-mode can be very powerful but only in combination with Emacs and learnig Emacs and programming elisp is also some effort. So you have to ask yourself: Do I really need all these features and put that effort in it if I need for example only a simple todo list?

Some final thoughts are:

  1. Even open source projects are not guaranteed to last forever. If the developer decides to drop it for any reason, you need someone who forks the project and picks up further development.
  2. Open source projects are not save because anyone can review the code. Do you always check the code for backdoors and other malicious code before using those programs? Most people simply trust the developers or third parties which might review the code.
  3. the developers of Obsidian mentioned a valid point in their statement regarding why the don’t go open source: an open source project has a big time effort maintaining the project. The developers rather want to put their time in programming and development.
  4. if the developers of Obsidian ever decide to drop their project, they can still decide to go open source. All community plugins for Obsidian are already open source.
  5. even if Obsidian stops to exist you still have access to your notes. They are stored in an open markdown format. Although you might loose some functionality.

I’d never invest money or effort in a lock-in situation where the time-frame is more than a few months from now.

Data export is only one thing. With closed source solutions like Obsidian, you’ll risk that you lose functionality when you need to stop using it (out of business, Elon Musk bought it, pricing strategy changes, company becomes known to be bad, user’s data re-used somewhere else, …).

If Obsidian is not that relevant because you get the MD files anyway (besides: markdown is really bad IMO: Org Mode Syntax Is One of the Most Reasonable Markup Languages to Use for Text), then you can start a test by using your knowledge base with a normal text editor or similar. You’ll notice that there is really good and lots of functionality that Obsidian provides to you so that you can actually use your written knowledge. And this is the part that will be gone some day - trust me.

I recommend using Org-mode for anybody: UOMF: How to Start With Emacs Org Mode and UOMF: The Right Way to Use Org Mode and then The Tag «emacs»

If not: Logseq from an Org-mode Point of View

I used Obsidian for about 1 year when the zettelkasten craze was beginning. It was convenient, community support was great, and it was constantly being updated. The youtube content creators were all “obsessed” over it, showing off their graph views and barfing out as many videos as they could.

I got swept up in it and tried my best to crank out notes, traditional and atomic. But something about the whole setup just never clicked with me after the initial novelty wore off. Maybe it was the electron aspect, or javascriptiness, or the nagging feelings about it being closed source.

Ultimately org-mode + emacs won over because:

  1. Fully OSS
  2. code block execution for just about any language
  3. org-roam is solid
  4. not-electron
  5. way more satisfying keybindings/chords on emacs vs obsidian
  6. evil-mode is much better than obsidian’s vim bindings
  7. org-mode text outlining features are just better and they still can’t get close to replicating it in obsidian.
  8. I never got the sense while using obsidian that it was a place for me to any serious work. With emacs/org-mode/roam, I can get into a real flow state while working and I feel like it’s a real serious tool. Obviously that’s subjective and more indicative of my relationship with different types of tech and interfaces. Let’s just say I grew up on SunOS.

Obsidian has its place and I’m happy for anyone that genuinely gets value out of it. I am waiting for the day, years from now, when someone who actually publishes something of significant value due to their Obsidian zettelkasten setup comes forward. But for now, it mostly seems like it’s just used for making content, DnD players, and dabblers.

How do you feel emacs provides a better environment for you to enter a flow state vs obsidian?

A couple of things seem to do it for me. The keybindings. Once you’re used to them, it’s just flows out of you naturally and it feels very satisfying to operate like that, versus clicking around all the time on the gui interface. I know obsidian has keybindings and I did use them but it wasn’t the same. It did also grate on me a bit that I’d have yet another set of keybindings to learn for a piece of software I wasn’t really that impressed with. But I tried and used them but emacs and vim are already in my fingers and brain.

Secondly, the aesthetics of the two are quite different. Obsidian is “pretty”, in that mac-like way. And for a while I had a really pretty setup with the catpuccin theme and bunch of other cool changes. But then I’d go to my emacs setup with my monospace font and whatever color theme I’d been using for code, and it always felt more like it was a place where real work can take place. Perhaps it’s just the way my mind works, because I deeply associate so much of the important work I’ve done in terminals and emacs with “real” work. It’s a little unusual, though, as I can get into the zone even in MS Word or Google Docs when I have to, but it just wasn’t happening for me the same way in Obsidian. Again, I realize that this is an issue specifically with me.

I’m having a hard time putting it to words but obsidian feels like it’s flimsy software whereas emacs never feels that way. Maybe in 10 years and if obsidian goes full OSS I’ll try it again.

I tried Obsidian briefly. It seemed fine for notes, but as far as I could tell offered nothing that org-roam does not (nothing I would use, anyway). One thing I can think of that the org ecosystem can bring for notes is transclusion, which Obsidian did not offer last I checked (which was admittedly awhile ago). The biggest thing keeping me from Obsidian (and Logseq, which is similar but open-source) is that I found them incredibly inflexible and lacking in task-management capability, which is really 90% of what I do in org.

Honestly, I would love to have something a little more lightweight and modern than Emacs and the org ecosystem for managing my tasks and notes, and I would be okay with moving to Markdown instead of org syntax. However, every time I look elsewhere, the modularity and ease of customization (well, once you get over the steep learning curve) of Emacs and org keep pulling me back. The closest I’ve found so far is VSCode + plugins, but I have not found a task management plugin that makes me happy.

  1. I’m using Emacs as daily code editor, so having code and notes in on space is very helpful(using just different projects).
  2. Babel and code execution inside the files is just game changer, especially in area of ops. You can build your runbooks and execute commands one by one, even with variables!
  3. I very like org syntax, much more than Markdown.
  4. Definitely VI’s keybinding are much better implemented and more natural.
  5. At the end it’s open source, I can use my NAS for syncing almost instantly, no Obsidian Sync or Commercial License needed. (I was using iCloud as storage for obsidian, but it requires using same iCloud account on all devices…), the same with git(multiple users)

Aside from what others have said here, i would add that one reason I prefer org and roam, is that it’s already in emacs, which I am in most of the time for my job. Emacs, being a killer text environment, is a workhorse for my mostly text driven job. To also have my notes and agenda in it means there’s nearly zero friction or interruption of my workflow when adding an item or notes.

Having a separate app means interrupting my workflow and using an app disconnected from my work files.

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