I stopped using Evernote about 2 years ago. I made the switch to DevonThink (lots of good discussion from the MPU forums helped in this decision) haven’t looked back since.
Evernote is good for multi-platform which is why I had started with them years ago, but I stopped need the multi-platform option. I also noticed that my family/friends were not using the tech I was using (unless they too were techies). One of my main grips with Evernote was formatting, something would look good on my computer, but then on my iPad for speaking engagements the font was way too small. I wanted something to easily pinch/zoom. It also was becoming sluggish in search due to all the stuff I was dumping into it.
I branched out and divided my work.
Drafts - ideas/topics list for writing start in Ulysses - all writing (and writing storage)* Goodnotes 5 - taking notes in a meeting (archives in DevonThink) Feedly - RSS Pocket - saved articles from Feedly DevonThink - research gathering, articles, journals, favorite articles from Pocket, etc (reference manual)
*There are times (focused mode) when I just start writing direct in Ulysses. Drafts is more when I am out and about on the road.
Correct. And EARLY lots of bugs. It only just got to Beta. You have to be really dedicated to its unique features, at this point, to take a deep dive. It has the potential to be a dramatic game changer on many fronts, but it will take a while.
On first pass, it looks somewhat Agenda-like with an ability to index topics using hashtags and back links. Is that basically it?
Can you recommend a good, quick overview article or a video demo that’s shorter than 97 minutes because seriously life is finite and who the heck has that kind of time?
I will think about the best way to introduce it, but really there is no other application like it. If I would compare it to anything, it would be comparable to Notion but far more focused on note-taking and writing and other forms of data relationships. For example, here is my Zettlekasten at the moment:
Not long, BUT I had been using DEVONThink’s wiki note feature which uses the same syntax as Roam. So, really it was almost a direct port. However, the features of the app are far more powerful than wiki. Just a couple durable features that are unique: first, you can open up any “block“ or “node” (note) and a slide out window on the right and edit it in place, dragon drop between notes, and many other things. Second, you can reference any notes or block from any node in your database, and it will be replicated in the current note — and if you edit either, changes are reflected in both. Third, there is a footer that displays both intentional linkages And also related notes throughout your database. Fourth, you can navigate throughout the database in a variety of ways; probably the most unique is one, through the note graph I posted, or through the footer section. Much in the way that Nicholas lumen roamed through his Zettlekasten by going from note to note, from idea to idea, from thought to thought, you can do that in Roam as well.
Not sure I understand what you mean. You can change the name of the top level folder to anything. And you can add many more folders as you desire. So you aren’t locked into Manuscript at all. I have a bunch of different Scrivener projects and I don’t have a Manuscript folder in any of them except my NaNo Novel.
I think apps like Roam and Notion are interesting apps that do novel things, maybe even prosumer level things. But I feel like most of their benefit over a more traditional app is novelty.
Reminds me of Prezi. Prezi can do some cool stuff on the surface but it’s fundamentally at its best when the user focuses on writing a good presentation … which never happens in Prezi, because ZOOMING AND WIZ BANG!
The problem being long term viability and getting used to workflows that probably won’t exist in any other apps when they inevitably write their Medium post about the end of their incredible journey.
I think it’s more important to look for apps that have more power under the hood, focus less on neato features, and focus more on how you go about collecting and using the information you’re after. Work the information, not the app.
I tried Notion earlier this year. It’s pretty neat and I can see lots of potential uses for the app. But I just felt like I was working more ON the app than I was working on my work (does that make sense??).
I actually use a combo of Drafts / Notes / Evernote now. I’ve been using EN for years (since 2009) and I have so much stored in there. It’s a great repo for all-things-digital. Drafts is where text starts for me. If I have an idea, it goes in drafts. If I want to start and email, It goes in drafts. I try to sort that inbox out each week.
Notes holds current stuff that I am working on or want to reference quickly. I tried using only notes (without EN) for a while this year and I just found myself spending too much time looking around for things. I like the notes books and tags inside of EN.
Eventually everything lands inside of Evernote for archive and reference. I think that is what EN is best at (ORC, search, storage).
But, I will echo what others have said as well, the best system is one that you commit to using. For me, Notion was the “new thing” that was exciting and cool but ultimately I was going to sink too much time into the setup and it did not seem like it was going to pay off in the long run.
Aye. The example of Prezi is apt here too. Using Prezi changed how I thought of slideshows, and as a result my presentations had more movement and interactivity than before.
Agenda made me realize how iterative note taking should be, and reified the link between notes, projects, and future events on the calendar.
DEVONthink convinced me to take long-term personal knowledge management more seriously. It also made permanent, cross-platform/device file locations more important.
I don’t use Prezi or Agenda anymore, but I like letting the tools shape me a little!
I’ve used DevonThink to organize research and writing for two huge non-fiction book projects. I love the idea of this app, and I’m drawn to many of its features … but I’ve stopped using it because I find the app environment visually depressing. (“Does not spark joy.”)
Though I once subscribed to Bear, I left it because improvements in Apple Notes made it a more than adequate “grab and go” storage container or bucket app for snippets, facts, links, etc.
I used Scrivener for years, and it can store and associate most any kind of file. I prefer Ulysses, though, for its stability and its “all your writing in one place / forget about multiple projects” approach.
Keep It is a pretty good bucket app. I used early versions and subscribed to the latest version for a long time. I love the three-column, highly visual environment, and it can store pretty much anything you throw at it. Once, though, it lost some key documents – they just vanished – and I lost faith. I may give it another try, now that some time has passed.
Currently, I’m not as organized as I’d like, as I find myself hesitating when filing things away. Should this go in Ulysses or Notes? I’d like to eliminate the hesitation.
And since ya kept reading, here’s my wishlist:
I wish a visually attractive bucket app would incorporate enough intelligence to say, “I think this is probably related to that,” or, at a minimum, give me charts that show a heat map of interests, based on, if nothing else, word frequency. (I know! I know! DevonThink has something very like this … it just fails the “visually attractive” test.)
I wish my bucket app had a “serendipity” feature: randomly search my notes, randomly surface a note (or set of notes) on a frequency I specify, asking, “Have you thought about these ideas lately?” (Or even, “Have you considered how [Note 1] might be related to [Note 2]?”
If I were starting from scratch, I’d go with Keep It, I believe.
Yes, I agree, and I toyed a few years back with the idea of starting a blog that that would be something of a reflexive ANT-informed account of my own tech. Even drafted a dozen posts or so before responsibilities intervened…
You definitely speak the truth here. The beauty (for me, and probably not others) is that the core Roam experience is bi-directionally linking using a double-bracket syntax. This is the same for the other two apps I have used for years (Bear and DEVONthink), therefore I am using Roam as a tool to build a plain-text wiki which I backup on my machine every night. So in effect I am exploiting Many of Roams great features to build a very stand wiki faster. Even the AI references and connections that Roam is so good for is “preserved” in many ways upon export. So as long as Roam is here I can take advantage of the functionality and even if it dies tomorrow I would have squeezed quite a bit of value out of it. And frankly I only lose the AI element - which another company will adopt at some point too.
With that said, I hope it is successful and I can continue to use its features while they last. For others who create more unique forms of data using roams features, death of the company would be a big hit.
They don’t create Bi-directional linking, only wiki linking using the same syntax. However in Bear and DT you have to type in the link in both documents. Roam does it automatically. But upon export from Roam, you could traverse those same links.
Also, as I mentioned before, Roam crawls your text database and tracks you bi-directional link, AND suggests those you haven’t made yet and offers to do that automatically.
You can also filter those “linked” and “unlinked” references by chosen criteria.
A good example of the above would be if I was searching for a historical figure (I am a historian), Roam would “collect” all linked and unlinked references to that person (or event, concept, etc) and present them to you at the bottom of the note.
The collected references are the AI feature I mentioned above that I can utilize while I use Roam, but can be preserved in plain text on my device. So my worries are about longevity are very low compared to trying something that is entirely proprietary.
