I would argue that what you do likely isn’t “hoarding” - unless you also feel a compulsion to (for example) save every plastic pudding cup container after you’ve eaten the pudding out of it.
It’s one thing to save stuff that you’re going to use. My great-grandmother saved every aluminum pie tin she ever got with a store-bought pie and used them as disposable oven pans for re-heating leftovers. She probably died with a dozen of them in her cupboard, out of hundreds and hundreds she’d saved during her lifetime. But the person who has 500 aluminum pie tins “just in case” - and has no idea whatsoever what they might even use them for - is likely a hoarder.
The article comes across as overwrought and exaggerated. While I can understand how someone might become obsessed with note-taking, this pattern applies to virtually any hobby where you lose sight of your original purpose and become fixated on collecting for its own sake.
The real issue isn’t simply having lots of notes—it’s the compulsive need to keep creating and accumulating notes just for the sake of having them. I don’t see a problem with maintaining extensive notes. Losing an idea or train of thought creates an annoying and frustrating feeling, especially when that lost concept could have proved useful later. The challenge lies in developing a system that can resurface these ideas when needed.
This is a first step to conquer Collector’s Fallacy: to realize that having a text at hand does nothing to increase our knowledge. We have to work with it instead. Reading alone won’t suffice: we have to create notes, too, to create real, sustainable knowledge.
I think we’re talking about two different things here. If you have a legitimate rationale to hang on to an irreplaceable tool, or a tool that would be very expensive to replace, then yes, you should keep it.
I’m talking about the reflexive, undisciplined hoarding of things—whether they be digital or actual stuff—for which you cannot articulate a likely future need, which are not irreplaceable, which you will either squander your time cataloguing and organizing or toss into heap from which it will never surface again, and simply take up more mental and physical space than they are worth.
Sitting here looking at the dwindling time left on the clock, I’m pretty annoyed with past me for squandering time grooming collections of things that were most definitely trivial in the grand scheme of things.
An aside: There are also things that one might need someday, maybe that someone else could make better use of right now. Take a deep breath and hand them to the person who can use them.
I was just about to point to that article myself.
While DEVONthink does allow collecting masses of data very easily, I agree with Christian in that article.
And though it’s now a decade old, this is still relevant…
. Actually the fruit cup ones are really good for holding small electronic parts during various disassembly and reassembly procedures. They are also great containers for mixing various adhesives and paints in small quantities and collecting sewing notions like buttons or snaps for a specific project into one place.
The flat bottom ones that individual servings of frozen guacamole come in are perfect for holding ear tags from dead sheep until they get entered into the database as died, when and why. I can write on them with a sharpie the relevant details. I can stack them and do the database updates all at once. Usually it’s for documenting slaughter sheep.
But I agree once you have a reasonable useful stash toss or recycle the rest.
This is the reason I could never even start into the whole Joplin/Obsidian ritual ever.
To me “that” type of note taking (or "PKM"ing) always felt like note taking becoming a complex and forced (acquired) hobby - note taking for the sake of note taking.
This makes note taking becoming a “work” in itself. I know these apps have very specific use and some people who need such apps they need such apps, but what it has eventually become like is a PKM movement kind of.
And hence I remained in the “plain text” (simpler) note taking and kept hunting for the perfect note app (and never finding it ). I still believe it was much better when I just did this with pen and paper. But I guess at least that ship has sailed.
Even as a plain text note taker I keep pruning them - regularly visiting notes and deleting them “without emotions involved” if they are not needed anymore or are irrelevant or if I can’t figure out why they are there. But then this is something I do with everything in life - digital or analog.
I think that’s the crux of the issue. Having experimented with PKM in Obsidian, I’ve concluded that personal knowledge management, whether digital or analog, is best suited for academics and creatives whose work depends on exploring, connecting, and communicating ideas through writing or teaching. For most people, however, the return on investment in building and maintaining such a system is minimal at best.
I came to the same conclusion, and I’ve reverted to keeping notes in Apple Notes exclusively. I’m much happier to be honest because it’s got features like being able to easily embed files and documents in notes, and I need this all the time.
I think you know if you need a PKM system, I didn’t find any benefit in linking my notes at all, but I work primarily in people management. If it were 10 years ago when I was working as an academic researcher, I’m sure it would have had its uses.
I do believe that the “Second Brain” concept is going to change, fast, with the irruption of AI. What will it look like? Not like what we have now in terms of LLMs applied to a chat with this collection of docs, these are baby steps. A full second brain will watch you working, collecting the relevant info for you, and will stay working autonomously in the background to proactively surface the connections you need for your thinking.
A pipe dream, a privacy nightmare, and an expensive toy if you ask me. But maybe Apple is not that behind.
I do the same, except for my research articles. I keep all of those in Devonthink. All other notes are stored in Apple Notes. Apple Notes has a comprehensive feature set that keeps improving. It meets all my note-taking needs.
I started my notes as a grad student. studying for my qualifying exams They became my teaching notes. As I increasingly got work as a writer, I needed more notes.
But I don’t want to fuss with them. I want to create them, add to them and be able to find what I want easily to use them for teaching, or currently, writing.
Care to elaborate? I would be curious to hear your take on this. The second brain or zettelkasten thing seems to be based in large part on anecdotal evidence: « Niklas Luhmann used it and he wrote tons, so we should all use it too. » But different scholars and writers used different methods, and they were also very productive. I remember there was a fascinating blog on note taking (it doesn’t exist anymore, unfortunately). The blogger talked about the note taking methods of people like Lichtenberg, Thomas Mann, Nietzsche, etc, etc.
To me, this is the wrong concept. No system or process is objectively better. “Better” is personal - to you, to me to the specific circumstances and needs. We choose the techniques that work for us - Bullet Journal, Zettelkasten, Post-Its stuck on the wall - or, alternatively, we jump on the next cool thing and spend our time trying to wrestle what we need into the new way of working.
Hi, can you share with us how do you archive all of that? I usually use raindrop for web sources and my iphone camera with the files app to scan documents.
Devonthink is not that different. You capture with its extensions (similar to what you do with Raindrop) with the difference that with the mobile app you can scan directly, it accesses your camera and takes the snapshot. But this is only a way of putting data inside DEVONthink, you can create the data itself just by creating or manipulating files inside DT.
The huge difference is what you can do with what you have inside DT vs Raindrop. While Raindrop is a good app, DT goes well beyond but everything is for a reason. If you feel like your current system is lacking in some areas I’d suggest you to investigate DT (and others, there’s a good competition there) to see if it fits what you need. But remember that comparing DEVONthink vs Raindrop is not a like for like match.
. Actually the fruit cup ones are really good for holding small electronic parts during various disassembly and reassembly procedures. They are also great containers for mixing various adhesives and paints in small quantities and collecting sewing notions like buttons or snaps for a specific project into one place.
). I still believe it was much better when I just did this with pen and paper. But I guess at least that ship has sailed.