In my experience, most people use software tools only begrudgingly, and will go to great lengths to avoid ever having to learn a new one. For some percentage of tech enthusiasts, though, trying out new software is a hobby all unto itself.
I count myself among this pathological second group, and will regularly drop everything to try out a new to-do app for no productive reason at all.
That’s me! I expect it is everyone else here, too. And I often return to tools I’ve previously abandoned, to see if they’ve changed or I’ve changed enough to find them useful. I did that yesterday with Obsidian.
His use of AI is different from my own, but we have the same philosophy, and I think I will try some of his ideas. “… there are things that AI does for me that I would now hate to do myself, and hope never to do again.” I use AI to write marketing copy, which I then revise, often extensively; suggest headlines, article descriptions, three-bullet article summaries, transition paragraphs and to help me prepare for interviews. I also use AI as a kind of super-Google for research; I’m a good researcher, and AI makes me a better researcher.
What I do not use AI for, professionally, is doing interviews and writing. Those are the core of my work, and I’m great at doing them.
The Readwise section and the section that followed echo my experience. I’ve not heard of Recall but it sounds tempting; it also sounds like what many people use DEVONthink for.
I’m test-driving Recall, and I don’t think it and DEVONthink really scratch the same itch.
When you put something in DEVONthink (other than a link, of course) it is on your device and in a database that you control. It gives you powerful tools to search your database, help you find related documents, or suggest where to put a document you’ve just added. But if you want to chat with an LLM about the items in your database or have an LLM summarize your documents, you’ll need an API key, and you’ll need to do the prompting.
To the best of my knowledge, Recall is web-only and doesn’t store what you collect on your device. You can export your notes and any of the content (e.g., summaries) that it creates for you to markdown, but you can’t export the thing that you saved itself. Recall wants to summarize, build connections, and organize your items for you without you’re having to ask it to. Recall organizes via tags and automatically tags your content for you. (You can change the tags if you’d like.)
If you can’t resist going down an internet rabbit hole—and I’m a proud member of that tribe—Recall is the app for you. If you’re looking for something to help you learn about a topic, it’s got some helpful tools to get you started. If you’re building a serious research database, however, you’ll probably need something more robust.
I’d like to use Recall as a super-charged read-it-later app, but for one thing: it’s absolutely unreadable on mobile. There’s no way to scale the text it generated, and you can forget about reading a PDF in the app.
Yes, Casey’s experience with Readwise is similar to mine. Also, Readwise is expensive and too complicated — it’s trying to be too many things at once. My annual subscription expires today, and I am not renewing.
I am certainly prone to the “Ooooh! Shiny!!” but I also subscribe to the idea that “productivity” is a solution in search of a problem for probably 95% of people.
I use reminders (Reminders and Calendar reminders) to ensure I don’t forget things. But nothing in my life is so predictable that I can really plan everything out with powerful tools like OmniFocus. Not that I haven’t tried; I just figured out the only thing apps like that do for me is to assuage my “look, it’s pretty” tendency. If Reminders didn’t look so… clinical… I’d probably never consider using anything else.
@Dawfnls I highlight books infrequently and don’t have a system for saving the highlights.
@zkarj I’ve been back to OmniFocus for a few weeks and I’m impressed with its ability to be simple and customizable in ways I have not found other task managers capable of.
I’m kicking the tires on Recall, following Casy Newton’s recommendation. It has survived the 15-minute test. I have had it installed for 15 minutes and have decided to give it a little while more.
@iOlly Time for me to yet again repeat my contribution to productivity wit and wisdom:
A read-it-later app is, by design, filled with articles, videos and content you have decided not to read.
I had paid Pocket for years and came to the conclusion, 6 months before they wound it up, that it was actually a source of stress rather than productivity for me. Clipping services for articles I have read and want to retain works better. Even better if I put my own summary at the top of the clipping. It also prompted a large unsubscribe from newsletters and a return to reading more books.
The Productivity Field Guide had a hand in this, reflecting on what was really signal vs noise and where I spent my time and attention.
“Productivity is a solution in search of a problem for 95% people”. Yep…after using a variety of productivity tools over the years, and spending much money, I came to that conclusion. The productivity tools end up dominating your time, not freeing up more.
Update! It’s not ideal, but, in the case of clipped web articles at least, there’s a handy little icon you can click to copy the article to your clipboard in markdown and then paste it into another document. The markdown version retains all of the links in the original, but doesn’t send over any metadata, so you’d have to add that yourself.
Thanks. I’ve used it. I always gravitate back to Reminders because it’s simple. My point about trying other apps was largely one of wanting something that looks better.
Remember the Milk, Things, OmniFocus, To-do (any spelling), Due, and probably others. Every one of them has, at some point, given me some kind of friction.
Prior to the Palm III my To Do list was always some form of pen and paper. A Franklin Planner, a 3x5 card, or occasionally something I “borrowed” from someone’s desk.
Today I might use Reminders, Due, or Google Tasks depending on which is the quickest way to enter the information. And I still keep a couple of 3x5 cards handy.
