People naturally try to enact typed distinctions in their notes
Authored by:: Joel Chan
- Let’s start with articulating some desire paths we’ve observed. I’ll focus on Roam first because this is what the Discourse Graph Plugin hooks into, but we can also generalize to other settings.
- In Roam Research
- @ Maggie Appleton’s evergreen note system: https://maggieappleton.com/roam-garden
- Loom
- Maggie prefixes evergreen note titles with * to enable her to Efficiently retrieve high-signal conceptual building blocks for synthesis and writing
- Some notes are tagged in-line as “seedlings” to guide attention (needs more work). These “seedlings” are integrated with a “writing inbox” practice adapted from Andy. This enables her to Incrementally develop ideas over time
- She enhances this by applying CSS styles to enable visual distinction. This is a very common practice in the Roam (and larger hypertext notebook community; see, e.g., Obsidian supercharged links plugin: https://github.com/mdelobelle/obsidian_supercharged_links): https://maggieappleton.com/paintingroam
- Note: Maggie’s Zettelkasten system is a synthesis with Evergreen Notes
- https://youtu.be/RXXXHN516qc
- @ Lisa Hardy’s hyperfine village
- Tweet
- Lisa Hardy on Twitter: “OK, I made my “Hyperfine Village” into a public @RoamResearch database. Come take a look around, #roamcult! https://t.co/ukfvKbc8aW" / Twitter
- https://roamresearch.com/#/app/hyperfinelabs/page/zNhX395Zu
- Tweet
- @ Norman Chella’s thoughtmine: https://thatsthenorm.com/thoughtmine/
- It’s tuned to enable Norm to Incrementally develop ideas over time
- @ Shu Omi’s Zettelkasten system:
- @ Beau Haan’s Zettelkasten
- @ Maarten van Doorn’s system
- @ Lisa-Marie Cabrelli’s “realization notes” and similar
- influenced by
- @ Maggie Delano’s “hive mind” for syntopical reading https://www.maggiedelano.com/garden/syntopical-reading-in-roam
- @ Maggie Appleton’s evergreen note system: https://maggieappleton.com/roam-garden
- Outside Roam
- Obsidian supercharged links plugin: https://github.com/mdelobelle/obsidian_supercharged_links
- Andy Matuschak’s Evergreen Notes, taxonomy of notes, and writing inbox practice
- @ Nick Milo distinguishing “Maps of Content” from evergreen notes
- @ Eleanor Konik
- In Roam Research
- Observations
- Typing unlocks affordances that people find useful for their knowledge work. A shortlist includes the following:
- Incrementally develop ideas over time
- Efficiently retrieve high-signal conceptual building blocks for synthesis and writing
- Trace provenance of ideas to high-signal types of sources, including one’s own thought context, and references/literature
- There are pretty good workarounds and techniques for specifying types of nodes.
- There is significant diversity in the specific language used for the terms, including wholesale differences in metaphors
- Specifying types of relationships remains clunky.
- This is where the Discourse Graph Plugin enhances things.
- Typing unlocks affordances that people find useful for their knowledge work. A shortlist includes the following:
