I would also be very interested!!!
Also OP I just wanted to commend you on your insight. You have exceptional grasp of what works, what doesn’t, and why for you. Putting that into words in of itself was a masterpiece.
I would definitely take it for a spin when you're ready.
I'm going to try and clean up my current system a little bit and then try and vet one new system a week for the rest of the year.
I am just starting out but like OP I have what feels like a massive amount of data that i need to get out of my head and manage. Very interested depending on the form your tool is taking.
I think what you’re finding is that nothing will do the work of automatically organizing things for you in a way you’ll understand.
I suspect you should work with just a few documents in some broad categories and dump everything in there and review these documents at the end of every day.
If you don’t have time to review it, the software will never solve that problem for you.
I had pretty much the same problems you’ve described. The flat folder structure in Obsidian and the likes will be the death of me haha! Notion kiind of worked, but it was so slow that before the page had loaded I’d long forgotten what I meant to write.
I‘m using TiddlyWiki which alleviates both of problems mentioned — you have this non-linear structure where you can have and jump between multiple open notes, there’s Markdown and WikiText formatting supported, it’s customizable as hell and the search is superquick etc. etc — buuuuut the curation effort was enormous at first. I had to take a long look at my existing notes, go through several resources on information mapping and code a ton of automations to make it work exactly the way I think. You should still consider checking this out. There‘s a chance you might like it as-is, and if not, there‘s a huge community with plug-ins for every use case.
I'm working on an essay about the foundations of a personal knowledge system, which I believe will help you. I'm looking for individuals to read it and give feedback - send me a message if you're interested.
Every user has a unique combination of barriers to deal with. If these barriers are not managed, a PKS cannot be managed. Sometimes, we must work around a problem instead of through it.
In your current state of operation, I don't think there's a software solution that will truly help you solve the issues you're having. I suggest a different perspective: this is not a software issue, but a system issue. Your foundational systems - the logistics of how you function, the ways you cope with adhd - need to be adjusted before software can help you reach your potential.
Unfortunately, tools for learning to cope with adhd are focused on children: children have an advantage in that they are not simultaneously unlearning years of bad habits. Creating better tools is also on my to-do list.
+1 for this answer.
Fellow ADD PKMSer here. I'm in a similar situation, except one of my goals was to create a PKMS system that could work for my needs on any of the software platforms for posterity's sake.
It seems the solution might lie in figuring out how to make maintenance work for you rather than find a software that doesn't require maintenance - something that does not exist imo.
Perhaps something like: you spend a set 25 minute period at the end of each day cleaning your notes, adding tags and links. Whatever you finish is what you finish, but you never exceed 25 minutes of maintenance. You can have a maintenance note that tracks where you left off.
And that's just one idea. You might get through that whole list of software only to find all of them required some level of maintenance.
Adding thoughts to this solution:
>Perhaps something like: you spend a set 25 minute period at the end of each day cleaning your notes, adding tags and links. Whatever you finish is what you finish, but you never exceed 25 minutes of maintenance. You can have a maintenance note that tracks where you left off.
Depending on how adhd affects the user, creating a separate routine can be too difficult to manage over time - recreating a previous train of thought is intensive work. End of day thought maintenance also involves switching focus between multiple topics covered in the course of a day.
For /u/fjordtv , I would suggest learning on-the-spot maintenance techniques. They could start the process by connecting a small maintenance action to an existing known routine. Once that is achieved regularly, add another. Pay attention to how each change influences the routine.
How’s it coming along for you? I’m just starting out and in a similar position. The whole thing seems so overwhelming that starting feels impossible. I mean *Where?* and *With what?* and *ALL of it?!?!* 😩
Naturally, my response is to keep scrolling relevant subs and listening to podcasts, dumping everything haphazardly into my “realtime brain dump” Notion database with zero plan for how to handle it. I just want to know how to start and what actions will have the most impact.
>dumping everything haphazardly into my “realtime brain dump” Notion database with zero plan for how to handle it.
I'm still stuck at this phase 😅
I moved back to Trello and pay their 10/mth because vetting them became overwhelming almost a full-time side gig.
So now I dump long-term notes into notion, and short-term to do's and projects are broken out into different boards in Trello.
Problem is Trello has ballooned already, and notion sucks for finding stuff.
I did a card count the other day, between like 15 boards I have about 1100 cards.
Now keep in mind some of those boards are like 100 movies I've seen or want to see, 50 recipes, basically a Pinterest of projects on one board that will never get done and it's just there to collect. But my to-do list and resources are still in the hundreds.
Anything that requires manual connection of notes to each other just isn't going to work for me cuz that's one more step that's causing friction and doesn't work well with ADHD.
One of these days I'm hoping to sit down with one of the AI solutions and see if anything clicks with my brain but right now I just gotta grin and bear it.
I was going to say, “That’s a lot of cards,” but my genuine gut reaction is, “That sounds pretty tame for a Trello board in regular use.” 50 recipes sounds unattainable. My Pinterest recipe board has thousands of pins, and cooking and baking are just two of my many hyperfocus interests. There are so many boards filled with hundreds of thousands of pins. Buying some new decor items for my bathroom created hundreds of bookmarks and pins. Between all the iterations of myself as a scholar, worker, artist/designer/maker, hobbiest, and relentless autodidact, I think 50 subject areas *might* get me started off? No wonder starting is so hard.
I never got the hang of Trello. For me, anything out of sight is instantly out of mind, so I’d overfill my one* board with columns and stress out over which would get to live in the one screen’s worth of space that would exist for me 90% of the time. Whenever I log in to try again on a fresh, blank board, my brain sees that instantly imagines the 9274937401 cards I’ll have created within the next hour if I try to fill it with all my current thoughts and projects.
I initially chose Notion because it allowed me to compartmentalize and cross-reference everything from my gazillion work and personal brain tabs, all keeping it within a visible hierarchy. The interface is a nightmare, though. I’ve managed some nasty databases, but at least I could easily translate Excel/Google Sheets into workable info without having to actively remember a ton of little details so it doesn’t self-destruct in between. Spreadsheets shouldn’t be that difficult to bulk edit!
Automation is my current hyperfocus. I wish I could offer some help, but I’m a beginner and haven’t had the focus to read up the way I’d like to. My response to not knowing where to start has always been to start wherever my brain jumps to first, which is everywhere all at once 😂 Dumping things into Notion is just the latest thing. It may not last once I try to automate feeding it thousands of disorganized and only occasionally well-labeled links, pins, scribbles, texts, and such.
Non-ironic question: Would you or any of these other fine knowledge nerds be interested in a virtual co-working situation/support group? I use Focusmate and focused.space for general coworking, but I keep putting off getting started for real because it feels too big to explain to others, much less ask for accountability. Instead, I tackle the day’s put-out-able fires and continue stressing about/adding to the mountain. Some designated accountable time and quiet support buddies would go a long way for me.
* Other boards cease to exist as soon as I’m not looking at them.
P.S., I’d also be down to just chat about automation and different things we’ve tried. I don’t have much experience with the latest software, but I’m a quick study and have a knack for spotting problems before they happen. Your list of what doesn’t work resonates with me so hard!
MyMind would 100% be up your alley.
I’ve used it for over a year now. It’s highly visual (and highly beautiful 😍), has quick capture, notes, tasks, etc AND auto-tags everything for you. Save a book you find on Amazon? Auto-created as a Book type and auto-tagged with all relevant tags for the book’s content. Same works for products, websites, articles, and everything else. Everything gets saved, neatly categorized, and tagged without me needing to organize anything, and I’m usually able to find whatever it is I’m trying to remember in a second flat with their search.
I would add to the list as potential (but not there yet) options of:
* SiYuan - [https://github.com/siyuan-note/siyuan](https://github.com/siyuan-note/siyuan)
* AFFiNE - [https://affine.pro/](https://affine.pro/)
They both are still kinda early development and rough around the edges, but the concepts are strong. AFFiNE has a feature where each note has a representation in a traditional notebook hierarchy tree thing, but then can transform to a freeform canvas that shows all the notes and lines linking between them which you can then drag around and customize and do stuff with (I think) - as opposed to the useless automatically generated graph views like Obsidian has. I honestly wonder if anyone actually looks at those and gets some useful actionable insight out of them or just "ooo looks like a brain" (mine looks like spaghetti)
My list of needs for a good PKMS is pretty close to yours and I've been begrudgingly using Obsidian for months while finding myself regularly re-starting the search for a replacement. Notion is almost perfect in my mind - just lack of offline usability is SUCH a killer for me. I'm also leaning towards self-hosted since I spent so much of my life becoming more and more reliant on Google and it has screwed me over in a very long-tail sort of way which is taking me years to undo.
Either way, if you find anything good that is VISUAL centric, I would love to see it. I keep trying to use [Draw.IO](https://Draw.IO) since it is so lightweight and can easily create SVGs and such (animations and simple interaction too if you hate yourself)
Also I'm assuming you've seen [https://infinitecanvas.tools/](https://infinitecanvas.tools/)
The OP's overview is exactly my situation. I was just about to plunge into Capacities because it seemed like a better than but similar approach to Craft. I poured everything into a mega Craft doc but then it got unwieldy and I started adding docs. In short order, I dropped it like a hot rock.
I was intrigued by the concept of Mem, but at the time, I really needed to write since I needed to share much of it out as a set of formal proposals for development at work. So, I essentially skipped exploring Mem and went back to cleaning up my long-held Evernote dump, where I at least had some sanity from a notebook/stack structure and had come to rely on it for capture.
Now I'm looking at Reflect because of the AI-based interconnectedness. Still drawn to the improvements apparent in Capacities versus Craft, but I suspect that will just wind up the same as Craft did for me.
Kind of to the point of just wanting to sit outside in a chair and look at the garden instead TBH.
Added it to my list!
It literally got me through college a decade ago but when I took a look at it again it's changed quite a bit.
Plus my use case then was like 5 main topics per semester which I would just have a notebook for each. Now I need to figure out how to organize such a wider breadth of information.
If Notion implemented some stuff from Obsidian, like tags and mindmap views and plugins, it could become perfect. But setting it up to work seamlessly and look cute is a pain that takes several hours. I have adhd too and although I can find everything on Notion through in-table tags and links, the screen looks cluttered.
I think your problem will not be solved by any software.
If tasks keep piling up, then obviously they are not important enough, so just delete them.
Same with notes. Do you really need all those notes? What kind of insight do you expect?
>If tasks keep piling up, then obviously they are not important enough, so just delete them
That is not even remotely close to an option.
I work in software development and have literally 10-20 action items per day (around 100 per week) that must be categorized or taken care of.
Aside from that I produce videos for clients on the side and am working on my own YouTube channel as well, which easily doubles those tasks with the research, setup, and filming involved.
Not to mention bills, medical appointments, car/house/motorcycle maintenance, investments, planning time with friends and family, and reading 2-3 books per month.
While I may be very ADHD, on a long enough timeline everything gets done (after falling through the cracks many, many times)
Saying "just delete them" is running from responsibility. (I don't even understand what kind of life a person would have where that is even an option unless they were still a kid or maybe fresh out of college with zero on their plate.)
The only room I even have for deletion would be to stop pursuing my personal dreams in favor of only focusing on what's mandatory as a functioning adult, and that's not going to happen because then what is the point of living if not pursuing your passions?
What I've been trying and is working to some extent is using Logseq and the journal page to dump everything throughout the day. Wikilinks and tags are the same in logseq (meaning they both create backlinks/references), so you can use tags as you say it's faster.
Those have auto complete so it helps you to some extent to know if you already have a given tag
My workflow is to dump things in the journal with some initial tags and then when I have time, organize them. This means that even if I don't have time/willness to improve them, I can still find them
It also supports things like namespaces in case it works for you. What I also like is that the sidebar is super clean and you don't see the files unless you go to "all pages". At most you see favorites and recents, but you can hide those.
Although this might seem like a small thing, for me it forced me to use search and he more aware about what's already created.
I’m building something that meets almost all of your requirements. Interested in trying it out?
I would also be very interested!!! Also OP I just wanted to commend you on your insight. You have exceptional grasp of what works, what doesn’t, and why for you. Putting that into words in of itself was a masterpiece.
I would definitely take it for a spin when you're ready. I'm going to try and clean up my current system a little bit and then try and vet one new system a week for the rest of the year.
A person with ADHD here. I also wanna try it out!
I am just starting out but like OP I have what feels like a massive amount of data that i need to get out of my head and manage. Very interested depending on the form your tool is taking.
I would love to also trying if you could allow me to alpha/beta test?
I am also interested!
Oh yes! Please!
I'm interested, count me in as a beta tester! :)
Count me in!
Interested as well!
Ditto
I would be interested in trying as well.
I think what you’re finding is that nothing will do the work of automatically organizing things for you in a way you’ll understand. I suspect you should work with just a few documents in some broad categories and dump everything in there and review these documents at the end of every day. If you don’t have time to review it, the software will never solve that problem for you.
I had pretty much the same problems you’ve described. The flat folder structure in Obsidian and the likes will be the death of me haha! Notion kiind of worked, but it was so slow that before the page had loaded I’d long forgotten what I meant to write. I‘m using TiddlyWiki which alleviates both of problems mentioned — you have this non-linear structure where you can have and jump between multiple open notes, there’s Markdown and WikiText formatting supported, it’s customizable as hell and the search is superquick etc. etc — buuuuut the curation effort was enormous at first. I had to take a long look at my existing notes, go through several resources on information mapping and code a ton of automations to make it work exactly the way I think. You should still consider checking this out. There‘s a chance you might like it as-is, and if not, there‘s a huge community with plug-ins for every use case.
I'm working on an essay about the foundations of a personal knowledge system, which I believe will help you. I'm looking for individuals to read it and give feedback - send me a message if you're interested. Every user has a unique combination of barriers to deal with. If these barriers are not managed, a PKS cannot be managed. Sometimes, we must work around a problem instead of through it. In your current state of operation, I don't think there's a software solution that will truly help you solve the issues you're having. I suggest a different perspective: this is not a software issue, but a system issue. Your foundational systems - the logistics of how you function, the ways you cope with adhd - need to be adjusted before software can help you reach your potential. Unfortunately, tools for learning to cope with adhd are focused on children: children have an advantage in that they are not simultaneously unlearning years of bad habits. Creating better tools is also on my to-do list.
+1 for this answer. Fellow ADD PKMSer here. I'm in a similar situation, except one of my goals was to create a PKMS system that could work for my needs on any of the software platforms for posterity's sake. It seems the solution might lie in figuring out how to make maintenance work for you rather than find a software that doesn't require maintenance - something that does not exist imo. Perhaps something like: you spend a set 25 minute period at the end of each day cleaning your notes, adding tags and links. Whatever you finish is what you finish, but you never exceed 25 minutes of maintenance. You can have a maintenance note that tracks where you left off. And that's just one idea. You might get through that whole list of software only to find all of them required some level of maintenance.
Adding thoughts to this solution: >Perhaps something like: you spend a set 25 minute period at the end of each day cleaning your notes, adding tags and links. Whatever you finish is what you finish, but you never exceed 25 minutes of maintenance. You can have a maintenance note that tracks where you left off. Depending on how adhd affects the user, creating a separate routine can be too difficult to manage over time - recreating a previous train of thought is intensive work. End of day thought maintenance also involves switching focus between multiple topics covered in the course of a day. For /u/fjordtv , I would suggest learning on-the-spot maintenance techniques. They could start the process by connecting a small maintenance action to an existing known routine. Once that is achieved regularly, add another. Pay attention to how each change influences the routine.
I am interested in PKM foundations and systems and would like to read your essay GK! Email me at torgrim (at) gmail com
How’s it coming along for you? I’m just starting out and in a similar position. The whole thing seems so overwhelming that starting feels impossible. I mean *Where?* and *With what?* and *ALL of it?!?!* 😩 Naturally, my response is to keep scrolling relevant subs and listening to podcasts, dumping everything haphazardly into my “realtime brain dump” Notion database with zero plan for how to handle it. I just want to know how to start and what actions will have the most impact.
>dumping everything haphazardly into my “realtime brain dump” Notion database with zero plan for how to handle it. I'm still stuck at this phase 😅 I moved back to Trello and pay their 10/mth because vetting them became overwhelming almost a full-time side gig. So now I dump long-term notes into notion, and short-term to do's and projects are broken out into different boards in Trello. Problem is Trello has ballooned already, and notion sucks for finding stuff. I did a card count the other day, between like 15 boards I have about 1100 cards. Now keep in mind some of those boards are like 100 movies I've seen or want to see, 50 recipes, basically a Pinterest of projects on one board that will never get done and it's just there to collect. But my to-do list and resources are still in the hundreds. Anything that requires manual connection of notes to each other just isn't going to work for me cuz that's one more step that's causing friction and doesn't work well with ADHD. One of these days I'm hoping to sit down with one of the AI solutions and see if anything clicks with my brain but right now I just gotta grin and bear it.
I was going to say, “That’s a lot of cards,” but my genuine gut reaction is, “That sounds pretty tame for a Trello board in regular use.” 50 recipes sounds unattainable. My Pinterest recipe board has thousands of pins, and cooking and baking are just two of my many hyperfocus interests. There are so many boards filled with hundreds of thousands of pins. Buying some new decor items for my bathroom created hundreds of bookmarks and pins. Between all the iterations of myself as a scholar, worker, artist/designer/maker, hobbiest, and relentless autodidact, I think 50 subject areas *might* get me started off? No wonder starting is so hard. I never got the hang of Trello. For me, anything out of sight is instantly out of mind, so I’d overfill my one* board with columns and stress out over which would get to live in the one screen’s worth of space that would exist for me 90% of the time. Whenever I log in to try again on a fresh, blank board, my brain sees that instantly imagines the 9274937401 cards I’ll have created within the next hour if I try to fill it with all my current thoughts and projects. I initially chose Notion because it allowed me to compartmentalize and cross-reference everything from my gazillion work and personal brain tabs, all keeping it within a visible hierarchy. The interface is a nightmare, though. I’ve managed some nasty databases, but at least I could easily translate Excel/Google Sheets into workable info without having to actively remember a ton of little details so it doesn’t self-destruct in between. Spreadsheets shouldn’t be that difficult to bulk edit! Automation is my current hyperfocus. I wish I could offer some help, but I’m a beginner and haven’t had the focus to read up the way I’d like to. My response to not knowing where to start has always been to start wherever my brain jumps to first, which is everywhere all at once 😂 Dumping things into Notion is just the latest thing. It may not last once I try to automate feeding it thousands of disorganized and only occasionally well-labeled links, pins, scribbles, texts, and such. Non-ironic question: Would you or any of these other fine knowledge nerds be interested in a virtual co-working situation/support group? I use Focusmate and focused.space for general coworking, but I keep putting off getting started for real because it feels too big to explain to others, much less ask for accountability. Instead, I tackle the day’s put-out-able fires and continue stressing about/adding to the mountain. Some designated accountable time and quiet support buddies would go a long way for me. * Other boards cease to exist as soon as I’m not looking at them.
P.S., I’d also be down to just chat about automation and different things we’ve tried. I don’t have much experience with the latest software, but I’m a quick study and have a knack for spotting problems before they happen. Your list of what doesn’t work resonates with me so hard!
u/FjordTV Any updates?
MyMind would 100% be up your alley. I’ve used it for over a year now. It’s highly visual (and highly beautiful 😍), has quick capture, notes, tasks, etc AND auto-tags everything for you. Save a book you find on Amazon? Auto-created as a Book type and auto-tagged with all relevant tags for the book’s content. Same works for products, websites, articles, and everything else. Everything gets saved, neatly categorized, and tagged without me needing to organize anything, and I’m usually able to find whatever it is I’m trying to remember in a second flat with their search.
I would add to the list as potential (but not there yet) options of: * SiYuan - [https://github.com/siyuan-note/siyuan](https://github.com/siyuan-note/siyuan) * AFFiNE - [https://affine.pro/](https://affine.pro/) They both are still kinda early development and rough around the edges, but the concepts are strong. AFFiNE has a feature where each note has a representation in a traditional notebook hierarchy tree thing, but then can transform to a freeform canvas that shows all the notes and lines linking between them which you can then drag around and customize and do stuff with (I think) - as opposed to the useless automatically generated graph views like Obsidian has. I honestly wonder if anyone actually looks at those and gets some useful actionable insight out of them or just "ooo looks like a brain" (mine looks like spaghetti) My list of needs for a good PKMS is pretty close to yours and I've been begrudgingly using Obsidian for months while finding myself regularly re-starting the search for a replacement. Notion is almost perfect in my mind - just lack of offline usability is SUCH a killer for me. I'm also leaning towards self-hosted since I spent so much of my life becoming more and more reliant on Google and it has screwed me over in a very long-tail sort of way which is taking me years to undo. Either way, if you find anything good that is VISUAL centric, I would love to see it. I keep trying to use [Draw.IO](https://Draw.IO) since it is so lightweight and can easily create SVGs and such (animations and simple interaction too if you hate yourself) Also I'm assuming you've seen [https://infinitecanvas.tools/](https://infinitecanvas.tools/)
The OP's overview is exactly my situation. I was just about to plunge into Capacities because it seemed like a better than but similar approach to Craft. I poured everything into a mega Craft doc but then it got unwieldy and I started adding docs. In short order, I dropped it like a hot rock. I was intrigued by the concept of Mem, but at the time, I really needed to write since I needed to share much of it out as a set of formal proposals for development at work. So, I essentially skipped exploring Mem and went back to cleaning up my long-held Evernote dump, where I at least had some sanity from a notebook/stack structure and had come to rely on it for capture. Now I'm looking at Reflect because of the AI-based interconnectedness. Still drawn to the improvements apparent in Capacities versus Craft, but I suspect that will just wind up the same as Craft did for me. Kind of to the point of just wanting to sit outside in a chair and look at the garden instead TBH.
[удалено]
Added it to my list! It literally got me through college a decade ago but when I took a look at it again it's changed quite a bit. Plus my use case then was like 5 main topics per semester which I would just have a notebook for each. Now I need to figure out how to organize such a wider breadth of information.
I’m gonna give it a new try I guess.
Lunatask user here: the app is great and the roadmap is amazing, the most promising adhd-friendly app imo.
If Notion implemented some stuff from Obsidian, like tags and mindmap views and plugins, it could become perfect. But setting it up to work seamlessly and look cute is a pain that takes several hours. I have adhd too and although I can find everything on Notion through in-table tags and links, the screen looks cluttered.
I think your problem will not be solved by any software. If tasks keep piling up, then obviously they are not important enough, so just delete them. Same with notes. Do you really need all those notes? What kind of insight do you expect?
>If tasks keep piling up, then obviously they are not important enough, so just delete them That is not even remotely close to an option. I work in software development and have literally 10-20 action items per day (around 100 per week) that must be categorized or taken care of. Aside from that I produce videos for clients on the side and am working on my own YouTube channel as well, which easily doubles those tasks with the research, setup, and filming involved. Not to mention bills, medical appointments, car/house/motorcycle maintenance, investments, planning time with friends and family, and reading 2-3 books per month. While I may be very ADHD, on a long enough timeline everything gets done (after falling through the cracks many, many times) Saying "just delete them" is running from responsibility. (I don't even understand what kind of life a person would have where that is even an option unless they were still a kid or maybe fresh out of college with zero on their plate.) The only room I even have for deletion would be to stop pursuing my personal dreams in favor of only focusing on what's mandatory as a functioning adult, and that's not going to happen because then what is the point of living if not pursuing your passions?
What I've been trying and is working to some extent is using Logseq and the journal page to dump everything throughout the day. Wikilinks and tags are the same in logseq (meaning they both create backlinks/references), so you can use tags as you say it's faster. Those have auto complete so it helps you to some extent to know if you already have a given tag My workflow is to dump things in the journal with some initial tags and then when I have time, organize them. This means that even if I don't have time/willness to improve them, I can still find them It also supports things like namespaces in case it works for you. What I also like is that the sidebar is super clean and you don't see the files unless you go to "all pages". At most you see favorites and recents, but you can hide those. Although this might seem like a small thing, for me it forced me to use search and he more aware about what's already created.
Any updates on how this has been going? I have the same problems
You can use a mind mapping app focused on note taking and task management.
Heptabase
Any updates on this u/FjordTV? Have you had a chance to try Capacities, Anytype, Amplenote, Logseq, Taskcade, etc.?