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second brain?

CONTEXT:

I currently use #Obsidian as my primary second brain, however it is a bit heavy for the quick note / task that occur at inopportune moments, require regular review, and tend to accumulate in overwhelming quantities.

I've used a number of tools for this purpose - including #Google #Keep (but I find it lacking in task management and I'd like everything to integrate into a single plain text repository, e.g. markdown, csv, etc.)

I've also used Google #Sheets which

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I liked because it allows me to display multiple categories of tasks visually, simultaneously but which feels heavy in the #browser, isn't super easy to utilize on #mobile, and when used in this way lacks ease of sorting, etc.

I'm currently experiment with #Airtable which provides some of the sorting, etc. but I'm not a fan of it's closed source, heavy feel.

I'm also experimenting with #Obsidian's #canvas and need to dive into it more deeply, I've used various #MindMapping software but

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it feels too heavy.

When on a computer I oftentimes find myself falling back to a simple text editor (#Notepad++ on Windows), but I eventually end up moving this data into another system.

I've used a large a variety of task management apps (e.g. #Asana, #Trello, #TickTick, #Microsoft #ToDo, #Toodledo, #Google #Tasks) but always find them constraining.

The application that perhaps best captured my needs is Mark Joyner's #Simpleology but it isn't perfect, pretty expensive, etc.

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@davidshq

Hashtag or decent search system?

I get a little overwhelmed with hashtag use, never sure if I need 1 or 100. However, I could probably just replicate in hashtags the same directory structure I've used to file things for the last 30 years.

@TonyJWells I feel like I want all three. The third being a nice hierarchical system - which hashtags can be - but oftentimes tend to be sort of flat in practice.

I tend to prefer hierarchical when I can, it gives me easy lines to follow, but I recognize it's lack of flexibility.

Search is great, the problem (for me) is that I can't depend on my mind to remind me what I need to be paying attention to, so a system where I don't have to search, that surfaces what's important, is important

@davidshq @TonyJWells I use homepage plugin to open a workspace with home and a page that lists all the tasks in my vault. I now ues the 'query all the things' plugin I wrote to generate the list of markdown tasks with an emoji in the text. I used to use tags more but now just add the wiki links to the area of related work so I can create a task anywhere in my system at anytime.

@sytone @TonyJWells I saw the homepage plugin, that looks like a good option.

I think at this point my biggest issue with Obsidian is that it is a bit hefty. I'd really like something that opened in my browser window...hmmm...

@davidshq @TonyJWells well technically it is a browser.

@sytone @TonyJWells lol, that's true! afaik it can't install browser extensions...can it?

@davidshq @TonyJWells no. It cannot do that. I'm OK with it not having internet capabilities as the chance of. Being distracted is less.

If needed I'd write a plugin or JS or use an existing to pull internet feeds or information. I use the read it later plugin frequently on my phone.

@akkartik Yeah, I agree there is probably no "one app" - at this point I'm thinking more about interoperability - e.g., it'd be nice to keep the tasks in a plain text form that is utilized by the mobile apps but also humanly editable when I'm on a computer (if I want).

@davidshq Yeah. I've basically had my notes in text files for 20 years, 15 of them backed by a git repo. In the past year I started creating my own custom UIs for this repo.

For interop with mobile I currently bounce between drafts in my email app (networked, but #$%# Fastmail can't handle saving data without signal in 2023) and an utterly offline app (more reliable storage). And copy-paste, lots of copy-paste.

@davidshq You could have, as an example, a script that runs once a day that takes the top N uncompleted tasks from across a bunch of tasks and builds a view from that (after folding any tasks marked [x] back into the original sources). Most scripting languages have libraries for reading markdown, and it’s absurdly easy to generate.

@jimfl Have you used logseq? I stumbled upon that recently and thought it looked interesting (and open source!).

@davidshq Indeed, and I have done some programming against the raw markdown as well: https://jimfl.github.io/everything-burns/posts/2023-04-12-simplicity-and-richness.html

One thing I'll say is that some logseq features result in idiomatic markdown, so you would want to take care in mixing logseq generated files and script munged files.

@jimfl Awesome, I'll take a look!