Have you ever been asked this question:
If you could have just one superpower, which one would you choose?
It's one of those questions that can either leave you frozen without any actual clue what to say or you might catch yourself with so many ideas that you're simply overwhelmed by the abundance of options.
Unrelated: the most clever answer to this question I've read is this one by the way.
(not a bad idea, right?)
There's no right or wrong of course, but if you asked me, my answer would be something like:
I would be able to remember everything I learn
I don't know about you, but knowledge retention is easily one the big challenges of my life. I read blogs every day, I watch countless videos, I start (and sometimes finish) a few technical books per year and remembering everything I learnt is outright unrealistic.
There's just so much one can retain of what they read or hear.
What I tried
If you're like me, you've tried them all:
- blogging about it
- highlighting the most important sentences of the books you read
- taking physical notes
- taking notes online (eg Evernote)
- writing summaries of the books and videos you read
- flash cards
- semi-organised (or semi-random), heavy bookmarking with tools like Pocket
- you name it
All these methods have their merits. All of them ultimately fall short for me.
Some worked better than others but I couldn't for the life of me stick to one.
An impossible balance
I felt I was somehow looking for an impossible balance. I wanted a solution that:
- was structured...
- ...but still loose enough so it didn't kill my creativity and the free flow of thoughts that happens when learning something new
- searchable
- low friction, as in, easy to type in, giving me a pleasant, natural experience
- non-existent learning curve (no "new revolutionary tools"). Sorry, I'm busy leaning something else
- easily retrievable, available anywhere
- recoverable if a disaster happens (think about forgetting your notebook on a train, or having it chewed by your dog)
- trackable, I wanted to be able to see my progress through the months, and possibly get some stats, if not for vanity
Turning point
I was resigned to never find a solution for it.
Until one day, I randomly bumped into this
I’ve been extending and improving my personal wiki for 1 year now and it has been one of the best things I’ve done. I found writing blog posts was too high friction and very often didn’t finish things because there is so much you can talk about in any given article. But a wiki is just a living document containing your notes and thoughts on things. I also use it as my public bookmark manager as I collect interesting to me links under each topic.
For my wiki, I render everything to the web first with GitBook. And I have a macro I run that automatically commits any changes I’ve made with Sublime Text on the mac and Ulysses on the phone so everything is super easy to edit and publish.
Does anyone else keep their own wiki here? Or you think a blog is enough for you?
-- Nikita Volobev on Lobsters
And there it was. The sign that the "impossible balance" was actually possible.
From that moment, around 2 years ago, I also created my own personal wiki and it's been my go-to tool for remembering everything I learn.
It's nothing more than a repo on Github, divided in folders with a bunch of READMEs in each of them.
Folders are the main categories, such as databases, Kubernetes, JavaScript, security, regex etc. Each README inside them subdivide the folder into specific topics. Security would have READMEs for JWT, Frontend, Cryptography etc.
Evolution
I initially started with only programming topics but found myself using the wiki to store notes about literally anything I learn in any domain such as music, writing, managing, speaking and writing German.
The structure is not super strict, but still provide some order and thanks to Github searching is absolutely a breeze.
Since everything is committed, I wrote a small Go program to calculate some stats by accessing the git history and generate an HTML page. A Github action runs the script and publishes it to a URL. The page looks - let's say - minimal (it has literally 3 lines of CSS), but it gives me an overview of what I have been learning in the past 90 days. Apparently I've been very much into career development and management as of late.
Giving it a try
I strongly recommend giving this method a try if you're also struggling with knowledge retention.
The investment to start is so low, you literally only need to create a repo and that's it, and you can even fork mine and simply delete most of the folders if you like.
Nikita and I are not the only ones using this method. You can find plenty others for inspiration by going through this long list of wikis.
Cover image by Osman Rana
Oldest comments (54)
In other words, a modern-day research journal? 😜
This is a really cool concept! Thanks for enlightening me about this :) Very keen in trying it immediately
Interesting concept, thanks for this blog post. I would like to know what is the real advantage over an Evernote-like?
HI! Good question, here's a few advantages:
There might be even more, but hopefully this is a sufficient list already.
Thanks for the comment!
Thanks for your clear answer.
I am going to give this method a try. I also have multiple Excel trackers/files, journals, notebooks, and files where I keep different items that I learn for reference. I keep creating more and constantly look for where I have stuff. Work in itself. ( ´･_･`) I really hope this works. I will take you on @aurelio and copy your folders as a starting point. Why reinvent the wheel, right? (¬‿¬) My favorite benefit that you listed (I never got into Evernote, tried Google Keep also) is the fact that I can create my own static website of it all. The format looks pretty good too. Wish me luck. ☀
Exciting! Let me know how it goes, fingers crossed!
Good Idea!
Interesting! I'm using Roam for exactly that! The syntax is markdown and people do have some crazy methods, but I just add topics and keep it simple. So far pretty good and helps with drafts and keeping really valuable references.
Nice article and interesting build on Github!
I was sorta starting to build something similar, also for cooking recipes (what I've tried and worked/failed with reiterations) books read (and the infinite lists of the ones still to read) and such.
I've been using Notion, curious to know if you have you tried it?
PS: Definitely going to study a bit your german folder, hard one to learn!
I tried Notion and while i like it, it's still forcing me into a UI that wouldn't allow me to use my editor afaik. I also dread vendor lock in, what happens when the next Notion comes around? I feel safe in betting on git to stay around for a long time 😁
And please don't learn German from me, I'm a disaster......
Thanks for the comment, really appreciate it
I just finished the initial foundation for mine this past week after a month or so of free time work. Been a hurdle to get the groundwork laid, but now it's a matter of taking a little bit of time at the end of the day to add to it!
github.com/ahackit/work-on-the-LATTS
For fellow Mac users, I've found that the Notes program works extremely well for creating a personal wiki. It's light on some desirable features like categories, but is solid and never lags, no matter how much data I store. The best part is that it (nearly) instantly syncs everything on all devices. Pro tip - dragging pdfs into notes is a great way to keep your docs organized!
Amazing advice!! Thanks a lot, I'll be doing one of these for myself! Maybe with NextJS and deploying with Vercel
I have heard about Digital Garden very much recently but don't have a chance to try it
This is a great idea. Thank you for sharing!
Does anyone remember the guy who made a big query tool for his huge memory collection? I forget what the memory tool is called, it was some old old device someone invented. I think it was showcasing Ember, so it was a while back. It was fascinating because he could verify memories like checking against what the weather was that day to verify it did actually rain according to weather services. Or he had a query language like: music during:#roadTrip2007 with:@friendName
I've been wanting to find that video again, but the irony of my memory failing me 😂
LOL
I never heard of it. This sounds hilarious but also genuinely interesting. Let's see how my Google skills are, I'll try and find it.
If anyone knows it please post a link!
I've tried a few times and had no luck : (
I was wondering if maybe it is in the old Ember documentation or some old ember blog post that doesn't exist anymore : \
for the record, i want to know more about this too!
As someone who struggles with note taking, thanks for sharing this. I'm actually going to try and implement this into my learning workflow. Wish me luck.
I use zim on the desktop. I believe its quite extensible and a solid thing.
I also store private data in it (like notes about my tax declaration, contractor data etc), thats why I cannot (= don't want to) use an "online" Wiki. I once had two "notebooks"/wikis and encrypted pages and stuff but ultimately figured out that the more simpler version worked the better.