I like to define podcasts as “liquid information,” meaning they require very little cognitive effort
to
consume but
are dangerously ephemeral.
To solve this problem, I use Snipd, an app that allows you to highlight passages
from podcasts and export them to .md for Obsidian. I looked for free, open-source alternatives, but they
don't offer the same level of attention to detail.
With this link, you get one month free (I don't earn anything from it): try Snipd.
For RSS and newsletters, I use Newsblur, an open source and self-hostable software
(I don't self-host it,
but I'm thinking about it...).
There are several free and open source RSS feed readers, but none of them
have successfully implemented the feature that is most important to me: “Mark story as read on scroll.”
The email newsletter feature is very useful, allowing me to read newsletters in a dedicated environment
rather than in my personal email.
I add the most interesting links or those that require careful reading to Markor so I can read them
carefully when I have time (usually on my computer).
In this sense, Newsblur is for quick, less careful reading, a way to keep up with world events between sets
at the gym.
For ideas, I use Markor, a very simple and
fast text editor.
Obsidian is still not fast enough to load on my phone (probably due to both my phone and the size of my
vault), so I looked for a lightweight, open-source alternative.
With Markor, I can do what I want: when I have an idea, a memo, or a to-do to note, I open the app in an
instant, make a note, and close it immediately afterwards.
The biggest problem with books is how to export my highlights to Obsidian.
I started using BookFusion because of their Obsidian plugin. It works well, but the free version has too
many limitations and I don't want another monthly subscription.
So I looked for something free and open source and... I couldn't find it.
Then I came across FBReader, which
was open source until 2015... “good enough,” I thought.
The good thing about FBReader is the level of reading customization, but above all, the fact that you can
export highlights to .txt
It's an extra step compared to a direct plugin in Obsidian, but is acceptable
considering that I have to process and annotate them anyway.
Since Markor is my hub for ideas, I need to synchronize it between my computer and phone.
To do this, I use Syncthing, an open source and
open
protocol tool that does not share data with any
intermediate servers.
I also use it to move images or documents.
My PKM consists of two tools: raindrop.io and Obsidian.
Until a few months ago, I only used Obsidian, but I found myself with too many “archive” notes (zombie
notes, in a sense) and too few “active notes” (the ones I search for and consult periodically).
In other words, the information entropy of my notes was too low: using the random note plugin, I found too
many notes that meant nothing to me, but which would have been “acceptable” in a separate archive.
Many of the archive notes were from external sources to which I had not added any comments. So I decided to
use a bookmark manager for that: Raindrop. I haven't explored the landscape of these tools extensively, but
Raindrop is simple, does everything I need, and is free to use.
Now every piece of information is entered into Raindrop if I want to save it without adding comments or
additions, or into Obsidian if I can link it to other notes or add my own thoughts.
Surprisingly, Raindrop has proven to be an excellent PKM tool. It's the first time I've tried an archive,
and with a little organization (a handful of folders), I can find the information I need when I need it.
It's also worth mentioning that I currently have few items in the archive, so we'll see how it goes.
Procedures are algorithms that my life relies on.
They serve to remind you what to bring to work, what
to
bring to the gym, what to buy at the supermarket...
I needed a very simple tool with an Android widget, so I found an open source one: Tasks.org.
It does its job excellently and is constantly updated: it creates lists of checkable tasks.
Tasks are things to do that don't have a specific location.
(I mean: a doctor's appointment goes on the calendar.)
Since I need simple reminders with the only caveat being that they have strange occurrences, Todoist (with its natural language processing of
recurrences) is the
perfect tool and does what I need even with the free version.
(I literally just write down when to weigh myself and when to get a haircut...)
Tracking good habits seems too self-congratulatory to me, so I decided to do the opposite: measure how much
alcohol I drink, how many cigars I smoke, and how many liters of drinks in plastic containers I consume.
(It all started with the belief that I drink less than 5 liters of alcohol a year: now I can measure whether
that's true).
The most important thing for doing this is to have very little friction when adding an entry, so I looked
for an app with good widgets.
Track & Graph is perfect because it allows you to create on the home screen buttons
that increase the bad habit counter, and it also allows you to use Lua to customize the graphs.
Now, at the end of the year, I review the graphs and see when I drank the most alcohol.
I'm weird, right?