How I organize notes and files (or, why I'm anti-pkm)
This post is a result of a discussion on Tildes related to whether we should participate in web forums and, by extension, how to handle personal information management (PIM) or personal knowledge management (PKM).
Initially, I briefly stated my position on forums and PKM. First, it's fine to participate in forums but if you write something more than a throwaway comment, then it's good to preserve it in a form you fully control, such as on your own website. Second, "I generally find PKM to be serious overkill in my life." This prompted a question from Queresote, republished below:
Let me ask you a question. I don't have any frame-of-reference for how other people structure their thoughts or categorize their life. Sometimes, I wonder if everyone is just letting life lead them by the seat of their pants.
Do you organize your life/thoughts/notes? Do you have a strong need to? If you do, what level of organization do you see yourself at? And has it helped or hindered you in life?
Let me try to share my overall philosophy and how I approach data organization in my own life.
General philosophy
People overcomplicate things. Given the choice between doing a thing and building out a system to eek greater efficiency out of doing that thing someday, we choose the latter. I am no exception. I consciously choose solutions with less complexity because otherwise I will tinker with them until the death of the Sun.
People hold onto more than they need. The information age has caused an explosion in available information and the ease with which we can digitally store it. This, coupled with an innate human tendency to hoard things we might need someday, means people hold onto way more information than they actually need or are likely to ever return to.
I would venture to say that most people do not need a complex personal knowledge management system and that treating it like some noble endeavor is a bit ridiculous and distracting. Keep the notes you need to get work done, but don't allow them to bog you down.
Approach
I've tried different tools over the years like Evernote, Obsidian, OneNote, and Bear. Nowadays, in line with the meme, I use Apple Notes. For files on my computer, I set up the Johnny Decimal system, but I don't adhere closely to it.
Notes go into a single folder in Apple Notes. Most of them are a combination of PDF and complementary typed notes. When I don't need them anymore, I try to delete them. I'm not great about this; there's close to 300. I don't do daily notes, nor Zettelkasten, nor do I care to interlink my notes. I'm totally uninterested in anything like Obsidian's knowledge graph. This is definitely not Forever ✱ Notes.
Broadly speaking, if I'm typing it's to share publicly. It's a blog post, forum comment, announcement that will be printed and posted, or an article or webpage for a client. I rarely type personal notes.
Personal notes and those from lectures are usually handwritten. In most cases, I review them once or twice and the most salient points stick. I realize this isn't the case for everyone — it was a point of amazement and frustration for my high school classmates — but it's definitely helpful for not keeping stacks of paper or digital notes around.
So I would put my level of organization at "just enough" — and I would say that's a pretty optimal spot. I'm not struggling to find things because of an over- or under-engineered solution. I'm not holding on to notes I no longer need and will very likely never return to. And this helps me because it's enough to get work done without getting bogged down.