| I endorse the idea that over-engineering is counterproductive. Focusing on principles over tools is good; tools come and go. My list of lessons learned (which has some overlap with yours) is: 1. Make sure your files and their organizational scheme can be transferred between tools. Your files need to be searchable, and at some point you will need portability. Text-based notes are easiest, but formats that have ubiquitous support (like docx or html) are ok too. Similarly, a collection of files is more reliable and flexible than a database tied to a subscription-based service. 2. Don't bother with elaborate tag or folder based taxonomies. Search is more efficient. I, at least, cannot accurately predict what taxonomy I'll need 5 years in the future, nor can I consistently tag every file correctly. There is some empirical support in favor of search over tagging [1]. 3. Keep your notes organized; store your other files all over the place, wherever it is convenient. Use your notes to record context and thoughts relevant to a project/task/other activity, and use hyperlinks to connect those notes to the relevant files (wherever they are). Being able to embed or preview images in your notes is also very useful. 4. Organization is worthwhile for files that you have read/watched and thought about. The purpose of organization is to help you revisit and develop your thoughts on a topic. Organizing files you haven't read is not progress and does not improve your capabilities; you have to actually read and think about them to get any benefit. 5. Organization is also worthwhile for files that you know you will need for a specific project/task. Add a link to the relevant item in your notes for that project/task. Include a note why you thought it would be useful to future-you. 6. Files that you have not thought about / critiqued, and which do not fit a specific project/task, are not worth organizing. Dump them in an unorganized "to read later" list or just forget about them. The idea that you actually will get back to these files is mostly fictitious, and you can easily re-find them, or a superior equivalent, via search engines, browser history, or library logs. 7. Switch tools as needed based on circumstance. For example, my personal work notes are in org-mode, academic papers are in Zotero, personal work data is in a git + git-annex repo, and shared work notes and data are spread between Google Drive, Dropbox, and a private file server, depending on the requirements of the other people involved. I also have personal life notes in org-mode, Simplenote, and some ancient notes still to be migrated from Evernote. Hyperlinks tie files together as needed. [1] https://people.ucsc.edu/~swhittak/papers/chi2011_refinding_e... |
- things I want to (re)read next
- "best" / "mind-blowing" technologies, usually built around a simple, minimalistic, but powerful concept (e.g. reagents for composable lock-free data structures, parallel prefix sum, Futamura projections, etc)
For everything else full-text search in Zotero has served me well.
About portability between tools I would go with Pandoc, it supports conversion between a number of Wiki formats and markdown, which should suffice for most purposes. Definitely avoid tools that lock you in their proprietary formats.