"After my grandfather passed away, we got access to his computer and his files. We were amazed by what we found. We knew he liked to collect notes but had no idea how much he had gathered during the last years of his life."

"There were hundreds and hundreds of Word documents, filled with jokes, quotes and articles — in Dutch, English, French."

"A goldmine of information but without any structure and impossible to navigate."

"Personal Knowledge Management is the practice of capturing the ideas and insights we encounter in our daily life, whether from personal experience, from books and articles, or from our work, and cultivating them over time to produce more creative, higher quality work."

"To me, Personal Knowledge covers a wide range of information ranging from book highlights, personal data and anecdotes, meeting notes, birthdays, gift ideas, receipts, travel details, inspirational quotes, personal goals, and so on."

"There’s no real end goal here. For me, it’s about having systems that make me as organised, proactive and creative as possible."

"I use a light version of the productivity system Getting Things Done by David Allen."

"Inbox: here, I add every task that pops up in my head — no matter how small. I can immediately assign a date, or I can leave it in the inbox so I don’t forget and assign a date at a later point. I can set one-time or recurring tasks and set priority levels."

"Today: This is the last page I open in the evening to see what I need to do the following day."

"Next 7 Days: I look at this view a couple of times a week to have a sense of what is coming up and to rearrange dates as necessary."

"You’ll see there is a column called Project/Area. My files are organised using the P.A.R.A. method, a digital filing method developed by leading productivity expert Tiago Forte. It stands for Projects, Areas, Resources and Archive."

"In Notion, I only use P.A.A.:"

"The main goal of all this collecting and storing of notes should be to have a wealth of content at your fingertips for creating whatever it is that you want to create. In my case, that would be writing articles."

"I don’t do the actual writing in Notion, but I like to use the databases to keep track of the ideas and articles."

"The human brain is non-linear: we jump from idea to idea, all the time. Your second brain should work the same."

"This is taken from Obsidian’s website, a competitor note-taking app, but it perfectly describes why I prefer keeping text notes and highlights in Roam versus Notion."

"I don’t want to worry about folder structure or hierarchy, as that’s not how our brain works."

"Online content highlights: Instapaper → Readwise → Roam"

"Newsletters / Emails highlights: Email to Instapaper → Readwise → Roam"

"Every couple of weeks, I go through the Readwise highlights that have been imported into Roam. The intention is to engage with my notes as much as possible through tagging and notes design."

"I have been using Roam to create the high-level outline in bullet points format. I’ll first go through my notes, searching appropriate tags to collect pieces of content."

"I like to do long-form journaling in an app called Bear, but I’ll transfer my writing to Roam every week. I do this because I can easily create a page for every person and location mentioned in my entries in Roam. Then, when I go to that page, I can see every time I mentioned this person or location."

"Use Roam for capturing and organising notes and as a thinking/creativity tool."

"Use Notion for building productivity and project management systems, as well as storing documents and digital data."