I like Obsidian a lot! I looked at that before using Capacities. I really, really like that Obsidian is local-first. I am planning on making my webs public for paid members because I think it's another way to engage with the work, and with each other. A lot of my Zettels end up being half-thought thoughts, which is nice. Because I used to lose before, but now they can connect to one another and make a whole thought! I'd love to see your digital garden once it goes live!
Thanks so much for the info. I’m excited to check out Capacities. My projects are scattered between several systems. Consolidating would be awesome. I would love to see your webs so hope you decide to share them.
I am really glad you like the web idea! Capacities had a bit of a learning curve for me, but now I am properly obsessed. I think people who are already knowledgable about creating their own databases/creating systems would take to it immediately!
I use Evernote, but I'm intrigued by Capacities. I find the hierarchical structure of Evernote to be a little limiting. Sometimes I want to put a note in more than one folder. I've used other software that offers linking. I tend to go the other extreme, linking everything to everything else.
I see that import from Evernote is a future feature for Capacities, so I'll wait for that.
I have almost every email I've ever sent or received since Outlook, every financial transaction back to Quicken 1.0 for DOS (1990), every digital photograph I've ever taken, even many film that I've scanned in. I can find them all.
One of these days I'll down load birthdays from FB and pull the plug on it and IG. I'm so over them.
Maybe you already know this, but Evernote does have tags as well - that's what I use to put things into (effectively) more than one folder. It's possible to link notes as well, but it's been a long time since I've tended my Evernote garden and I don't remember how linking works!
It does indeed have tags, but there's no good system for organizing them. Linking has got very good. The basic structure remains hierarchical though and that's really the only view you can get.
Yes! But the system is pretty different, even down to how the tags operate. But I can totally see how it would work for lots of people with more orderly brains. I wish it worked for me!
Mm, yeah, good point, both of you! I had forgotten this, but to the extent my tags are organized it's because they're suuuuper structured.... and that might partly explain my falling off the Evernote maintenance cart!
I tried using Evernote about a year ago and I just couldn't get it to work for me. I think the hierarchical structure is exactly what made it difficult for me. But I know some people who really love it. We really all process information so differently, so I am very glad there are so many different kinds of options!
I am very jealous of your archive! I wish I'd been much better about keeping things much earlier on. Hoping to make up for lost time now.
It's not exactly the same thing, but for most of my adult life, I've been very interested in tracking my own habits—it's taken many forms, but the longest lasting version was a massive spreadsheet, named 'Tracking', and each sheet covered a different topic, oftentimes years' worth of self-reported data*: Restaurant Habits (where I ate, on what date, whether it was new to me or a repeat, what type of food I would categorize it as, etc); Exercise Habits (what activitees, what date, what duration); Dinner Parties hosted (including invite lists, food prepared, etc); Sexual Partners; Books Read; Movies Watched; Mountains Climbed; Travel (actually complex enough that each trip gets its own spreadsheet); Bathroom Habits; and so on...
I've often reflected on what possesses me to care, or to expend any energy at all trying to wrap my arms around what is mostly fleeting instances of a lived life. Most people just 'do' those things that I meticulously track, and never give them a second thought. And I think that's the crux of it for me...these otherwise insignificant snippets of my life are often times the clues that allow me to bring forth important memories and connections, and if those slipped through my fingers, I worry what else I would lose. So I go far outside of my way to try to hold onto the most mundane details.
* The self-reporting data part is important...I could have easily used Yelp to track restaurants, or Strava to track exercise, or any slew of other apps. But I want full and complete access to my data; I want to never worry about losing my history because some company goes out of business or wants to IPO (ahem, Reddit); and I want to be able to manipulate how I interpret my own habits and trends. Data scattered across platforms that include user-generated content simply doesn't work for my needs. With that said, I used Nara to track my baby's first year of life and whole-heartedly recommend it to any other parents. I've been able to download my data and manipulate it as I'd like, and I don't feel like my content is being used for monetization of the community owner.
This is AMAZING!!! I wish I'd started doing something like this much earlier. I think I am going to add some of this to my Objects list. I definitely would love to track meals that mattered - what food was eaten, with who, what song was playing, recipes, etc.
I use a hodgepodge of methods, none of them adding up to any real "system." I keep most emails, have a complex Dropbox system and a separate, and mostly not-redundant Google Drive system. I have piles of notes and notebooks, but I rarely go back to them. I horde papers in Zotero but can't seem to develop the meaningful habit of attaching my comments to them. I have multiple years' of spreadsheets tracking work habits and outcomes, projects, etc., plus all the academic records that are required artifacts of work at a university. I even have a file box with scraps of paper sorted by subject. But, the main things that help me to remember these days are: rocks from the places I visit (labeled with location & date), sketches of places I go amd food I eat, poetry notebooks, and my extensive (some might say excessive) photographs going all the way back to middle school and then college darkroom film and photos I developed myself. I'm going to try Capacities because I struggle with much of what you have described. (I've also heard good things about Scribner, but haven't really dedicated time to seeing if that will do the job.)
I ADORE the idea of keeping rocks from places you visit, each labeled. I might need to emulate you on that one. I feel like I can handle that kind of artifact finding and keeping. I've tried Scrivener and I wanted to LOVE it. But, again, it just befuddled me. I do know so many writers and researchers who really make good use of it though.
The rocks are, for me, a really wonderful practice. They help stave off the phenomenon where my brain doesn't remember things unless they are physically in front of me. (I somewhat recently was diagnosed with ADHD, and more recently learned that phenomenon is called object impermanence. In any case, the rocks are both aesthetically pleasing and really important for retaining memories of special places.) For most of my adult life, I collected the rocks but didn't label them. Eventually, my husband wondered what was the point of the drifts of rocks in our windowsills, etc. "You don't even know where they're from!", he once said. And, he was (mostly) right. That's what initiated the labeling. And, I'm grateful for that pushback of his, because now those rocks, when I hold them and look at the labels, take me *right back* to those places and moments. Also, *thank you* for that take on Scrivener. I've tried it and tried to love it. But wow, the how-tos are a LOT, and I just want something that feels like a sponge - absorbs what I throw at it, releases it back when I squeeze it. If you're finding that Capacities works better that way, I'm really excited to try it.
You bet! I label them on the bottom, so I don't see the writing even they are on display. (But I'm having issues figuring out how to add a photo to a reply. Is that even possible? )
I have a few very precious rocks, but after 12 years with someone who spends a lot of time in the backcountry, drifts of "pretty rocks" are a pheonomenon I'm more than familiar with. He sorted through some of his piles a while back, and left the ones he didn't want anymore at the Chico dumpster, our semi-official object re-homing spot in the valley.
Neither of us has the kind of personality where we're attached to labelling them though. We just like them, and maybe pass them along.
I use Evernote, and it works very very well for my brain. I've been using it for over a decade and it has SO much information: all book organization (what I've read, TBR list, who recommended what book, links to reviews, all manually cross-linked and tagged so I can find exactly what I need easily), what I've bought everyone for the past several Christmases, my permanent shopping list that is links to things I think would be helpful or pretty to buy for me/my house but which aren't requirements, records of recommendations from internet threads, interesting articles, pictures of boxes of things I've bought so I can toss the actual box but have the information contained on the box, etc.
My brain doesn't really work in a "web" way -- those brainstorm web things we had to do as kids never worked as well as neat bullet points for me -- but I'm excited that there's a "web" solution for you and for anyone else who would find it useful!
This is an amazing way to use a PKMS. I think I might start keeping a permanent shopping list too! Like, it's so convenient to have, but it's also SUCH A GOOD cultural artifact! Like the things we want at any given time in our lives are such a reflection of the culture and our place in it.
I'm mostly an Evernote user as well and it works well for my brain. I think my brain works like the file folders of computer or filing cabinet so maybe that's why Evernote works good for me. Lists, websites I want to keep, recipes, etc.
I still keep all my pre-iPhone photos on my hard drive in organized file folders and backed up. Haven't even gotten to the Herculean task of organizing the ones from my iPhone so they are just backed up only and not organized.
I use Pocket for all the website articles that I want to read and then if it's good enough to save I save it to Evernote.
I use Pinterest for all the web photos I want to save. I used to keep them on my hard drive but it became too much of a space hog.
Bookmarks are saved in Firefox obviously.
I use Feedly to capture all the blog posts I want to read and then if I want to save it I send it to Evernote.
I think that's about it. I'll take a look at Capabilities as well. What scares me is if these companies go out of business. I mean, I could print all this stuff I want to save but don't have the space to keep all that. I tried keep lists and stuff in journal because I love stationery, pens, handwriting, calligraphy, etc but then each journal became a mish mash of topics and I couldn't find things when I went to the next journal unless I created a table of contents or index and that was too much trouble. It was also too much trouble to have different journals for different subject. So, as much as love the idea of analog it just isn't realistic for me. If you go that route what happens if it's misplaced, lost in a move, fire, etc. I guess there is no one perfect way is there?
Coming back here to say that I recently started keeping a record of gifts I give and wow! SO helpful!!! So, a +1 to the idea of tracking past Christmas gifting.
I’m grateful for this little peek into how your glorious brain works!
Like others here, I’ve been using Evernote for a decade, but lately I’ve started feeling that I’m pushing up against its limits. Maybe I’ll give Capacities a try!
I really tried to love Evernote. And I am still pretty embarrassed by how difficult I found it. Like, what is wrong with me?! I actually think you'll really like Capacities. I can even see it being a nice companion for Evernote? Capacities for deep, lyrical thinking and Evernote for more file-friendly tasks. I think Capacites could be complementary for a lot of other PKMS, honestly. Like, I think eventually I'll use Capacities for my thinking and Notion for my business operations.
Yes, I'm thinking I'll use Capacities to complement Evernote, which is great for organizing class prep notes and such but less good for mapping out complex conceptual connections (e.g., my next book project). I also think that Capacities could be helpful for some of my more creative endeavors!
I started in Evernote in 2009. But then I felt like it wasn't evolving and I wanted more so I tried Notion, Milanote, and then Zoho Notes before I came back to Evernote. My favorite was Milanote for the flexibility in how I set everything up. Just signed up for Capacities to try it out!
Can't wait to hear how you like it! It's been a bit of a learning curve for me, but I feel like I basically get the basics now. ha! It'll be interesting to see how my approach to organization changes as I get better and better at it.
I like it so far! My biggest problem with Milanote was that I couldn't create relationships with information the way I needed to, even though I could organize it in a way that visually made sense. Evernote and Notion are too linear. I also have a hard time knowing what the structure needs to be until I get started. I think this is going to be amazing for me! Thank you thank you.
The timing on your post is crazy. Last night, I made my first ever Reddit post (I’ve barely lurked over there, it’s too scary for me for some reason) in r/Zettlekasten. I asked if anyone had used Scrintal yet because my index card Zettlekasten is just not working out for me and I want an app that has beautiful UX. I haven’t even heard of Capacities yet, but I’m so excited to check it out now! It’s funny how the universe just plops things in front of us sometimes, isn’t it? 💕
I thought Scrintal looked great, but I needed something that was friendly to longform, audio, creating historical figure profiles, etc too.
And I feel like I've found Reddit finally this year, just as it's being destroyed. It makes me so sad. I love scrolling through communities like r/mycology. I feel kind of more frantic than ever to start storing knowledge in other ways. The continued disintegration of so many social media apps that kind of functioned as community memory gardens! I wonder if that is why so many of us are thinking about this right now?
Same here with Reddit, and dismay at how social media is breaking down. It seems like it's the Wizard of Oz being revealed for the ugly core of what seemed to be a lovely thing.
Love this little thread of thought! 😍😆 I feel similarly about Reddit, though I find that there’s an awful lot of... dudes. And I have a hard time with the flippancy and casual rudeness I seem to continually find there. Something has to come after this wave of toxic twitter/fb/reddit, and I think you’re on to something here.
I am still leaning towards Scrintal, because I need something that won’t let me get distracted, but capacities looks AMAZING for my spouse with ADHD. I still have Evernote for all of my lists and life stuff, but I feel compelled to keep my Zettlekasten somewhere where I can’t easily toggle to my grocery lists. 🤡
Maybe i’m overly thinking my thoughts (or overly judging them), but I keep Notion for all of my silly little keeping track of things thoughts and Obsidian for my “this is an important thought that I need to weave together with other thoughts” thoughts. I’ll let you guess which one is busier 🫠
I am planning to use Notion to help me keep track of my freelance operations! I think it's a great complement! I also think I liked Capacities so much because it feels like Notion and Obsidian had a lil baby together.
Arghhh! The item on my calendar for literally right now* is "Learn Notion and Port Everything Over." Meaning, take my Evernote, my Apple Notes that I never liked, my Google Tasks and briefly used Google Keep and maybe some Docs, a bunch of loose Stickies and Word docs in project folders, my Bookmarks (Firefox, Chrome, and legacy), my To-Doist, some Miro boards, maybe even my Zotero and--no, surely not--Scrivener, and get them all in one place. I know, it's the dream of the killer app, the singularity, the Apple Orb that will one day do everything. Each of those others was supposed to be that. But I really do need something to hold together what my brain cannot, and the way you describe Capacities--I guess I am now chasing yet another shiny orb. Thanks, sarcastically and for real.
*because one ADHD strategy is to block out every little task on my calendar, even though almost every one inevitably gets shifted to Friday so that Friday is just a cascade of blue by the time it arrives
Thoughts in my brain look like a 3D constellation, too. I apparently think associatively, rather than linearly.
I do use lined notebooks, though. In my good notebook I write the things that I accomplished that day, the good things I saw and experienced. I didn’t expect to ever look at them again; they help me on the day itself to weight the positive things more. But I have been looking things up too.
Better than top-down for me is turning the entire page into a visual space. I put circles or squares around elements to separate them. I can draw lines to connect them. And sometimes colors to sort ideas/connections or differentiate voices.
Computer: These folders help me immensely:
Books. I put screenshots of books/media that I run across or that others recommend.
Make Things. Screenshots/pics with elements of things I’d like to make.
What Is an Image? After Lynda Barry. Screenshots of all the things I see that make me think, or see the world differently. Words/images both. This folder gives me a new random desktop background every 30 minutes. I like the surprise.
When I set about making something, I tend to turn to the unsorted materials first. Which speaks, in my case, more for not sorting.
I've been using Pinterest to organize my rabbit hole dives. It's clumsy, and I'm always aware how intensely its being scruntinzed by the relentless $$grinder but I also let that algorithm churn up things that enhance my initial interest. It's a constant opportunity to train myself to keep focus and pick out what works and not get distracted by extraneous bright lights.
I'm so confused about even getting started with a system like this. You have to import everything in and tag it by hand? That seems utterly overwhelming.
I guess this would be a use case I'd love to see for AI. If I could dump everything into a system like this and have some MT/AI driven spiders crawl it, and ask me what it is, I might be able to start. But it just looks totally overwhelming.
I like Obsidian a lot! I looked at that before using Capacities. I really, really like that Obsidian is local-first. I am planning on making my webs public for paid members because I think it's another way to engage with the work, and with each other. A lot of my Zettels end up being half-thought thoughts, which is nice. Because I used to lose before, but now they can connect to one another and make a whole thought! I'd love to see your digital garden once it goes live!
Thanks so much for the info. I’m excited to check out Capacities. My projects are scattered between several systems. Consolidating would be awesome. I would love to see your webs so hope you decide to share them.
I am really glad you like the web idea! Capacities had a bit of a learning curve for me, but now I am properly obsessed. I think people who are already knowledgable about creating their own databases/creating systems would take to it immediately!
I use Evernote, but I'm intrigued by Capacities. I find the hierarchical structure of Evernote to be a little limiting. Sometimes I want to put a note in more than one folder. I've used other software that offers linking. I tend to go the other extreme, linking everything to everything else.
I see that import from Evernote is a future feature for Capacities, so I'll wait for that.
I have almost every email I've ever sent or received since Outlook, every financial transaction back to Quicken 1.0 for DOS (1990), every digital photograph I've ever taken, even many film that I've scanned in. I can find them all.
One of these days I'll down load birthdays from FB and pull the plug on it and IG. I'm so over them.
Maybe you already know this, but Evernote does have tags as well - that's what I use to put things into (effectively) more than one folder. It's possible to link notes as well, but it's been a long time since I've tended my Evernote garden and I don't remember how linking works!
It does indeed have tags, but there's no good system for organizing them. Linking has got very good. The basic structure remains hierarchical though and that's really the only view you can get.
Yes, that's what I kept running into, unfortunately!
Yes! But the system is pretty different, even down to how the tags operate. But I can totally see how it would work for lots of people with more orderly brains. I wish it worked for me!
Mm, yeah, good point, both of you! I had forgotten this, but to the extent my tags are organized it's because they're suuuuper structured.... and that might partly explain my falling off the Evernote maintenance cart!
I tried using Evernote about a year ago and I just couldn't get it to work for me. I think the hierarchical structure is exactly what made it difficult for me. But I know some people who really love it. We really all process information so differently, so I am very glad there are so many different kinds of options!
I am very jealous of your archive! I wish I'd been much better about keeping things much earlier on. Hoping to make up for lost time now.
It's not exactly the same thing, but for most of my adult life, I've been very interested in tracking my own habits—it's taken many forms, but the longest lasting version was a massive spreadsheet, named 'Tracking', and each sheet covered a different topic, oftentimes years' worth of self-reported data*: Restaurant Habits (where I ate, on what date, whether it was new to me or a repeat, what type of food I would categorize it as, etc); Exercise Habits (what activitees, what date, what duration); Dinner Parties hosted (including invite lists, food prepared, etc); Sexual Partners; Books Read; Movies Watched; Mountains Climbed; Travel (actually complex enough that each trip gets its own spreadsheet); Bathroom Habits; and so on...
I've often reflected on what possesses me to care, or to expend any energy at all trying to wrap my arms around what is mostly fleeting instances of a lived life. Most people just 'do' those things that I meticulously track, and never give them a second thought. And I think that's the crux of it for me...these otherwise insignificant snippets of my life are often times the clues that allow me to bring forth important memories and connections, and if those slipped through my fingers, I worry what else I would lose. So I go far outside of my way to try to hold onto the most mundane details.
* The self-reporting data part is important...I could have easily used Yelp to track restaurants, or Strava to track exercise, or any slew of other apps. But I want full and complete access to my data; I want to never worry about losing my history because some company goes out of business or wants to IPO (ahem, Reddit); and I want to be able to manipulate how I interpret my own habits and trends. Data scattered across platforms that include user-generated content simply doesn't work for my needs. With that said, I used Nara to track my baby's first year of life and whole-heartedly recommend it to any other parents. I've been able to download my data and manipulate it as I'd like, and I don't feel like my content is being used for monetization of the community owner.
This is AMAZING!!! I wish I'd started doing something like this much earlier. I think I am going to add some of this to my Objects list. I definitely would love to track meals that mattered - what food was eaten, with who, what song was playing, recipes, etc.
I use a hodgepodge of methods, none of them adding up to any real "system." I keep most emails, have a complex Dropbox system and a separate, and mostly not-redundant Google Drive system. I have piles of notes and notebooks, but I rarely go back to them. I horde papers in Zotero but can't seem to develop the meaningful habit of attaching my comments to them. I have multiple years' of spreadsheets tracking work habits and outcomes, projects, etc., plus all the academic records that are required artifacts of work at a university. I even have a file box with scraps of paper sorted by subject. But, the main things that help me to remember these days are: rocks from the places I visit (labeled with location & date), sketches of places I go amd food I eat, poetry notebooks, and my extensive (some might say excessive) photographs going all the way back to middle school and then college darkroom film and photos I developed myself. I'm going to try Capacities because I struggle with much of what you have described. (I've also heard good things about Scribner, but haven't really dedicated time to seeing if that will do the job.)
I ADORE the idea of keeping rocks from places you visit, each labeled. I might need to emulate you on that one. I feel like I can handle that kind of artifact finding and keeping. I've tried Scrivener and I wanted to LOVE it. But, again, it just befuddled me. I do know so many writers and researchers who really make good use of it though.
The rocks are, for me, a really wonderful practice. They help stave off the phenomenon where my brain doesn't remember things unless they are physically in front of me. (I somewhat recently was diagnosed with ADHD, and more recently learned that phenomenon is called object impermanence. In any case, the rocks are both aesthetically pleasing and really important for retaining memories of special places.) For most of my adult life, I collected the rocks but didn't label them. Eventually, my husband wondered what was the point of the drifts of rocks in our windowsills, etc. "You don't even know where they're from!", he once said. And, he was (mostly) right. That's what initiated the labeling. And, I'm grateful for that pushback of his, because now those rocks, when I hold them and look at the labels, take me *right back* to those places and moments. Also, *thank you* for that take on Scrivener. I've tried it and tried to love it. But wow, the how-tos are a LOT, and I just want something that feels like a sponge - absorbs what I throw at it, releases it back when I squeeze it. If you're finding that Capacities works better that way, I'm really excited to try it.
I love every thing about your rocks idea on so many levels. Thanks for sharing it. Would you consider posting a photo of a labled rock?
You bet! I label them on the bottom, so I don't see the writing even they are on display. (But I'm having issues figuring out how to add a photo to a reply. Is that even possible? )
I have a few very precious rocks, but after 12 years with someone who spends a lot of time in the backcountry, drifts of "pretty rocks" are a pheonomenon I'm more than familiar with. He sorted through some of his piles a while back, and left the ones he didn't want anymore at the Chico dumpster, our semi-official object re-homing spot in the valley.
Neither of us has the kind of personality where we're attached to labelling them though. We just like them, and maybe pass them along.
I use Evernote, and it works very very well for my brain. I've been using it for over a decade and it has SO much information: all book organization (what I've read, TBR list, who recommended what book, links to reviews, all manually cross-linked and tagged so I can find exactly what I need easily), what I've bought everyone for the past several Christmases, my permanent shopping list that is links to things I think would be helpful or pretty to buy for me/my house but which aren't requirements, records of recommendations from internet threads, interesting articles, pictures of boxes of things I've bought so I can toss the actual box but have the information contained on the box, etc.
My brain doesn't really work in a "web" way -- those brainstorm web things we had to do as kids never worked as well as neat bullet points for me -- but I'm excited that there's a "web" solution for you and for anyone else who would find it useful!
This is an amazing way to use a PKMS. I think I might start keeping a permanent shopping list too! Like, it's so convenient to have, but it's also SUCH A GOOD cultural artifact! Like the things we want at any given time in our lives are such a reflection of the culture and our place in it.
I'm mostly an Evernote user as well and it works well for my brain. I think my brain works like the file folders of computer or filing cabinet so maybe that's why Evernote works good for me. Lists, websites I want to keep, recipes, etc.
I still keep all my pre-iPhone photos on my hard drive in organized file folders and backed up. Haven't even gotten to the Herculean task of organizing the ones from my iPhone so they are just backed up only and not organized.
I use Pocket for all the website articles that I want to read and then if it's good enough to save I save it to Evernote.
I use Pinterest for all the web photos I want to save. I used to keep them on my hard drive but it became too much of a space hog.
Bookmarks are saved in Firefox obviously.
I use Feedly to capture all the blog posts I want to read and then if I want to save it I send it to Evernote.
I think that's about it. I'll take a look at Capabilities as well. What scares me is if these companies go out of business. I mean, I could print all this stuff I want to save but don't have the space to keep all that. I tried keep lists and stuff in journal because I love stationery, pens, handwriting, calligraphy, etc but then each journal became a mish mash of topics and I couldn't find things when I went to the next journal unless I created a table of contents or index and that was too much trouble. It was also too much trouble to have different journals for different subject. So, as much as love the idea of analog it just isn't realistic for me. If you go that route what happens if it's misplaced, lost in a move, fire, etc. I guess there is no one perfect way is there?
Coming back here to say that I recently started keeping a record of gifts I give and wow! SO helpful!!! So, a +1 to the idea of tracking past Christmas gifting.
I’m grateful for this little peek into how your glorious brain works!
Like others here, I’ve been using Evernote for a decade, but lately I’ve started feeling that I’m pushing up against its limits. Maybe I’ll give Capacities a try!
I really tried to love Evernote. And I am still pretty embarrassed by how difficult I found it. Like, what is wrong with me?! I actually think you'll really like Capacities. I can even see it being a nice companion for Evernote? Capacities for deep, lyrical thinking and Evernote for more file-friendly tasks. I think Capacites could be complementary for a lot of other PKMS, honestly. Like, I think eventually I'll use Capacities for my thinking and Notion for my business operations.
Yes, I'm thinking I'll use Capacities to complement Evernote, which is great for organizing class prep notes and such but less good for mapping out complex conceptual connections (e.g., my next book project). I also think that Capacities could be helpful for some of my more creative endeavors!
I started in Evernote in 2009. But then I felt like it wasn't evolving and I wanted more so I tried Notion, Milanote, and then Zoho Notes before I came back to Evernote. My favorite was Milanote for the flexibility in how I set everything up. Just signed up for Capacities to try it out!
Can't wait to hear how you like it! It's been a bit of a learning curve for me, but I feel like I basically get the basics now. ha! It'll be interesting to see how my approach to organization changes as I get better and better at it.
I like it so far! My biggest problem with Milanote was that I couldn't create relationships with information the way I needed to, even though I could organize it in a way that visually made sense. Evernote and Notion are too linear. I also have a hard time knowing what the structure needs to be until I get started. I think this is going to be amazing for me! Thank you thank you.
The timing on your post is crazy. Last night, I made my first ever Reddit post (I’ve barely lurked over there, it’s too scary for me for some reason) in r/Zettlekasten. I asked if anyone had used Scrintal yet because my index card Zettlekasten is just not working out for me and I want an app that has beautiful UX. I haven’t even heard of Capacities yet, but I’m so excited to check it out now! It’s funny how the universe just plops things in front of us sometimes, isn’t it? 💕
THIS DELIGHTS ME!!!
I thought Scrintal looked great, but I needed something that was friendly to longform, audio, creating historical figure profiles, etc too.
And I feel like I've found Reddit finally this year, just as it's being destroyed. It makes me so sad. I love scrolling through communities like r/mycology. I feel kind of more frantic than ever to start storing knowledge in other ways. The continued disintegration of so many social media apps that kind of functioned as community memory gardens! I wonder if that is why so many of us are thinking about this right now?
Same here with Reddit, and dismay at how social media is breaking down. It seems like it's the Wizard of Oz being revealed for the ugly core of what seemed to be a lovely thing.
Love this little thread of thought! 😍😆 I feel similarly about Reddit, though I find that there’s an awful lot of... dudes. And I have a hard time with the flippancy and casual rudeness I seem to continually find there. Something has to come after this wave of toxic twitter/fb/reddit, and I think you’re on to something here.
I am still leaning towards Scrintal, because I need something that won’t let me get distracted, but capacities looks AMAZING for my spouse with ADHD. I still have Evernote for all of my lists and life stuff, but I feel compelled to keep my Zettlekasten somewhere where I can’t easily toggle to my grocery lists. 🤡
Maybe i’m overly thinking my thoughts (or overly judging them), but I keep Notion for all of my silly little keeping track of things thoughts and Obsidian for my “this is an important thought that I need to weave together with other thoughts” thoughts. I’ll let you guess which one is busier 🫠
I am planning to use Notion to help me keep track of my freelance operations! I think it's a great complement! I also think I liked Capacities so much because it feels like Notion and Obsidian had a lil baby together.
Arghhh! The item on my calendar for literally right now* is "Learn Notion and Port Everything Over." Meaning, take my Evernote, my Apple Notes that I never liked, my Google Tasks and briefly used Google Keep and maybe some Docs, a bunch of loose Stickies and Word docs in project folders, my Bookmarks (Firefox, Chrome, and legacy), my To-Doist, some Miro boards, maybe even my Zotero and--no, surely not--Scrivener, and get them all in one place. I know, it's the dream of the killer app, the singularity, the Apple Orb that will one day do everything. Each of those others was supposed to be that. But I really do need something to hold together what my brain cannot, and the way you describe Capacities--I guess I am now chasing yet another shiny orb. Thanks, sarcastically and for real.
*because one ADHD strategy is to block out every little task on my calendar, even though almost every one inevitably gets shifted to Friday so that Friday is just a cascade of blue by the time it arrives
Thoughts in my brain look like a 3D constellation, too. I apparently think associatively, rather than linearly.
I do use lined notebooks, though. In my good notebook I write the things that I accomplished that day, the good things I saw and experienced. I didn’t expect to ever look at them again; they help me on the day itself to weight the positive things more. But I have been looking things up too.
Better than top-down for me is turning the entire page into a visual space. I put circles or squares around elements to separate them. I can draw lines to connect them. And sometimes colors to sort ideas/connections or differentiate voices.
Computer: These folders help me immensely:
Books. I put screenshots of books/media that I run across or that others recommend.
Make Things. Screenshots/pics with elements of things I’d like to make.
What Is an Image? After Lynda Barry. Screenshots of all the things I see that make me think, or see the world differently. Words/images both. This folder gives me a new random desktop background every 30 minutes. I like the surprise.
When I set about making something, I tend to turn to the unsorted materials first. Which speaks, in my case, more for not sorting.
Meg, if you want to *see* systems, a chat thread would be a possibility to share pics.
I've been using Pinterest to organize my rabbit hole dives. It's clumsy, and I'm always aware how intensely its being scruntinzed by the relentless $$grinder but I also let that algorithm churn up things that enhance my initial interest. It's a constant opportunity to train myself to keep focus and pick out what works and not get distracted by extraneous bright lights.
Also, David Epstein wrote about his organization recently, with more ideas in the comments:
https://davidepstein.substack.com/p/dont-let-good-ideas-get-away
I'm so confused about even getting started with a system like this. You have to import everything in and tag it by hand? That seems utterly overwhelming.
I guess this would be a use case I'd love to see for AI. If I could dump everything into a system like this and have some MT/AI driven spiders crawl it, and ask me what it is, I might be able to start. But it just looks totally overwhelming.