PKM Weekly – 2024-09-01

Sep 01, 2024

Pinch and a punch for the first of the month.

This week’s episode is coming to you on a Sunday to mix things up a little (and also because I did not manage to complete it yesterday due to travelling during the week). Regardless of my tardiness, there are a lot of updates so let’s get to it.

Capacities
Logseq
Tana
Obsidian
Other Apps

Video of this week’s update:

CAPACITIES

Simple but effective inbox and daily routines system in Capacities

Steffen shares with us how he processes many ideas, inspirations, decisions, and tasks in Capacities. Here’s a quick overview of my inbox system and my routines in Capacities. My simple but effective inbox and daily routines system in Capacities. Although the article is from a couple of months or so ago, I only came across it this week and thought to share it with you all as it is an interesting one.

I basically use three tags for all incoming things. I used to have more but I boiled it down to the following:

ToRead
ToThinkAbout
NeedsProcessing

Whenever I save a web article or paper on my phone or come across a YouTube video, I share it with Capacities and add the #ToRead tag. This is basically my reading list. When I add too many items, I radically start pruning it from the bottom. Quite often, older stuff is not that relevant anymore and can be removed.

How to store web links, media files (images, etc) in Capacities

A new user asks “Curious to hear how many web links, media files (images, etc) people store in Capacities. As I get started building out my PKM system, and I start to put more and more information into the system, the strategies I use to reveal/process/find information seems to get more complex, nuanced as I start to add more and more content. Curious how others have handled really large PKM workspaces in Capacities?”

Beth provides us with an overview of how she does things:

I have a few of principles that I follow in all my spaces:

Things have to work really hard to get into Capacities in the first place – I call it my resonance filter. I use Raindrop for all bookmarks and only things I actively want notes on/to connect other objects to come into Capacities. Obviously not an all-in-one solution but I save a lot of things and act on/connect very few of them by comparison.

If I add a property, I try to make sure it has a query to resurface it where I need it. Sometimes I realise that I actually don’t need the property at all and I delete it, which keeps object types tidy.

I archive things I don’t need a lot (current favourite approach is downloading the file as markdown and storing elsewhere)

I review objects with no backlinks a lot as well (via an object type query where number of backlinks = 0) and use bulk actions to delete a lot of them if I don’t think I need them anymore.

So really for me it’s being really selective with what comes into Capacities and then doing really specific reviews rather than going through all objects which would take a long time if you have large spaces like I do

Lots of other great responses on Discord.

Create a Watchlist with Capacities

Kuntal shares with us how we can go about creating a watchlist in Capacities and leverage AI to fill in some properties / data for us automatically. PS. If you are interested in Capacities, this is definitely an account you should follow.

LOGSEQ

Readwise + Logseq Tutorial: Importing Book Notes into my Second Brain

In this video, Combiningminds demonstrate how they use Readwise to import Kindle highlights into Logseq, partly in preparation for an upcoming interview with Bob Doto, the author of ‘A System for Writing.’ The video looks at my custom export and import settings to maintain a clear distinction between my own notes and the authors’ content, and touches on my methods for organizing and retrieving information in Logseq.

Logseq Customisations for Project Management Template

I have now been using logseq for nearly two months. Initially I started looking into this because I thought it will be helpful for my daughter who will soon be heading to university but after using it for few days I figured there is some merit in using it for my own use. Now I am a programme manager of the non-IT variety on my day job though I do understand technology enough to tinker with things and this worked well over past couple of weeks. There was a PM template from Luhman that I originally cam across which I have now tinkered to my hearts content to get to a workflow which totally makes my project log management a breeze.

While the overall planning of project timeline gets lot of attention in the world of software, the most important aspect of project management in my experience is maintaining and tracking Issues and Actions. This in normal project management practice is carried out through the use of an Actions Log and an Issues Log. In addition any medium complexity project invariably will have internal and external dependencies / constraints, risks which I tend to track on Constraints Log and Risks Log. Finally, every project has decisions that I track on a Decisions Log.

Check out this link for more details. Logseq Customisations for Project Management Template – Make Gadgets Work (dumatics.com)

TANA

Tana Office Hours Recording

Come join Matt and Brage for the Tana Office Hours! We will go through the latest changes to Tana and highlight awesome community content

Tana’s next chapter – our roadmap

Tana’s 2024 development focus: Our plans to enhance user experience, develop mobile apps for iOS and Android, improve performance, and expand AI integration.

At Tana, we’re on a mission to reinvent how humans, teams, and computers work together. Our vision is to make knowledge-work fast and effortless in an age of AI, remote and async teams, and fast-changing workflows. This vision has been clear since we started building the platform four years ago, and it continues to guide us today.

We hear that you want to better understand where we’re going, and we want you to be part of our journey. So, instead of a traditional roadmap, we’ve decided to share our next “Chapter” with you. This approach allows us to remain flexible and responsive to the evolving needs of our users and the technological landscape while giving you insight into our current focus and priorities. Tana’s next chapter – our roadmap

Real-World Tana Demo: Unpolished Walkthrough

In this video, I go beyond the scenes and do a live demo with a friend to showcase my hands-on, real-world setup of Tana. It’s a bit messy, and there’s lots of room for cleaning up my workspace, but I’ll let this serve as a good prompt to do so for future course updates.

OBSIDIAN

Beta testing Obsidian Morgen integration

Danny tests out Obsidian and Morgen integration to show us a whole new way to manage projects amongst other benefits.

1.7.1 Available for Testing

Obsidian Desktop v1.7.1 is now available for testing to Insiders. Includes:

Added a new screen in settings (General → Advanced) to show the total app load time. You can also enable a toggle to get a notified when startup takes too long, including details for debugging.
Page previews will stay open even if the window loses focus or the command palette appears.
Spellcheck is now disabled for inline tags.
Pressing Esc now instantly closes the page preview while editing.
Dragging a .webloc or .url file into the editor creates a Markdown link with the filename as the display text.
Hovering over a notice keeps it on screen until you move the mouse away.
Added a right-click menu for footnotes to delete both the footnote and its reference.

Full changelog available here: Obsidian 1.7.1 Desktop (Early access) – Obsidian

Obsidian Review: Is this your NEXT note-taking app? (2024)

An Obsidian review by Francesco of Tool Finder:

Other Apps

Anytype – Missing Features + Roadmap (Aug 2024)

Check out this video to see OP going over some of the most requested features that are still missing as of Aug 2024.

Siyuan 3.1.4

Lots of updates in the latest version of Siyuan – check out the changelog here.

Affine Mobile App

The question of an Affine mobile app was raised and the team responded with “We hope to release something over the next few months.“. So if you are waiting for the mobile app, hopefully just a little bit longer to wait.

RemNote

I thought this was a brilliant tweet which showcases just how much Remnote has changed and improved:

How it started. How it's going. pic.twitter.com/1ByB976LWy
— RemNote (@remnote) August 25, 2024

That’s all for this week. Thank you very much in advance for reading and I look forward to bringing you more PKM news next week.

PKM Weekly