Apr 11 2023
What is my system for now?
For the past 2-3 years I’ve been a little more consistent than usual. I’ve consistently put all my magpie bookmarks in Raindrop.io. I’ve started taking, and looking back on, notes in Obsidian. I had a few RSS feeds gathered in Feedly.
What’s maddening/interesting, is how I make sense of any object at any given time. If I find an article about some productivity method, am I putting it in Raindrop, in my Johnny Decimal folder “Reading/Research” because it has a more scientific background that I’d like to sit and digest instead of skim through? Or am I putting it in my Johnny Decimal folder “NoteTaking” because it also refers to a method of taking notes? I like to categorize things by type, by function, by my response to them, etc., but that leads to a lot of inconsistencies.
Every now and again, I also want to do a clean sweep and declutter because I know that at some point, I just threw a few things in the first folder that felt somewhat fitting. Which is why a lot of computer science-focused items are in both Reading/Research and Computer Science folders. You may think that this inconsistency is just because my folders overlap, and the answer is that, too.
So my system, for now, is to use these tools in the following ways:
Raindrop.io is for reference items.
Reference items are artifacts/pages/entities/snippets/code that I may need to use in the future. A grey area is guides. Any resource that is specifically I am teaching you x/y/z and it is specifically designed as guide/tutorial, that goes here as well. I also use this for things I want to buy or thing are neat, in the “Shopping” folder.
Obsidian is for things I have made.
This includes my own reference items that I created, and really any content that I create. This is entirely generated by me.
Reader/Readwise is for things I (want to) think about.
Articles go here. Even if it is describing a method of something I would do, it can be highlighted and turned into content whenever I actually do it. Reader allows me to highlight and notate in browser, which is something I want to do more of (Raindrop also does this, but I want to keep things separate and it’s just what I’m doing, efficiency be damned.)
When using Raindrop, and really when finding things online in general, I tend to store everything away in my junk drawers of Raindrop folders. But I want to be able to sift through it for the things that pertain to me, or that I can carry away with me.