<story><title>Roam: Why I Love It and How I Use It</title><url>https://www.nateliason.com/blog/roam</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>mark_l_watson</author><text>I like the author’s enthusiasm for organizing personal information. That was me from about 15 years ago to about 3 years ago.&lt;p&gt;I stopped spending time and effort when I realized how little I used my organized notes. Specifically, I used Evernote and had my personal information wonderfully organized, but rarely used it. Now I use something simpler:&lt;p&gt;For work: about 20 Emacs org-mode files for various topics. I use grep to find stuff.&lt;p&gt;For personal: at different times I have used Apple Notes or Google Keep to maintain todo lists, shopping lists, notes on present and future writing projects, planning travel, etc. Both support search. I spend very little time writing these notes and they are useful. A few times a year, I spend a few minutes deleting notes I don’t need anymore.&lt;p&gt;Anyway, thinking about cost&amp;#x2F;benefits, not spending much time organizing my own information makes sense to me.&lt;p&gt;The turning point was spending months of part time hacking writing my own Evernote’s clone in Clojure in the backend, a Firefox plugin, and a web app. It was a fun project, but mire fun writing it than using it.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>The_Colonel</author><text>For me the notes app is almost like a workspace - I need to figure something out, I write it down, start to break it down, describe, analyse - this process helps me to understand the problem. The fact that the artifacts of this process will not disappear is a nice bonus. A lot of the time I don&amp;#x27;t ever read them again, but I got the main benefit (understanding) already anyway.&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s a bit similar to writing a journal - just the act of writing it down has big therapeutic and introspective effects.&lt;p&gt;For me, the act of organizing the information actually does not take too much time but that might be caused by the fact that I typically don&amp;#x27;t obsess over correct categorization or do this &amp;quot;refactoring&amp;quot; when I&amp;#x27;m bored. Main tool to find notes of interest is search anyway, categorization for me serves as a way to find related notes.&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; The turning point was spending months of part time hacking writing my own Evernote’s clone in Clojure in the backend, a Firefox plugin, and a web app. It was a fun project, but mire fun writing it than using it.&lt;p&gt;Lol, sounds like me, except it&amp;#x27;s been almost 3 years since I started (&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;github.com&amp;#x2F;zadam&amp;#x2F;trilium&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;github.com&amp;#x2F;zadam&amp;#x2F;trilium&lt;/a&gt; if anybody&amp;#x27;s interested)</text></comment>
<story><title>Roam: Why I Love It and How I Use It</title><url>https://www.nateliason.com/blog/roam</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>mark_l_watson</author><text>I like the author’s enthusiasm for organizing personal information. That was me from about 15 years ago to about 3 years ago.&lt;p&gt;I stopped spending time and effort when I realized how little I used my organized notes. Specifically, I used Evernote and had my personal information wonderfully organized, but rarely used it. Now I use something simpler:&lt;p&gt;For work: about 20 Emacs org-mode files for various topics. I use grep to find stuff.&lt;p&gt;For personal: at different times I have used Apple Notes or Google Keep to maintain todo lists, shopping lists, notes on present and future writing projects, planning travel, etc. Both support search. I spend very little time writing these notes and they are useful. A few times a year, I spend a few minutes deleting notes I don’t need anymore.&lt;p&gt;Anyway, thinking about cost&amp;#x2F;benefits, not spending much time organizing my own information makes sense to me.&lt;p&gt;The turning point was spending months of part time hacking writing my own Evernote’s clone in Clojure in the backend, a Firefox plugin, and a web app. It was a fun project, but mire fun writing it than using it.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>Multiplayer</author><text>Roam appears to remove the time and effort needed to organize notes.  Just write.  Links will happen.  No need for silos, no need for hierarchies.&lt;p&gt;They are removing the friction and effort.  This has huge implications and potential.&lt;p&gt;I am with you on not going and looking for notes (I don&amp;#x27;t often browse through my photo library either, which is a close analog).&lt;p&gt;This really feels like it&amp;#x27;s onto something special if you can let go of the evernote paradigm.</text></comment>