Second Brains?

Introduction

I’ve hit the breaking point where I can’t keep track of all of my scatterbrained thoughts and ideas.

I’ve tried a lot of things and nothing really works perfectly, but I’ve come up with a workflow that’s “good enough” and I wanted to share everything I’ve done up to this point.

Previously, my thoughts were scattered between Google Keep, Gists, OneNote, and a Lifeograph notebook that I can’t find. I have accepted the fact that I’m going to have to deal with migration as a necessary sacrifice, so I don’t want to have to do it multiple times.

This is an ongoing journey, so there’s a chance that this gets updated soon. I haven’t gone through the usual quality checks for this post, so I’m sorry if some things don’t make sense.

Metrics

Here’s what I’m looking for:

• WebDAV Support I want to be able to use my NextCloud instance as much as possible and not be reliant on a subscription service.

• Open Standard I should be able to view files in other programs if something goes wrong.

• Offline Functionality I want to be able to edit things locally

• Mobile Support I want to be able to edit things on my Android Phone

• Encryption I’m fine with delegating this to another service, but I want to keep certain details private

Results

Here’s some of the tools that I looked into. I definitely looked into + tested more than this, but I’m having trouble recalling everything (which is the issue I’m trying to solve here).

Joplin

I tried out Joplin ~3 years ago and encountered some issues with syncing that turned me away at the time. Since I’m already going to be switching around as part of, I decided to give it another shot.

The major issue I encountered was the inability to create SubFolders on Mobile. It also felt kinda rough in terms of User Experience, so I dropped it pretty quickly.

I’ve heard good things about Joplin from acquaintances, but it just isn’t working for me right now.

Dendron

Dendron was really appealing to me since it was just an extension of VS Code and not a full application. The dealbreakers were the lack of Android support and confusion on how Pods worked.

Standard Notes

I used Standard Notes a really long time ago. The structure of notetaking doesn’t seem to work well for me, so I’m not planning on switching back.

Orgzly

Orgzly seems nice, but jumping to Org mode might be a bit too much for right now.

Obsidian

Obsidian is decent enough, but I don’t like closed source nature as well as syncing as a service (no WebDAV support). I’m using FolderSync on Android to get around this, but it’s an extra step that I wish I didn’t need.

I’m currently using Obsidian as it’s the closest to what I wanted.

Logseq

Logseq seems to be a really good solution, but self-hosting a server takes effort.

Conclusion

Currently using Obsidian, but it’s not ideal. I’m manually migrating things from Google Drive / Keep and GitHub Gist to Obsidian. Most of the other information is staying right where it is right now.

Getting things out of my head and into a notebook of some sort structure has proved useful. I would strongly recommend doing so, regardless of what tool that you decide to use.