Logseq - A Personal Knowledge Management System

You can not remember everything, but you can remember where to find it.

It became very obvious to me that I needed a better way to keep track of my notes and ideas. I have never really been a fan of taking notes or staying organized when trying to piece together what I had written. I would have notebooks all over the place, and I would forget where I put them. I ended up just having one big notebook and just marking different sections, which would then get full. This led me to look for a better way to keep track of my notes and ideas. I knew I had to find an electronic way to keep track of my notes and ideas. I wanted something that was easy to use, easy to access, and easy to organize. Most importantly it could not be hidden behind paywalls or keep my data hostage for a premium in order to access it anywhere.

I found a few options that were free and open source, but they all had their own issues. Some were not very user friendly, some were not very organized, and some were not very easy to access. I wanted something that was easy to use, easy to access, and easy to organize. I wanted something that was free and open source, but also something that was actively being developed and maintained. I found obsidian first that ticked all the boxes I thought I wanted but it was pay to play. A few other projects promised to do something similar but it was a lot of small repositories that did not seem to be maintained. Then I found Logseq, which is a free and open source knowledge management system that is actively being developed and maintained.

There was an issue though. Logseq is a desktop application that runs on your computer. It is not a web application that you can access from anywhere. This means that if I want to access my notes and ideas, I have to be on the computer that has Logseq installed. I planned on installing it on all my devices anyway but I would end up with different notes on different computers and missing some information depending on where I accessed Logseq. Logseq did have an option to sync your notes and ideas through a paid service, but I did not want to pay for that. I needed a quick and easy way to share notes among all devices I own and quickly set up a new device when I get it to keep with my workflow.

This lead to me using Logseq along with Git and GitHub to keep my notes and ideas in sync across all my devices. By using cron and also git, I could automatically pull notes from other devices and push notes as well to make sure everything is available everywhere all at once. It even helps with token control, posting to linkedin, and my job searching. I even use the graph function that shows what ideas are connected to each other and how they relate to each other. If I needed to have a quick way during a meeting to see or show where an idea could play into another, I make a quick link and I can reference it later.

While some of my other projects I can share a link to or share a video of, this project is more of personal notes and information that I need including any and all work information that I can not share. So while I can not show my progress on this front I will say that I highly recommend digitizing your notes and how you interact with them. This will save you loads of time, money, and effort in the future and you will absolutely thank yourself when it comes to finding that one note you wrote down years ago that you need to reference for a project you are working on now.

In Conclusion - What I Learned

What I learned while setting up this pipeline for my notes is that learning does not stop. There is always a way to do something better, stay more organized, take better notes, and even write and publish better code. I also learned that I can not remember everything, but having a system to find it easier has made all the difference.