This article participates in the Digital Stationery Box Call for Papers.
I am an undergraduate student in my sophomore year. After a year of exploration in college, I think I have some experience in knowledge management, and I would like to share it with you. First of all, let me talk about my concept of using knowledge management software:
- Don’t blindly pursue all in one, professional things should be done by professional software.
- Good software should help to cultivate the way of thinking, rather than restricting their own thinking.
I divided this system into four parts: input-temporary storage-organization-output, covering the whole process from knowledge acquisition to internalization. I basically use different tools for each process. The mind map is as follows.
The input of knowledge
In the Internet era of information explosion, what we lack most is information, and how to find useful information becomes the key. Here are a few ways I usually acquire knowledge.
physical books
I used to force myself to study completely electronically for a period of time during the online class, but I could not adapt to it. It was time-consuming and laborious to watch various tutorials back and forth, and toss with various note-taking software, so I still bought paper. Textbooks and notebooks. For me, physical books still make up a large part of my learning, and the simple and quick experience allows me to focus more on what’s in the book. When I see the content I want to excerpt, I will type it into Flomo and make a preliminary refinement, which can also deepen the impression. Although I am sharing a digital stationery box, I still want to remind everyone not to be blindly obsessed with digital technology, and sometimes it is a good way to go back to the physical.
Paper journal website
When I first entered the university, I didn’t have the habit of checking papers and journals. If I came across any new terminology, I still checked Baidu for the first time. As a college student, you can generally access the dissertation resources purchased by the school, such as CNKI, VIP, Baidu Scholar and other websites for free. You can also check Google Scholar and Sci-Hub for foreign dissertations, which are better than Baidu search results. Much more reliable.
A trick about academic search is to use the “Advanced Search” function more to find more accurate results. Sometimes a theorem you want to search for may not be included in the title of the paper, in which case it will be easier to retrieve it using a keyword search in advanced search. Take HowNet as an example:
I wanted to search for something called “Fourier’s Law” in heat conduction, but I searched directly in the topic, and there were too few results, so I selected keyword search on the left in the advanced search, and fuzzy on the right, and I searched a lot. useful content. If there are multiple keywords, you can continue to add them below. It is recommended to change AND to OR on the left, and change each keyword to fuzzy. If you have other needs, you can choose as needed.
Newsletter Email Subscriptions and RSS
This should be the two most recommended methods of acquiring knowledge. There are two advantages: one is that the quality of the information obtained is high enough, and the reading experience is also very good; the other is that there is no personalized recommendation and advertising, so you can focus more on reading itself .
Newsletter is the way to receive knowledge via email subscription. You can look for a Newsletter subscription link on Zhubai or the blog of your favorite creator (such as Jianyue’s website ), and you can subscribe directly by entering your email address.
RSS is a way to browse knowledge through an RSS reader after adding a subscription. There is a certain entry threshold, if you are interested, you can search for tutorials by yourself. Personally, I mainly use my RSS reader to watch minority articles and some subscribed videos from Bilibili. In the FeedMe app, you can block keywords you don’t want to watch according to your interests, or you can only watch videos with keywords you want to watch, which greatly reduces the interruption of other content.
2. Temporary storage of knowledge
After acquiring knowledge, it is easy to forget if it is not classified and summarized in time. When I am in a good state of study, I may organize detailed study notes while studying. However, it is impossible for me to maintain a good learning state forever. When faced with complicated and fragmented knowledge, I will choose to temporarily store the knowledge I have received, and then organize it after accumulating a certain amount. I divide the knowledge that needs to be temporarily stored into the following two categories:
Coping with Fragmented Knowledge Input with Card Notes
This kind of knowledge is mainly the little knowledge I captured when I browsed videos and information streams, or what I thought while walking on the road, or the sudden inspiration when I was reading, all of which can be called fragmented knowledge input. For this kind of fragmented input, if I don’t write it down, I may forget it soon, but it is too much burden for me to open the note software and write down the notes.
Card notes are the best way to solve this kind of knowledge. Write down what you have learned and ideas in a few short sentences. When you have time, go back and review them. Organize useful things into notes. It can be deleted directly without any burden. The software I use is Flomo, but of course you can use memos from your phone, sticky notes on the wall, or whatever you find comfortable.
Here are some of the cards that I have sentence-labeled on my Flomo homepage. When I have time, I will organize them into collections like “Literary Digests”, “Bathroom Meditations”, and some I can expand into and write a long article.
After using Flomo, the burden of knowledge recording has been reduced a lot. I just remember it, and I don’t care whether I will read it later. I use it as a temporary storage point for knowledge. When I look back again, maybe some of the knowledge has expired, so I will throw it away; maybe some of the knowledge has lasted for a long time, and I can move it to the place where it is needed more and play a greater role.
Use Read Later to Cope with Deep Knowledge Input
Have you ever encountered such a situation: I saw someone recommending a good article on the Internet, but I was busy and didn’t have time to read it, but I couldn’t find it when I looked back; I saw someone recommending a blogger, forgot to pay attention, and turned back I can’t remember what the blogger’s name was. If you are in WeChat, you can use the “floating window” function to aggregate all the content you want to see but can’t watch in one place, and watch it together when you have time, but what about in other software?
I use a software called Listy to aggregate all the “read later” content, which is a software recommended by a few recent apps that deserve attention . According to the official introduction, this is a tool to keep track of your favorite things privately using lists (keep track of your favorite things privately using lists), you can add many lists of movies and TV shows you want to watch, but I use the most import links and The ability to add to-do lists.
When you see something you want to watch later on any website or app, you can just click the share button and select Listy to import it directly into the list. If you want to see that the content is not a link, you can add it to the to-do list and mark which page of which app it is, so that you can find it later. Listy is a relatively new software, there is not a single comment on the Play Store, and the software has not been localized yet, but the developer responds quickly to emails. If you don’t like Listy, you can also try the more professional Cubox recommended by many people.
3. Knowledge Arrangement
When it comes to knowledge sorting, we need beautiful notebooks or professional note-taking software. I personally use Obsidian. You can also try dual-chain note-taking software such as Roam Research or traditional note-taking software such as Evernote and OneNote. There are two main points I like about Obsidian:
- Has a rich plugin library
- It has the function of double chain, which can effectively connect the knowledge system
In the previous step, we have completed the preliminary preservation of knowledge. Next, we only need to pick a free time to read the temporarily stored knowledge in depth and organize it into systematic notes. There are two things to keep in mind when using obsidian:
Try to use your own words when arranging, avoid complicated terminology, and don’t copy the original text. The source of this theory is the famous Feynman method of learning:
Learn anything, if you can in simple words, in your own words, without jargon, to an eighty-year-old lady, to an eight-year-old child. When these people understand, you will understand the concept.
The sorting process is the process of internalizing knowledge, and you must choose a time when your thinking is active and it is not easy to get distracted. I have seen this sentence before:
When we put the concepts in our minds on paper, pen and paper start to “think” for us.
This is exactly the meaning of organizing our notes. When we organize our notes, we can organize our brains, form a deeper impression of knowledge, and form a newer and better way of thinking.
What kind of information fits into Obsidian?
After reading the above, you should understand that Obsidian is suitable for arranging in-depth, logical knowledge that needs to be repeatedly understood, such as reading notes, study notes, authored articles, etc.
I have also seen other creators on the Internet who can use Obsidian to complete almost all work, and use Obsidian to create a large and comprehensive note-taking system. I also tried to make my Obsidian big and full, but I quickly gave up. First, the plug-in library is huge, it is too difficult to get started, and it takes too much time to toss; second, there are some defects in the software itself, such as the weak synchronization function, which cannot meet my needs for multi-terminal synchronization.
Soon I gave up using Obsidian to manage all my information, and established my principle of using Obsidian: don’t blindly pursue all in one, keep restraint. As for how you want to use Obsidian, it depends on your personal preferences, I still recommend that you don’t spend too much time on tossing tools, but focus on the content itself.
How to use the double chain function?
Double-chain is a new concept that has become popular in recent years, and many note-taking software have followed suit, but many people do not understand the real usage of double-chain (including me, I have not figured it out very clearly), so they blindly switch to double-chain notes software. In my opinion, there are two main functions of the double chain:
1. Create an index for your notes for easy search
When managing a large number of notes, you can create a separate index page for different types of notes, and use two-way links to link all notes of that type to this index page. This index page is like the directory of a book, which makes it easier for you to find the content of the book, click to jump directly, and it is more convenient to switch between different knowledge points.
2. Linking the fragmented knowledge together to form a knowledge system
Obsidian can automatically generate a relational graph based on your notes and double chains, allowing you to visually see the knowledge system you build.
Obsidian Relationship Graph Page
In order to build this system well, we need to establish more two-way links in the notes. When you first start taking notes, you can just write notes and forget about links. When the number of notes reaches a certain level, the general steps for organizing notes become: put the ideas or thoughts that are usually collected into Obsidian – further disassemble the knowledge to see if it can be related to the old knowledge – combine the new and old knowledge Build two-way links and see if you can collide with new ideas in the links.
some plugins that might be useful
As mentioned just now, Obsidian has a rich library of plugins. The ones I mainly use are the following:
obsidian’s plugin page
Dataview
This is a very powerful plug-in that can be used to automatically generate a table of contents for notes, and it can be updated automatically as notes are updated. If you are interested, you can read this Fun Obsidian 08: Use Dataview to create an automated HomePage .
Day planner
This is a daily planner plugin that is easy to use: add a day planner template (type add a Day Planner template at the command line), then link the plan to the current note (type link today’s Day Planner to the current note) , so that today’s timeline will be automatically generated in the right column, and it is more intuitive to see what should be done in each time period. Of course, don’t make plans too detailed. Rather than worrying about those three or five minutes, you should think about what you should do today and how to do them more efficiently, and use the plan to make your work and life more efficient, fulfilling and happy. .
Remotely Save
This is a plug-in that automatically synchronizes notes between multiple devices. After installation, it can be directly synchronized with Nut Cloud or OneDrive network disk, so that you can view notes on other devices such as mobile phones. However, it is not synchronized in real time after modification, but is synchronized every specific time, so there will be a certain delay, and the synchronization speed of my OneDrive is not very fast, and the experience of multi-end editing may not be very good.
4. Knowledge output
After we have completely digested the knowledge, we can output some of our own views and opinions. I know that many people like to read and do not have the habit of writing, but I suggest that everyone can actually try to write, because writing is not only a process of expressing opinions, but also a way to exercise their own thinking. The ancients said that “teaching is mutually beneficial”, which means that teaching and learning can promote each other. In fact, writing and learning can also promote each other. Learning can help us write better things. Writing can also stimulate our desire to learn and make us more active. to learn.
I only started writing a little bit of my own stuff last year, at first just as a distraction in my free time, and then I found out that writing brings me more than I thought. The logic and rigor of my thinking have been improved to a certain extent; I can exchange my views and opinions with more people, correct my shortcomings in time, and meet more like-minded friends; if I write well, I can earn income .
The software I currently use for writing is also Obsidian, which has to mention another advantage of it – it supports markdown syntax, and you can use specific symbols to control the format of the article, such as:
用# 表示标题**文字**表示加粗*文字*表示斜体> 表示引用> > 为段落之间的空白行添加> 符号表示多个段落引用>> 表示嵌套引用1. 表示有序列表- 或* 或+ 表示无序列表缩进可以创建嵌套列表反引号`包裹`表示代码Minority also supports the syntax of markdown, so that after I finish writing in Obsidian, I can directly copy and paste it into Minority for publication, and the whole coding experience is very comfortable.
Don’t be afraid if you don’t write very well at the beginning. I generally feel that I don’t write well, so I will post it on my personal account or blog, and if I write better, I can post it on a writing platform like Minority. . When the article I wrote is recognized, that kind of joy is incomparable.
Epilogue
To sum up, this full-link knowledge system refers to: using websites, Newsletter and RSS for knowledge input – using Flomo and Listy for temporary storage of knowledge – using Obsidian for knowledge sorting and output. These softwares are all treasures of stationery in my digital stationery box, helping me to accumulate knowledge and optimize my thinking day by day.
Originally, I felt that my knowledge was superficial, and many people already knew what I was talking about. But I see a lot of college freshmen who are not proficient with electronic products, let alone know these efficiency softwares. I would like to take this opportunity of the minority essay to share with inexperienced students and workers just entering the workplace how to use these digital stationery, so as to help everyone live a better digital life.
The above is the knowledge management method and the digital stationery I have explored in the past two years. I hope it will be helpful to you. Please forgive me if the writing is not good.
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