Probably stupid questions to ask in the PKMS sub but how do you use your PKMS and what type of information do you store in there?

I started a pkms a couple of times with Notion, Obsidian and OneNote but could not follow through.

Mainly I think because it feels like it is a lot faster just to google or ask an AI of your choosing but also what are my benefits of writing down stuff I find interesting once but then forget about and if I ever need this type of information again I would have forgotten and searched online anyway.

So my 3 questions are:

1. What do you store in your PKMS?

2. Why use a PKMS and not google when you need the information?

3. Do you ever look at your PKMS notes and connections [[wikilink]] ever again?

I'll start by caveating that I am extremely new to productivity systems. Well... I should say new to giving productivity systems serious thought/consideration for what I want/need.

I'll also state that I have a swiss cheese magpie brain. Easily distracted by a new bit of info that takes me down rabbit holes, making me forget previous points until they inevitably crop up later and the cycle repeats.

I'm trying to get back to my roots of research, insights and analysis, which means reading, dissecting, annotating journals/books/articles and tying seemingly disparate threads of information together to form a hypothesis that I can investigate.

Tech (and my environmental conscience of refusing to print hundreds of pages of paper) has come a long way in the last 12 years I've been out of academia, and I am a bit overwhelmed by the sheer number of options out there.

Essentially, I'm looking for a productivity and knowledge management system that will let me just hold everything in one place. By this I mean, books, articles, even videos that I can highlight/annotate/write on.

It would be great if I can link my notes to particular sections of pdfs/timestamps in videos so I can subconsciously document my train of thought as to how certain parts relate to one another given the way my mind bounces back and forth between topics.

If I can do this on an iPad with an apple pencil, but still access this library(?) on Android/pc then that'd be the cherry on top!

I thought I'd found a winner with Obsidian, but I really really want to protect against AI scraping, so looked at either integrating with proton drive or using obsidian sync.

The problem is that connecting Obsidian to PD on iOS is seemingly not particularly easy and obsidian sync's limitations on file and vault sizes pose a problem as I want to be storing engineering, economics, and policy textbooks, hour long video lectures, etc...

I'm just lost at this point. I'm not looking for someone to just hand me an answer, but given how new I am to PKMS, is there a workflow or well-known solution/system I'm not aware of? I'm not married to any particular app/tool/system so am happy to adjust.

Thanks if you read through the above mad ramble. And appreciate any thoughts any of you may have on my predicament.

I've bounced between Notion, Apple Notes, Obsidian, Keep, back to Notion… and finally figured out why nothing stuck: I was cramming four unrelated jobs into one "notes" bucket.

When I actually separated them, the chaos made sense:

1. Thinking out loud - half-formed ideas, journaling. Wants to be fast and frictionless.
2. Reference - articles/docs I want to keep and reread. Wants to be clean and searchable.
3. Talking it through - increasingly I "think" by chatting with AI. That's a note too, really.
4. Watch/read later - videos and links I'll get to. Wants to not become 90 open tabs.

The trick that fixed it for me — it was giving each of those a type instead of dumping them in one pile, then keeping them all in one place so I'm not app-switching.

Curious how others split this. Do you keep "read later" and "notes" separate, or is that just more overhead? What's your actual system?

(Full disclosure since this sub is strict about it: this frustration is also why I ended up building my own thing. Happy to share in a comment if anyone wants, but genuinely more interested in how you all solve it.)

Hi I’m Dani,
I’m pretty new to PKM and I’m building my first real second brain in Notion. It started because I’m going back to school, but I want it to eventually hold things I learn from school, work, research, and a business I’m building.
For those of you who have actually maintained a system for years, what do you wish you had done differently when you started?
I’m especially worried about collecting way too much stuff and ending up with a giant mess I never use lol.
Any advice on organization, backups, keeping old information from becoming misleading, or useful GitHub/open-source tools would be appreciated.
Thanks 😊

My friend said that he uses obsidian and he usually writes his notes by hand and has to use work arounds to make everything work while making notes by hands.

So I was wondering if there would be other features that is missing from apps like notion, evernotes, todoist etc etc that needs to be added but the developers are ignoring

And what workarounds are you guys using??

I have this stupid backlog of voice memos that just sits there. mostly half thoughts i dumped while walking the dog or standing in line. capture itself never fails me so the pile grows without effort. months ago i tried being responsible about it. every sunday night i would sit down, play them back one by one, and file anything useful into my actual system. felt grown-up for about three weeks. then the queue was already forty-deep and listening to my own rambling voice started feeling like punishment. i skipped one sunday. then the next. never restarted.

what i do now is harsher and kind of lame. on the morning train i make myself open the oldest three or four. if i can smash the point into a single line in my notes in under a minute, fine. anything that needs more context or makes me pause gets deleted on the spot. no archive, no "listen later" folder. just gone. last tuesday i killed one that i dimly recall was a decent angle on how i wanted to restructure a side project. it bothered me the rest of the day but the alternative was watching the unread count keep climbing forever. the mediocre routine at least keeps the guilt from compounding.

what do you actually do with captures that age past the point where triage still feels worth it?

A few years ago, my workflow was pretty straightforward: bookmark interesting links, save notes, organize everything into folders, and hope future-me would actually find it again.

Now, with ChatGPT, Claude, and increasingly capable search tools, I catch myself asking: what's even the point of meticulously organizing information if I can just ask an AI later?

At the same time, AI seems to work better when it's fed good notes, documentation, and context. So I'm not sure whether AI has made knowledge management less important or more important than ever.

Have your habits changed over the last couple of years? Are you taking fewer notes, or has AI pushed you to build an even better system?

I timed myself yesterday out of curiosity and I apparently spend a

genuinely stupid amount of my day re-fixing things I just pasted.

Mine:

- Copy a table off a webpage → paste into Numbers → one long column

of mush. I redo it by hand every time.

- Anything → Slack, and it arrives in whatever font the source used.

- Copy text out of an email → every line breaks in a random place.

I've just accepted all of these as how computers are.

Curious what everyone else's is:

1. Which app do you copy FROM and paste INTO?

2. What breaks?

3. Have you actually fixed it somehow, or do you just redo it manually?

Mostly interested in #3 — I have a feeling most of us have never even

looked for a solution.

Us at 2AM explaining the billion-dollar idea

Like you’re at a friend’s place, playing games, having a few beers, joking about some random business idea.

Then somehow the joke turns into a real conversation and everyone gets serious for like 20 minutes.

“wait… this might actually be something”

And sometimes you even end up giving the idea some ridiculous nickname that only makes sense to you guys.

Like, “the IKEA of side hustles” or something equally stupid that somehow perfectly explains the whole idea at the time.

Maybe you throw a few words into Notes, scribble something down, or record a voice memo.

Then you look at it a week later and you’re like… what were we even talking about lol

Or it sounds terrible.

Then randomly a month later it feels good again.

I actually really love having these kinds of conversations with friends. Just sitting around and seriously talking about weird business ideas, things we wish existed, stuff we might build someday.

I figured there are probably a lot of people like that here.

Do you guys get this too?

Do you save those thoughts somewhere, or just let most of them disappear?

Would genuinely love to hear your stories.

Hello, hoping for some ideas or suggestions on how to improve my current method(s) of tracking tasks and things to do at work.

Important notes to start:

• I have ADHD and autism - so my neurodivergent brain does work in some weird and wonderful ways sometimes which is reflected in my task management
• I work in an environment that is strict on the tools available - anything outside of the permitted list requires a full security review, and good justification for it, so I'd like to avoid if I can

Current status and problem:

• I have tasks assigned to me in Jira in one space
• I have tasks assigned to me verbally, or via Slack, that don't belong in the aforementioned Jira space (or any other Jira space)
• I have tasks that I create of my own accord that I want to do
• I have ongoing projects that I am working on and would like to keep a rough track of them
• I am undergoing some professional certifications and would like to track projects

I'm finding it hard to keep on top of all of the things I need to do - I don't remember them, so I need to document them somewhere, but also need to be able to update them easily, re-prioritise easily etc.

If there's too much friction involved, I won't do it, and I default back to paper, but that has its own challenges.

Tools I have access to:

• Jira
• Confluence
• Trello - free and no power ups
• Obsidian - including connector to Claude
• Claude - fine to build internal/personal artifacts, but limited connectors and MCPs available

What I've tried and why it didn't work:

• Confluence - table with tasks / statuses
  • Didn't work because it was too manual and fell out of date quickly
• Jira - using current space
  • Didn't work because it only captures some of the tasks, not all
• Trello
  • Might still have potential, but not sure how best to set it up given the limitations around power ups etc
• Obsidian
  • Might still have potential, but so far requiring a lot of workarounds and "bastardisation" to make it work
• Paper notes
  • My fallback every time - but I inevitably end up with 239234 pieces of paper on my desk and no clear system

Help would be appreciated!

I’m stuck in a cycle of hoarding information. If I come across something that I don't know much about but feel like I'll benefit from it, I save it or pin the tab on my browser and look for that specific time when I'm on my desk or by myself so I can fully invest myself in that article, or that video about investing. I have hoarded so much information over the years.

Now, It's not like I haven't consumed that info at all but if you were to ask me the last thing I went through that I had been trying to get through, I wouldn't have an answer and I really feel nauseous because it interrupts my plans to hangout with my friends and partner where I feel rushed to be done with socialising so I can just be by myself and go through my 'watch later' items.
When I do go through these things, my attention span is prolly rotted that I try to skim through it all and close the tab or video as if I'm done with the task but I wouldn't have grasped anything.
Does anyone here have any advice? It's something I've been struggling with for years now.

I’m curious how other people handle this without building an overly complicated productivity system. Throughout the day I constantly come across things I want to keep:

• Posts on X or LinkedIn that I want to read later
• Articles and interesting links
• Ideas or topics I want to look into
• Quick notes and thoughts
• Things I should not forget

My current system is simple: I email things to myself.

The problem is that my inbox has basically become a graveyard of unread emails with links that I once thought were interesting. There is no structure, no categories, no tags, and most importantly no real process for going through them again.

I feel like I need some kind of very simple inbox where I can quickly throw something in, maybe add a tag or category, and deal with it later. The capture process needs to be extremely simple.

So, I’m interested in how you actually handle this.

• Do you use one tool for everything?
• What does your actual workflow look like from seeing something interesting to eventually reading, processing or deleting it?

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Also, I want to give a shout out to our top 1% contributors and everybody who makes this cove of the internet the best place to discuss PKM. You guys are the best :)

This is not a product I am selling or trying to advertise. I am just trying to make something that I need to increase my productivity.

TLDR: building self-hosted personal AI/PKMS on a RPI to help manage ADHD and personal life. Automatically captures messages and notes, creates events and todos, and has a personal knowledge database to improve dynamic reminders. The goal is to make a passive interconnected system that acts as my second brain. I am mainly looking for problems other people struggle with, tools and methods used for solutions, and features I should consider adding.

Hello all! I am looking for input and feedback and advice on a personal project I am working on for myself. I want to share the features my project has and see what you guys have or use. The main goal of the project is to make something as passive and automatic as possible.

For context I finally figured out that I had adhd few months ago and have been trying to develop tools to help manage my personal life as I suck at that shit.

What are some things you find hard to manage and specific problems you run into?
What tools or methods have you used to combat this?
What specific features about said tools do you find most helpful or useful?

Currently I have a raspberry pi that is always on and running I can access anywhere on any device using tailscale. On it is openclaw waiting to be used with access to a lot of skills. Here is a list of the skills.

• CLI interface
• Web interface
• iPhone shortcut/api interface
• !command usage (to limit the amount of api credits used)
  • !status, !schedule, !remind, !note, !gym, !study, !dump, !recall, !help
• automatic reminder creation
• google calendar for automatic event creation
• Loads a day plan every morning with to dos reminders and events
• End of day reflection so reminders and to dos are adaptive and dynamic
• Automatic message forwarding
  • Messages sent and received get sent to ai
  • Local ai looks it over and creates a reminder, event, or to do if pile fills
• Email forwarding
  • Same feature as messages
• Universal dump inbox (!dump)
  • Input anything I want it categorizes it into a specific note, to do, reminder, event or storage pool
• Workout tracking
• SQLite vector data base
  • Has databases for different areas of my life
    • School (Textbooks, syllabus, homework assignments, etc.)
    • Personal knowledge base on me (Currently going over all information i recieved from data dumps from various companies [Google, apple, facebook, chatgpt, etc.])
    • Google Drive
    • Notes app
  • Creates a knowledge graph in obsidian so I can see what it thinks it knows and correct if necessary
• Able to recall information from these data bases when necessary
• Creates graphs and statistics for things done like workouts or reminders or todos

Future features

• Macro tracker
• Meal and meal prep tracker
• Knows how much I spend and can help manage money and unnoticed subscriptions
• Manage emails
• Audiobook generator
• Google extension
• Completely local
• Task and to do prioritization

I know tools exist already but they are all subscriptions or not interconnected or don't have enough to customization. I would rather have something I built my self I can improve or change easily. I pretty much just finished the V1 and have been testing, tweaking, and fixing errors while also working on V2. It works pretty well so far and is very passive.

I am looking for any critiques, feedback, possible improvements and advice.

Hi everyone!

I'm a First Officer, and I keep a large personal knowledge base of regulations, aircraft systems notes, and company SOPs/procedures, the kind of stuff I need to reference constantly, both for studying and for quick lookups during work.

I've been using Notion for this, but with their pricing change, real AI search now requires the Business plan, which is way more than I need as a solo user just wanting to query my own notes. +

What I actually need:

• Offline access on iOS and PC: I'm often without signal, need my notes reachable no matter what.
• AI chat/search over my own notes when I am online, not just keyword search, but something that can find buried info based on what I'm asking. Example: I should be able to ask "what's the bank angle limitation for normal law" and have it pull the answer from deep inside a folder structure like Aircraft > A320 > Systems > Laws and Protections, without me needing to remember exactly where I filed it. I don't care about auto tagging, proof reading nor any other AI feature, I only need to be able to chat with my notes.
• Reasonable pricing for a single user, not an enterprise/team plan.
• Nice to have: some kind of structure/hierarchy (folders, tags, linked notes) since my notes are technical and cross-referenced a lot (e.g. a systems note might tie into a regulation note might tie into a company SOP).

I've looked at Obsidian, Capacities, Tana, and Reflect, and I'm currently also taking a closer look at Mem — but wanted to ask people who actually use these day-to-day: which one handles offline reliability + genuinely useful AI search best, without pushing me into team/business pricing? Bonus points if anyone else here is in aviation or another field with dense technical/regulatory documentation and has found a setup that works.

Appreciate any real-world input!

Update: I don’t need offline AI. This will only be required when im not flying and for studying only when connected to the internet. When flying, and for specific procedures, I will only use quick notes that i can access through favorites, bookmarks etc.