Welcome to this week’s newsletter. Before we dive into the main topics, I wanted to highlight a few insights I had this week.

Personal Insights

I have less notes.

This week when I was trying to write an essay on “Inequality in India” and I suddenly realised that my notes corpus is not large enough. I might have about 6k notes in markdown, 3k are from Readwise and another 2k is the content I accumulated. My own handwritten notes might be about another 1k. I have too many disparate topics I am writing on, and these notes don’t give me an in-depth perspective of any one topic. I feel I started note taking rather late, like past 10 years. You need a lifetime of notes, to make it effective. Also, I am not a serious note taker yet. I generally save (copy paste) content I feel I like. Nowadays, the content I save are generally the answers I get from my LLM model. The size of the replies from LLM models are rather ideal for notes. My target would be next one or two years is to increase the corpus of my notes to 50k and at least 5k of them should be my own written notes, like literature notes and ideas. It would be extremely pertinent to have an optimised PKM setup which doesn’t collapse under this weight.

Do you think, I am thinking right? What is the size and the age of your notes?

Asking the Right Question

Having stressed the importance of having more personal notes, I would like to clarify that the most fundamental thing about PKM is not the number of notes one has but whether one has the capability of asking the right questions. The role of your notes is to make you rational enough to ask the right question. How well you can think, depends on how grounded you in reality. Your ability to make sense depends on how rational you are. Mindfulness and a stable relationship can make you a better thinker in my opinion.

Latest App Discoveries

I discovered a promising new tool called Fabric which connects your iCloud, google, Dropbox and other drives. This could be the panacea which we might be all looking forward. Fabric is still in beta, so the most promising features are still on the roadmap. If you fancy it, they still have the believer pricing where you can get the app as a lifetime deal (LTD).

After going gaga over Lex for writing, I have been exploring writing apps which are similar to Lex. So, I stumbled on to Jenny. Jenny is like Lex for research students. You can upload your papers and it will automatically cite from the research. The AI (if turned on auto) can automatically write the entire article, sentence by sentence. After every sentence it asks you if you want to accept it or want another alternative. I love the idea of the AI writing sentence by sentence, as most AI just go on and on and create plain inhuman bland content. I recommend you check out Jenny, especially if you write content which needs to be cited.

Articles Published this week.

Fabric: A Universal Home for Your Information Needs

• Discover the key features and benefits of Fabric, a platform that offers seamless information management and collaboration tools.
• Learn about its intelligent search technology and emphasis on notetaking as a fundamental unit of knowledge work.
• Explore Fabric’s roadmap for future development.

The Unified Knowledge Model (UKM): Analyzing Costs in Personal Knowledge Management Systems

• Understand how the UKM framework provides insights into cost-benefit analysis in designing personal knowledge management systems.
• Explore the integrated approach of UKM in representing textual content and interconnecting information items.

JenniAI: Revolutionizing Research and Writing with Advanced AI Assistance

• Discover how JenniAI, an advanced AI writing assistant, helps students, researchers, and writers produce high-quality content more efficiently.
• Explore its powerful features such as autocomplete suggestions, citation support, and plagiarism checker.
• How to Take Smart Notes: Enhancing Productivity through Effective Notetaking
• Dive into Sönke Ahrens’ book “How to Take Smart Notes” and learn about the slip box notetaking method.
• Understand the importance of simplicity, consistency, and writing in intellectual endeavours.

Some Interesting Articles and Updates

Why I’m ditching Obsidian as a task manager – Elizabeth Tai

The author explains why they switched from using Obsidian as a task manager to Todoist. They faced challenges with Obsidian such as rescheduling tasks, accessing them on mobile, and feeling overwhelmed by project notes. They liked Todoist’s time sector method and hoped it would work better for them.

Perplexity AI is chatGPT with google search

I use perplexity AI as much as I use bing AI. It feels like a better interface and now they have introduced collections which means you can now save your search threads for future reference in convenient collections.

Merlin is the best chrome extension for AI

If you haven’t used Merlin, then I highly recommend it. It has a generous plan. Here is a twitter thread on what it can all do.

Closing Notes

As always, we value your feedback and suggestions. If you have any specific topics or questions you’d like us to address in future newsletters, please don’t hesitate to reach out. Our goal is to provide valuable insights and resources that empower you in your knowledge work journey. Stay tuned for our next newsletter where we’ll continue to explore the latest trends and developments in the world of knowledge management and productivity tools.

Until then, stay organized, stay productive!