Why We Take Notes, with Achim Rothe

Clerestory (Bryan Kam)

This is a live conversation I recorded on Twitter Spaces on 16 June 2022, between me (Bryan Kam) and Achim Rothe. We discuss our history of note-taking, our usage of personal knowledge management, and tools for thought. Achim discusses how he came to build Trickle.app, and I discuss how David Allen's Getting Things Done and Sönke Ahrens' How to Take Smart Notes led me to build my own knowledge management system, an implementation of Zettelkasten. We also discuss how software development relates to knowledge usage, metasystems, pragmatism, the problem of never revisiting notes, and how to decide what to remember, Schopenhauer, how note-taking relates to photo-taking.

Errata: I said that Schopenhauer is quoting "Owen Smith"; I'm thinking of Sir William Jones (1764–1794).

Schedule a Twitter space with me!