Organization and Management

I have used Obsidian, Logseq, Org Mode or I should say I have tried to use them to keep notes, maintain todos and more. I have even tried just markdown with neovim and none of them have worked for me. This is probably a me problem cause I've seen people using these tools to keep notes and all the other things so good that I feel envious.

Why do I need to keep things so organized? If these tools are not working, maybe I'm fine with keeping things disorganized.

But I like the idea of organizing such notes. Having pages and pages of information that you've filled over a significant amount of time, whether by summarizing a textbook or writing out your thoughts, appear as an interconnected web that somewhat reflects your personality is a dream of mine.

Before I say What I think is the problem, Lets walk through an example scenerio of what happens when I use such app.

Let's say I've heard about a new note taking app with pretty unique feature. I would most likely want to try it out. After looking at the features, I think maybe this is the one. Deep down I know I'm going to abandon this as well but no harm in trying. For first few days, I will try the app and come up with some workflow based on that app. I will maybe write journals or things I need to complete each day, notes, all sorts of writings, links to some resources, ideas etc. After getting used to it, I feel productive with it. It feels like nothing can stop me and maybe this one will actually work. It won't The routine will work flawlessly for few weeks then it will slowly deteriorate. I will use the app/workflow less and less each day until I completely abondon it.

Even though I like to be organized, I don't think I'm an organized person. The most significant problem with all of this is organizing notes and todos. I like to write for a lot of different things. Things like notes for subjects on my curriculum, notes for the things I'm learning, blogs, writing about projects, writing about an online article I found interesting and maybe more. So, it just doesn't make sense to keep them all under the same directory. It also doesn't make sense to have a single file type like markdown to write all those different types of notes. I want to have the power of org-mode when writing a blog about algorithmic problem and simple markdown for something else and maybe just comments on the source file for notes on solving a problem from Advent of Code. In that regard, Emacs and Org-mode came very close to solving the organization problem and I do believe that it's my lack of knowledge about emacs and org-mode to develop a workflow similar to the solution I'm going to present soon.

Another problem I have is that I love terminal. So anything that requires me to open a different app already feels less motivating. even though I have no problem wasting hours watching videos on youtube in a browser This is also the reason I use helix for editing dotfiles or for simple one off codes even though I use emacs as my editor. I know I can use emacs in terminal. Although I said having a web of interconneted notes was like a dream of mine, I once moved from obsidian (which literally had that built in) to neovim just because it was in terminal.

I don't know what can solve my problem at the moment. All I can think of is that either I learn how to use emacs org-mode (and maybe roam) properly or make a cli myself. I don't have time for either of them so just gonna wait for a new app or some free time to come.

Bye.