System: Error
This is what happened far too often to me during the last 2 weeks. As you may know, I am using Evernote (EN) as my chosen software for personal knowledge management (PKM) / main 2nd brain app. As I´ve written last week I am struggling with my system lately. And today´s post show that these struggles continue, even after a major revamp of my system.
Currently, my online training has a three-week long group project which will end next week. We are a group of three and work on that project five days per week via Zoom.
I saw it as a real-life trial for my 2nd brain app Evernote and my PKM. Summary: it failed more often than not when I needed it the most.
The project required tons of online research. I tried my best to use EN and saw it as a test. But the problems with synchronization and the web clipper lead to the fact that I had to save every web page as a bookmark in my browser too. Documents weren´t uploaded even though I bought additional data volume for EN. I had revamped my system down to approx. 1.1k notes before the project started. I updated everything just the day before we started working.
But it went wrong. I am pretty frustrated about the technical issues with EN and had to ask my group mates to share links again more often than not.
For me, as a long-term 2nd brain nerd this is my version of an information apocalypse. I have been pissed off and now started doubting EN again. I love the software in principle, despite the poor mobile performance. Using it means feeling at home.
But as the company was sold I don´t know yet if I should move on or stay here. I rarely use the mobile version and have kinda accepted that the current version of my dashboard in EN is never up-to-date on my phone. I love stuff like the OCR and the in-built PDF and image editor a lot. I love the ability to search things even within PDFs I imported. I´ve also started loving the functions with bidirectional linking and used it extensively during the last months.
And there is also the price issue. Paying 45€ a year for the ability to upload 10GB a month to my system is ok, as the servers are in Switzerland. For me, as a German, it means a high standard of data safety and I am willing to pay a price in that range. But I know that the next bill in July will be 60€. It´s not that much more if you consider the current inflation rates here in Europe. But who knows if it stays this way? Or will they increase the price even further to 90€ or 100€? We don´t know. I´ve seen online a lot, that for users in other countries the prices for their subscriptions doubled this year.
And tbh: all this lets me reflect on my system and the value EN brings to my life a lot.
concerning the money:
- What price can I afford?
- What price am I willing to pay for my main 2nd brain app? Under which circumstances?
- What price am I willing to pay overall for all my knowledge management subscriptions in total? I have a 30€/year subscription for Instapaper premium as well. And I don´t want to pay more than 100€/year in total as a rule of thumb. When I have a job again I could afford higher prices. But how much is too much?
concerning my current system and personal knowledge management in general:
- Do I use EN too much as a filing cabinet because of the search functions?
- What are the highest values I get out of a PKM?
- Why and how do I take notes?
- Can I replace some filling cabinet parts of my current EN system with links to google drive?
- May I go back to the PKM drawing board or would it just be procrastination?
- Should I use Notion for working with notes and just keep Evernote as a filing cabinet for the digitization of my paper notes?
- When should I use Instapaper and when should I use bookmarks?
- May I start using syncing bookmarks for my browser? I use the same on my computer and mobile.
- Would it be better to develop a fixed naming framework for notes?
- When are notes worth merging when not (except for technical limitations)?
- How important are images and PDFs in my system?
concerning a potential move to other apps:
- Was it a mistake to come back from Obsidian?
- May Notion be a better alternative?
- Is it just this transitional phase that sucks? How long do I have to wait until the software performance increases again?
- Back to the basics: May I try out markdown again with Simplenote?
- Are these thoughts just shiny-object kicking in again?
- (excluded: tons of thoughts concerning 20ish note-taking apps I may try out xD)
- Under which circumstances would a move be worth the effort?
- Is Evernote still reliable enough?
- What would it take to move to a new note-taking app?
- according to Tiago Forte I know I am a librarian type of note-taker… Which of the apps shown in this video are worth a trial for me?
