167: Personal Knowledge Management
55:51 Share

Welcome the automated i'm David Sparks enjoying by my cohoes rose mary orchard. And this is what we talk about, how to automate your technology to do your work for you. Hi rose IT dive .

how you excEllent.

Looking forward to the show. We've got a lot of listeners that have britain talking about P, K, M. And automation, and both of us have been playing with IT.

I'd say beyond dip in our toes, I think we're kind of in in up to our next. But BGM is a great uh, kind of new thought in a personal knowledge management. There is a lot of opportunities for automation and there to make a more useful and we were going to a tackle that today.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. And it's one of those things where you they're going here. I've heard pek. I've heard a personal launched management. What is this and or you've seem like the idea of IT and it's kind of a personal Vicky, you might be there are going, I mean, I don't know like do I really need this um and it's one of those things where I feel like you have to find the right use cases for you and for your life because maybe you don't need this but I have found this to just be an incredibly useful like resource for myself.

So for example, I have documented some parts of my network set up at home because I have certain things set up certain ways like i've got my ice p provided router and then i've got my stuff sitting behind that with my wife and everything, and knowing what settings I have set on the isp provider. Browder, like you think, like, you know, how important is that? Well, the other day I was having internet problems, and because I apparently am the only person in this precise area that works from home during the middle, the my I S P was one hundred percent note, this is your problem.

This is not an us problem. This is, uh, you personally problem. We're going to send you a new rotor to fix. I was like, ark cool. Well, I got the new router and I had to set up and I just opened in my a subsidiary and I had the info there of what I changed and why I changed IT as well, just not just so that I could copy pace IT over, but because I I actually knew why things were there. And that is that sort of light ended up being my starting point.

You know, what things have I done in my life, and why have I done them? So that then, if I need to look back at this later for myself or for somebody else, I have that information. And starting with, you know, technical things really is what made IT click for me.

But of course, there are the people who you like to start with a little family tree and bits of information about other people as a place to start. I don't know what you're starting point for. This was David. I'm sure there was one.

Well, I think you really hit a good point in that. I think that that I common idea on personal age management is like you're writing your P H D dis and you want to collect your research and you got to have at all organize an index so you can do a good job. But I think that's that's one application, a personal knowledge management technology.

But there's a lot in just Normal life like you are talking about just managing your technology. I have a similar one because I have an ancient um a audio device that's analog and IT has dip switches in the back and once I got them set right, I took a picture of IT and put IT in my P K, M system. So if things ever get out of wac, I can always just look at that picture and reset the dips.

But I also have a note for my dog no. And when I go to the vet, i've got a list of the medications she's taken in the problem. She's when the that asked me a question I can answer.

I even have like test results in in some PDF in there, so I can just give him to her right there. And any others, all of us have these bits of information. I have them with respect to my kids.

And you know, we we're all responsible for all this information. And as automated, we want to have the information available to us, but we don't want you to become this massive cognate of low to Carry IT. And I think that's where PK in can step in, especially if you include automation.

You can make IT a simple thing to create, but easy to access. And that's what we'd like to talk about today. I guess we should mention that there is a good friend of ours on the internet who has really taken on the idea P.

K, M. Pretty seriously. And it's it's our power. Max fits yeah your .

co host over on focused yeah, which is a great powders of people are looking for, know, a sort of productivity h angle for things, you know, map users is how do I technically automated? How do I automates and focus? How do I productively? And it's is a nice to that you got there will be sad.

We don't have automatons, okay, because we we will pull IT into my power users as needed. But mike put a whole bunch of things together for this and I also got a link, one of his articles which is and in true to personal knowledge management, that he wrote for the sweet set up. Ah because I feel like that's quite a good place to sort of get started with this. But at the same time, if you ve gotten notes that you reference on a regular basis, congratulations you have a personal modish management system. You just didn't know IT or maybe you did, but that's OK.

Yeah and another mike has done if you really want to just kind of soup enough. He has a product. It's that practical P K M com that's kind of his home for the stuff and it's practical.

P king become slash life H Q, where he's built in abcd involved. That is a PK m system that you can just installed and have a built for you. So so might get some great ideas.

And that's on IT, so you can check that out. But but there I think this PK m thing is a relatively new concept. We've had a weakest forever.

But IT seems like in the last three, four years that it's really become a thing where, you know, Normal users have started think well, why not use linking and the kind of this new notes technology to build a system where I can quickly grass the the router settings or the dogs of and and you can do that, but there's a lot of tools. For the first time that really came to my front of mind was as a research launched, and that's not a tool that I ended up using. IT was well based. I didn't really care for their data model, but IT was one of the first kind of like p km. Link to thinking tools.

Yeah yeah I feel like rome and of city and started becoming very popular at the same time. Um and you know I ve always been very hesitant to use web only things. I guess this comes back from when I used to travel a lot and I was never guaranteed to have an internet connection. And having something that relies on having an internet connection like, for example, notion, which is a great tool, is still something that i'm not super keen on IT.

Because you know, if your internet goes down or there is just a problem connecting to that website or whatever, then you you get into a little bit of trouble because you can't access your information and the whole point of a personal knowledge system of whatever kind of is, is that you you've save this information for yourself to use and not being able to access that is kind to feed the point of IT. Um so I mean I personally end up uh settling on predominantly but not exclusively obsidian for my things. But there is a whole bunch of options out there, including just basic apple notes, which is really great.

Yeah well, I would say that both rows and I are are lean towards of city in for a lot of reasons. The data models really simple its stories, marketing files on your drive so you own the data. Um they're thinking engineers in the end encrypted. You've got some protection and IT is so customer, I mean, every time you open up city in, there are new plugins available and it's got this very active community. We're in this kind of infancy of P, K, M tools.

And IT seems like there's a new one every week and you want to avoid the the new and shiny until they've prove in their staying power and upset and has solution done that it's got a huge user base and it's not going anywhere, but there are others. Um I think there are really nice one is no plan. It's it's a native APP for apple stuff of your own windows is not going to be any fun.

But but it's it's an native APP for mac, uh, iphone, ipad. Yeah I think it's kind of like abcd an light IT really does have a lot of the ebony tools, but not all of them. Clearly not the the plugging stuff.

It's not multiple platform, but IT does save markdown files to your drive. And if you kind of want that native experience, you're willing to give up a few features as worth checking out. Apple notes, like rose said, I think is hugely useful, and i'm going to talk about that a minute notion to me.

I don't really view that is A P K M P. I know there's people that do IT. If you look at youtube, there's a whole bunch people that i've made a career on youtube about how they run their whole life out of notion. But like rose, I don't like the data model. I don't like they have been online for IT to work.

I am in a notion enthusiast but just for collaborative projects that I have to do with other people I mean, were reading this outline out of notion right now um and and I would say notion is much Better at two of us making a podcast outline than of city in this um so you gotta a choose the right tool for the right job and I don't really see notion as a particularly good p game. Tall, but um that's just just my opinion. I know the people disagree.

Yeah I think you know I A lot of the stuff kind of probably started with um envied um and what's now the replacement ultra h which is from bret turpin a um it's uh env ultra to be clearly still in in private data um so you can sign up i'll puddling to the website there you that clear the kind of idea of just save mark downfalls look at mark downfalls to find information tid a like and or at least that for me is where they are originated.

And for me, that has expanded over time to include more than just mark TM files know i've got P, D, F saved in there. I've got images saved in there. I've got code file saved in there as references of how to do this thing or that thing because there there are things that I will need to essentially use more or less as a template um for all the things. And you know personal knowledge management is really basically I putting this here so that I can find IT when I needed again.

And it's more about the or not more about it's it's about the structure and the ability to find the information that you want rather than necessarily you know that everything is perfectly um type set and laid out and so and you know filled structures and follow structures are a really great idea but you don't have to make them complicate and so to find them as long as you can to put your notes in, as long you can find your notes um or whatever IT is you're looking for when you need IT, you're winning which you know I think that was another thing for me. Where was there trying to figure, you know, like what food do do I need and like how I going to structure things and then I decided, know what, i'm onna forget all of that, i'm just good dump everything in a folder. And I started, literally, by just dumping a whole bunch of mark and files in a single folder. And I realized, okay, but these five files very clearly bloom together and undo this heading. And so I I group them together and bad and put them in a folder and that I from there, from there just kind of let my structure evolve organically, which for me works much Better than sitting down in advance trying to figure out, you know, like eighty levels deep of where does this need to go and so and so forth.

Yeah, well, one of the other leaders and this is is nick mile with the linking you're thinking, which is, of course, she's been teaching for years about how to use these tools to kind of develop that and that that really does open up kind of the question of P K M verses thinking tools. And I that's just to term my use.

I don't know that's a taking bail choices, but I do think there's a difference like like getting back to the example earlier of planning your PHD that's different than planning. You know your veteran visit are changing your router. And uh, I would argue that you should think about them separately. Now they could all be in one tool, but maybe they shouldn't.

Yeah and I think that is you know that that's the way you kind of have to figure out where the lines get drawn. You know do do you mind that work on personal things are in the same system together? Or do you actually want them separated? So I personally tend to use up stadium from most of the like the the notes that I have.

Um other things will live living everything and we will come back to that. But I have two of city involves I also have two different think felts um but drafts I don't there. I mean I could have to support eod accounts, but that is very messy very quickly because then you have to try and transfer stuff from one to the other.

So I just have everything in drafts, and I use tags for anything that I need to separate out until IT then goes off to live in the right place. If it's a thing that is gonna live on. If it's not, then I don't necessarily put IT there.

And you have to figure out, you know where where do you want the dividing lines? Do you want your dividing lines to be very clearly strictly between projects, just between areas of your life already really not mind? And is everything kind of messy and blurry together anyway? Because, I mean, at least for me, there are some stuff from work that bleves over into personnel.

Because little snippets of code that i've written, you know, like a little command or series of commands that I used for work. I might work that for personnel as well. So I have to figure out a place where and put that working access IT for both and that that's something that you know is is were throwing in mind if that's well, you just have to figure out where you want your lines. If you want lines yeah.

it's been an evolution for me too. I like when I first started with up city and I was an early it's a great APP. You're gna if you spend any time with that. There are so many people that can hook up, up, sit in uh, but, uh, I did everything in IT in in my volt and then I started to see downside to that. I didn't like kind of like I causing the veteran note, but that's a good example.

I didn't like that being mixed with my thoughts on just, you know, i've got like but I call kind of Spark us is the deep thought kind of stuff my personal Operating system in there. But I also had a the the project I was doing, whether it's the next field guide or the next pod caster, whatever, and there as well. But now over the course of years, that has evolved a bit.

Uh, I have pulled out the personal, what I would call P K M, the kind of true P K M, like the vet notes and the picture of the audio interface that's all in apple notes now. And it's very easy for when we understand the personal stuff and and things like that going apple notes. And at the same time, i've evolved to where the teams are on are largely using notion.

So IT didn't make sense to have a max parky fuel guide project in both obsidian and notion because then you've got the risk that the data is gonna be inconsistent and you know the other person doesn't going to see what you're updating in in upset。 And so a lot of them x Sparking management has gone into notion and abilities has remained as like my serious thought tool. You know, the thing I put when I read things that are serious and whether it's me thinking about something I want to write the future, or like deeper thoughts about productivity and just like all the stuff that like serious thoughts, I guess i'll say, you know, and it's where I put my book notes, you know, because I have read wise, feed me book notes.

And so it's kind of where I do my heavy thinking. But I have ended up with three tools in essence. And i'm not still exactly sure about the baLance of the max ark stuff.

Like do I put IT all in notion? I'm not really sure I like that, but because i'm not as big of a fan of notion as I am of something that's local with markdown files like like capabilities. But I am am evolving a bit on IT but but I have really kind of got to three buckets were used .

to have just one yeah, i'm still very much in a three bucket sort of system. I have draft and draws is essentially for things that are not gona live for very long. So for example, I pick up a user story at work that would be something like a new feature to implement.

And as i'm going on with that, i'll make notice about IT and drafts and so on. But then once that thing is done and it's delivered in the testers of stop throwing IT back at me because of course that happens, then that note just to get deleted and that said, it's gone. Um and so you know there are some things that are in drafts and then abide a is for stuff that is going to basically just live for a long time but I wrote IT myself and i'm gonna ue to edit IT.

It's it's a living breathing but living a way know the intention of being a bit more than you know just A A flower that will disappear relatively soon document and then that and think is for this is a thing that exists. It's almost certainly not going change. They probably are things in the takes that should change but things like my washing machine manual um and if I have a link to a weapon from abc dian, uh I have been a relatively recently actually by a way, page that I had linked in up syrian for reference no longer existing.

So I now save any way pages that I would like reference into them and think I also advent them to the way back machine of our archive to ark um as well. But then I then I am starting to link to the dependent version of the way page uh for those things so that when I go to come back to IT and I look at the thing that I said, hey, this is a good reference for how this works. Then I I don't get bitten by this website longer exists or they've changed everything in the link doesn't work anymore. Um so I have three buckets, but it's more for me the the lifespan of the document versus and and the editorship of IT versus you know areas of my life.

Yeah i'm going to put a pin in draft. I want to talk but that a minute but the um I should have mentioned I also there is a matching devon think uh database to match my obsidian one and there's just one of each that I don't have multiples but they're all cross link because although you can put resource files into europe city involved um because of the nature the application a sinking becomes I think a problem if you get too much in there and I your everything is just so good at managing like PDF and anything other than text really that I I just have kind of married the two and I use the best features of both of them.

So the the ability involved has many, many links to documents that are stored in the dividing and VISA. In fact, the other thing I do is I I index the ability involved because it's a folder former down files in deviant thing, so I can access IT there if I want. IT doesn't get you all the website and bells one whistles, but i've done IT. It's fine if I if I really need IT. But generally text for me is a city and and everything else is everything for that that .

part of my stack yeah being able to index uh your you know your your a volt of tax files in everything is a it's a really nice thing to be able to do. I personally have not done that just because i've not yet found a case where i've been searching for everything and then thought that and then realized that I was in abide an but uh, that is absolutely something that you could do if you wanted to um I I i've just yeah i've not found a need for that just yet and um I am trying to keep all of these places as lean as possible so not eating. Or duplication information.

Now in this case, because that would be reading the folder that I have for obsidian, you know, there ouldn't be a potential case for, i've updated this in upstairs, but the updated version isn't yet. Think that shouldn't happen, because even thinks just all my mac is always running. Um but yeah the last thing I I want with any of my systems is to have duplicate information which means if information goes from say, drives into um abcd an or into everything or something, then I delete IT from dss.

And if I if I put something from cdn to even think I delete IT from city n if I move IT, then IT is moving. IT is not a copy. Um and that's something that I tried to be really careful of because there is nothing worse.

Then looking at a note that you ve made for yourself that explains how the thing works and then you're looking at IT and going that IT doesn't work, I don't understand, only to find out, oh, right. The reason why IT doesn't work is because this is the old version. I need the new version, you know and for final and final in this episode of the .

automatic podcast is brought to by the data citizens of dialogues podcast, impacting the importance of data and its impact on the world. As a listener of the automated, you're probably serious about data. So assuming you are interested in data, especially about the way he continues to shape our world, you need to check out the data.

Citizens dialogues, a forward thinking show brought you by the folks at calibrate, the leader in data intelligence. I really like the way the show is structured. They bring in experts from the field and they're interviewed by people who have specific knowledge of what they're talking about. So it's a very informative show.

You'll hear first hand from industry tightens innovators and executives from some of the world's largest companies as they dive into the hottest topics in data, and you'll get inside to everything from popular staples such as A I governance and data sharing down to more new once questions like kai ensured data reiterated at a global scale. I recently listen to the september twenty twenty four episode called meddle a magic, the path of data enlightenment in IT. Host caring and guest tonia talked a lot about meta data management and how you can help empower the organization.

Rose and I often talk about the importance of meta data with automation. That's also true, and big data, perhaps even more so. Tony shared the programme mission to democractic ze data.

The importance of stakeholder management in the role of continuous improvers tion in maintaining the programs is success. Getting a meddle, a repository strategy early can make all the difference down the road as you work with big data. I'm not an expert in the field, but the podcast really brought me right along.

I felt like I understood everything that we're talking about, and I had a Better understanding of the use of medi data in these large data implementations. While data may be shaping in our world, data citizens dialogues is shaping the conversation. Follow the data citizens s dialogues and apple, spotify, youtube or whatever you get your podcast are thanks to data citizens dialogues for their support of the automated podcast and all of really.

Yeah okay, let me just talk about my drafts. Then I use IT similar to me. Drafts is the catch all for all of these things. And let's get into the automation discussion in general because, okay, I think we both explained why we like p comes on whether useful. But automation can make IT so much more useful because the the downside of A P M system is the generation of IT.

Like how do you create this data? How much time you spend on IT? And you know great that you can access IT, but you have to put IT in there for that to just and that's where automation can really come handy.

And h, for me, drafts is kind of, like I said, the catch all this morning, I had a doctor appointment and i'm walking out, I SAT down on a bench, opened up drafts and dictated a quick note. And now it's in drafts. And that for me is the type of information that goes into an apple note on medical notes.

Um IT doesn't go to upset dian, but I was in giraffe and and I could have gone straight into apple notes, but it's kind of like fiddly with formatting and getting in the right place. And draft is the catchall. It's like it's so fast to capture something in drafts that that that's why I use IT and you going further down the road, you can put a widget on your screen is a million ways you can make IT even faster.

And and I just find that really useful. And then a part of my routine is just to go through the drafts in box. Me, we've talked another thing I do is I use my apple watch and I dictate into whisper members, which automatically, since anything I say to draft.

So I just go to drafts and that stuff is there. But just like rose, I don't use draft as an entire text management system, although you can. Greg has made IT very powerful.

Lot of people do that to me. It's a, it's a halfway house, you know. I mean, the text is gonna go somewhere might go into the city and I go into notes that might go to a notion outline. Am I going to an email? You know, there's all these different things you can do with that from there, but I find there's no faster way to capture text that I may want to drop into, among other things, the p game system yeah .

and I think that is, you know for me, the point where any and all automation needs to start. I need to be able to capture information as quickly and as easily as possible, which means that if there is anything text based, anything at all the text based, I am going to be starting almost certainly in draft every often. You know, I I might be like, okay, well, there is gonna a whole bunch of information.

This is going to live in a CD N I might start by creating a new document in a um but usually I will start in drafts and get all the things out of my head um and then from there you know all my say a little but perhaps first or maybe i'll just be like, okay, i've not my head got the things that I was trying to capture cool, send the severity of city and figure out how i'm gonna name IT where i'm going to put IT and so on and so forth and then go from there and yeah I I attended to start and dance because the dictation on IT is so good and you know IT also which can be quite useful actually sometimes I found every soften David. I've left a note to myself in drafts, okay, and i've written something down or i've um you know I i've located something but something somewhere along the way went a little alright not sure exactly what nor sure exactly how. But like there's a word missing or maybe we expecting something got unner transposed.

So a word that should have been this ended up being that and IT doesn't quite make sense being able to look in draft like when you created this and where you created this, you've got that location history. You would not believe how often that has actually helped to me. Um so you adders for capture for me has been gravely useful.

So yeah, I I I do of draft as a capital system and you know IT does have the options to use that clings and all of those other things as well, which are all in the user guide for drafts. Uh, and I can pop a link to that in the in the shown notes because you can use IT as personal loadstone ishant system. But for me, from there I do tend to go to absence an just because IT is amazing addresses for auto meeting. I like having the feral and drafts, and the more permanent, not permanent, permanent, but more permanent things in abcd, n, just so that there is a nice mental divide.

Yeah and so let's talk about that capture to upset in and i'm going to also say no plan because it's another APP that just looks at a full of full of markdown files on your drive um that makes IT very handy for automation because any automation told we talk about the show from apple script to uh uh short cuts to keyboard, my show to you know almost any automation can think of can write a text file and save IT on your drive.

And that's true on almost every platform. And and so you've got this great opportunity now to automate the generation of notes in these tools because all you attitude create a text file and is there you don't have to monkey around with the interface. You know that these apps have, like built in tag systems and all sorts of cool stuff.

I mean, of city in is is markham, but IT also has additional syntax, which can be easily written into this text file, whether it's your front matter or your links or whatever. So I have written many automation over the years where like if I have a new project, I can just push about and shortcuts, slash, keyboard, metro, slash, whatever can generate that textile and just save IT on my drive to the eb site and folder in the propria volt. And the appropriate beholder and IT is there waiting for me. And that makes IT so easy the capture and create stuff. yes.

yeah. And I think that that is, you know, that is always the key with a personal relation system. IT has to be easy to get stuff in and IT has to be easy to find stuff when you need IT.

Because if you are looking for something and you cannot find IT and you know you wrote IT or you know you've store this information, so say, for example, i'm looking for my washing machine manual and I know i've saved IT, but I can't find IT that that's a problem because then I have to try and find the washing machine manual again online, which depending on the age of the device and so may not be possible. And so and so forth. There's a reason why we save this information or we want to save this information. So being able to to find IT is really important. But being to capture quickly and then easily, you modify IT editor and so on is also really, really key.

Yeah so I I think that um one of the the big selling points of a tool like obsidian into a less extent plan is just the new big way of automation because it's so easy like and the same goes for attachments by the way, like I said earlier, right I like to keep PDF in that and think but you could also just move IT A P D F to a folder in your upsetting data bank and it's a it's going to show up.

But I I prefer to do that with everything, but it's it's really easy to automate the stuff. One tip, however, is always make sure you save the file extinction consistent what the way the application is looking for by default city and is looking for markdown file, so you need to save IT is not md, I think no plan is that tx, t but you can change IT in the settings. But I mean, when people started automatic, as I get, i've got those email saying, oh, you had a great idea. I created automation, but the files aren't showing up in the APP and nine times entertain its because they saved IT as the wrong extinction type so just make sure and you can do this in short cuts cables in my show, whatever, to change extension to dot md to make sure that actually shows up .

yeah there are a couple of settings which can be quite useful to to have a little look at inside of obsidian. And there is one of them, for example, for making sure that all files, uh, show up regardless of the file type. And that is that is one of the option. So detect all file extensions is the name of that preference and it's under files and links because that can be quite useful, especially if you are using attachments because well of syrian is a markdown editor.

IT does support attachments so you can have uh images and P D essence on embedded in your files um and that's something that you can do and there is also a default location for new attachments um so you can uh say, hey, I would like to just put everything all the attachment should be in A A vote folder or everything should be in a particular folder just called attachments or everything should go into the same files as a note that is going in or IT should go into a sub folder under the current folder and those options are all you know worth having to think about and deciding what works for you. If you're somebody that tends to h restructure things a love just because that you know you haven't yet figured out your system in zone, then one of those may sit you Better than another. Or if somebody that has a lot of attachments may be you don't want everything in uh you know the same folder because you'll make a difficile find you know one image that you know you're or looking for or something that you should be able to find IT hopefully through the note.

Um so yeah, there's there's all those things. And of course, there's also an option to a and make sure that all of the files in your vote get sinked as well, because beautiful IT will sink images, audio, videos and P, D, but IT wouldn't sink anything else. So if, like me, you throw the od code file into a sodium, because do you want a reference, you know, a piece of code that you vote a again, again, then you will need to make sure that that is on. And so yeah, that can be quite handy.

H shortcuts. Um it's mixed back. Uh, IT is not a thing where you can just write a text file to your drive and it's going to show up um but they have good automation support uh so via shortcuts so i'm sorry I miss poke that I say shortcuts .

that you did but that's .

okay because shortcuts support.

Yeah of notes, of notes does have great shortcut t support at which is great. IT is possibly one of the best actions on I O S for shortcut support as flowers you apple's native applications go uh which you you know is very impressive.

There are so many actions there you know for finding things uh for creating things, for adding to existing notes as well depending to an existing note that all stuff that can be done uh via shortcuts and that's a very impressive place. Um and you know I am honestly really pleased with that and I wish apple notes were a little Better with my brain. I preferred just to write markdown um and not necessarily have the rich text and so on.

And also I am bet a lot of code into into my notes. It's it's just a hazard of my day job and everything else ah that I do that code is such a big part of my life that I needs up with coats and tex highlighting supports. Unfortunately apple this doesn't quite work for me but but the shortcut support is genuinely brilliant. So that should not be considered A A blocker for anybody that's looking using apple notes.

Although I will say it's not as good in some ways because although it's rich, text IT doesn't really let you generate rich texture of the shortcut automation because you you created text field. But if you want there to be checked xe in heading ings and things like that, they just don't show up.

I mean, you know, i've tried so many ways around this to write rich text, and there's just not a good way to do IT like try try to convert mark on the rich text. And an important and IT doesn't work. I feel like there's a missing element there with apple notes and shortcuts.

Yeah yeah. I think that I mean, the problem is very fundamentally that shortcuts in tax support is for plain text, is not for markdown. And i'm pretty certain that what happens with notes is, uh, if you have like an attitude or a pentium te action, IT takes you know IT takes either like a text or something I can to that.

So yeah, I just tried to check the append to note action, add text to the end of the note. So i'm pretty certain that what happens is when IT receives the text, it's just stripping out any formatting because IT may not even receive the rich text. IT probably just receives playing tax because a fun fact for anybody he does not know.

If you got rich texas got like bold and colors and things like that. There's also like a plain text version of that almost always. And so what more cuts almost certainly be doing is going okay. Well, you're trying to give IT the fancy text version, but IT doesn't take fancy text. So going to give IT the plain text version, uh which you know at least IT doesn't just drop IT on the floor be like I did not think by uh but IT would be nice if IT actually could take the rich text but unfortunately, and I don't know if this is a limit of shortcuts or this is a of notes um but um yeah I am i'm pretty certain that that is a just something that can be done by sure cuts at the man, which is a shame .

yeah another limit you point IT out is opened and prepare. You can put text at the beginning or text at the end, but you cannot put in the middle wherewith of sitting in note plan. Most of these more powerful tools, there's a way to address, to say, add this text under a specific heading and that is more useful.

As for automated and and so I pay a Price for putting the veteran area of that stuff in apple notes, but I kind of want to use them. My reasoning is, is, is a few things. First of all, apple no does continue get Better, and I want to use them so I can talk about them.

But also there is a convenience to them because they're very good at media in a rich media like if I take a picture of the deep switches, it's going to show up there I know reliably and and there are advantages to IT. But the automation is limited because of text formatting in the inability to put text exactly in the document where you want the automation, which is kind of which brings me back to drafts. No drafts is always my cheap coat, and I can put IT into raft and that I can move IT into apple notes.

It's it's a manual process but it's fine. And um I don't do so much of this that I like sit around all day doing this stuff. But the occasionally and I got back from the doctor appointment, I moved the text wear belonging in the right apple note and I just took a minute. So it's fine, but that's something you have to deal with if you .

make these decisions yeah and I think that is you is always something you know remember or at least be aware of. You know you don't have to start with any perfect system and you can always modify your system you know whenever you you want you and change things up and so on and so forth.

But you know there there there is no perfect system and I think that is whenever you're setting up any kind of system, be an automation system, personal management system, whatever IT is perfect systems are uh you know there a goal? There are not something that is necessarily achievable. Um and so yeah you you you there always be a trade of these things, right um but at least, for example, you can put stuff into notes um and you can put stuff into whatever system is you like and you know is putting things in the city.

And again, no perfect because of sitting itself doesn't have short of actions. It's got your scheme. Um so you know that's a little tRicky um and theyve got documentation on IT and IT works and there is draft sections and so on as well.

But for me, uh you know i've ended up finding there's a lovely APP a called actions for b edition which exists basically to put shortcuts actions for a cdn into um your into shortcuts um and it's got a 4 fourteen day trial than a one time payment。 Um but IT creates actions for a city and and there are fifty of them and that really nice because you can do things like getting periodic notes, like a note for particular day or just listing files and all of that stuff. But again, that's not something that you can um just do natively with sitting and you have to add something on and yeah there is no perfect system .

yeah although a city also has plugging built around making that processes here too. So it's A A lot to IT and and like um and I don't really want to get this into a comparison. Everything but but like apple notes is Better on iphone than i'm sitting this.

But the sitting is easier to automate into like you are saying, there's just trade off. So kind of choose your poison and think about what you're using IT for. Like one of my thoughts was if I met the doctor, the veteran, whatever, what's the easiest way to get this data? I massed for IT.

And having an apple notes to me is a big benefit for that. You know, where's, like, am, I can tell the doctor, hold on the second. My city in data abase hasn't thinked in a month, and I know just don't want to deal with that. And so so you you know you just pick where you want, but but then use the automation tools available to you in the tools you have. And and the good is, is all of these tools have some degree of automation involved.

Yes, yes. yeah. Like David think you know it's it's a bigger application. Um it's kind of the way I think of that. You know you've the applications like drafts and I say that draft draft is a sneak won because IT looks little and really simple but actually if you like, it's if you go around the corner or like, oh, wow, there is so much here. So it's not just little and simple and city kind of a medium.

One of IT can do a whole chunk e and then you've got all the plugins and the atoms and so to make IT even cooler. And even thing for me is like it's it's there and it's it's got the muscles, got the half, therefore, i'm here what you need me for and it's got all the parent. So and it's got a great shortcut and support.

I have to say no, you can create markdown items specifically and IT. You can create text items, images, PDF and all that straight from shortcuts. And that is, you know, something that's really awesome.

But at the same time, it's got this whole big database to IT. It's not just text files in you know on your Operating system like IT is just text files on your Operating system. But please, if you are actually putting the files in there and thin, you're not indexing of folder.

Don't mess with those. That's when things are going wrong. Yeah, there's there there's trade of some and winds and everything for all of these things. And I do love in a syrian I can say like, hey, like I want to keep this group available offline.

But still, i've not opened up city and in a month because I didn't think about IT and then i'm sitting but in your case, you're sitting at the vets office and you're they are like, okay now and I oh shoot, I have haven't simply in a month i'll open IT now. Oh, great. There is there is you know i've got like one spot of three g and and it's not downloading because I added you know hope on to scans and recent dog medical records into this.

And so it's trying to downloaded all those. And so that can be a little bit annoying or frustrating when that happens and that's not even thinking that you know that that's just how things work. If you try and down let A A bunch thousand of so internet connection is tRicky, but if you've just got you know that one thing that you need to be also access regularly for your dog that goes an apple notes, so maybe the scans of, you know, previous things that could still live think because that's a Better place for IT that you just have to find the system works for you.

right? Well, you've moved us into an interesting topic of retrieving and linking the information because we we do use automation to populate these things. But is automation an option for getting access to the to the data?

Yeah and that that is the thing, right? How how do you find something when you need IT later? Um and part of this is you know making sure things have good titles that could either be found.

Names or just a title at the top of the document and so on. And tags can be useful here as well so that you can find things basically put key words on things so that when you look for those later or you look for different keywords, you find them. And that, to me, is like the the first starting point, because I have to think, you know, current me thinks this is the information that I need to achieve this.

Okay, now go away. Grab c loss of water, take out the recycling and or something, come back OK. Now, five years late to me.

What other words are useful for this so that I can remember this? And what other information do I need to link to this? Because that is the other thing.

You know what information belongs together. Putting like information is similar place or cross linking things and so on. That's all quite important. You know if you want to be able to go from here to hear and back again, then you know linking things together is very, very important .

yeah and he really is a payoff. And a lot of ways it's because because these tools are excEllent at linking. A lot of them allow you to create internal s inside their database that what you jump between notes, which is the tap, you know, the double braket, is generally the this tax for that ub sidy and uses rome users at no plan.

So you can jump around within the document. But also these tools are excEllent at creating your links into the pic document from outside the application. So uh then you can drop that link into dev d think or omi focus or whatever and then links straight into that data. And again, that gets you there so quickly, which is what we're looking for.

yes. And I think that is, you know, that is the thing you want IT to be fast, okay? If you're looking for information, IT shouldn't be Foster to go to a doctor, go search or a google search or whatever IT is to fine that information that IT is to look IT up in your personal mole's management system.

Because if taking you longer to find IT, you know the same way that you had to go through to find the information originally. Have you gained anything? Possibly not.

Maybe you have because you've added drone notes and so to IT. But ideally, IT should be really file to look up and find. And that that for me is, you know, the thing that I always try to remember. So I too tend to half just an area at the bottom of my node, David. And this might sound really crazy, but this is just like search term dump. And like sometimes I I will know that, hey, this particular thing here, like i'll find IT because the problem that i'm searching for is called this or something, and i'll just have a section of the bottom where I note down like things that might calls me to look for this, which then in turn if means that if I search for a particular error that I know i've encounter before, and I have a good way of fixing IT in my persons knowledge managment system, I will find IT .

and put out done yeah yeah. And these these power tools that we're talking about just have so many things to do there. There's like so many plugins for up sitting to make IT easier to search and find data and to a less extent, no plan uh, for even apple notes like there's ways to search IT faster. I use an Alfred pluggin or I just a trigger offered and type in space and then just searches the of the apple notes titles so I can get to what I need very quickly but yet bring automation to bear in finding the data as well as creating IT yes and .

I think that is um you know something that is worth remembering you know hook mark is great for creating notes, uh org for creating links for things and so on as well so that you can cross linking things. But I do I did try to mostly think about, okay, well, i'm using a stadium, i'm using them and think both of those have uh, notes. You are else for all of the things that are in them. So I can just link that somewhere else. So if I have a particular set up, for example, for running the cleaning cycle on my washing machine, then no, I can actually, you know, I can, I can put that in a abc um because I have live in a breathing document and I can link to the the P D F of my wash machine manual even think and from one to the other .

I just tap and a that's IT yeah no I mean it's all about the liking.

Absolutely any other .

stuff you're doing you had a note hear about upset and data view and data review. How are you using those two together?

Yeah so date of view is just really nice for um you know creating a visual representation of or like pulling information out of things so safe for example you decide that you want to um store uh project template tes um or project information and and big tasks and so on in abide an then data, you can grab task set of things or IT can make a pretty list of notes organized by uh data that you've put in IT or IT can create a visual version of uh those things as well you know like pulling that information now and it's very nice uh, for that sort of thing.

It's definitely a more advanced way of a handling your data in of syrian but for me that can be really nice. And i've used this for example for example um uh so my network uh stuff I started with the note for my reuter and I realized that or for the icy reuter and that realize you know the other reta i've also done some things on so I created IT for that and so router one and next reta two um and then rated to uh well a connects a whole bunch of things. But sometimes it's useful to know like the mac address of the devices, which I P addresses of the sign to IT and so and so forth.

And so I started creating notes to these other ones and then I used date of you to blink IT altogether because I was possible to do that. Um and yeah it's just quite nice to have that as a possibility with dian, and it's not necessary something you need if you want just diagrams and syrian, then IT have support for uh mermaid diagrams which are very pretty and tax based um and quite simple to create. But you know it's just uh yeah the date of view is very, very nice uh to have as an an enhancement if you're looking for IT.

But you don't have to a go at all ordinary with these things. You know it's a possibility, but it's not a requirement. And I would say with all these things, wait until you have a need for the thing before you d find a way to solve that problem in whatever system you're using. Because otherwise, if you start with, well, I need diagrams and I need to be able to, like, pull out a list of tasks and so but you never put tasks in there, then you know, we don't need a way to pull a list of tasks until you have a list of tasks you need to pull out. And you can easily just find IT quickly with a search.

And I think people can get in intimidate with a tool like a city. And they say, well, i've got all these files on here. How do I service what I want? And date of view is the answer to that.

Like, you can create an essence, smart files and smart photo or smart grapes, and you tag based tables of outstanding projects or whatever is you want to do. IT really is very flexible. But but finding your way to to your pgm data of via automation is is very useful.

I keep coming back to appliance because i've got IT also running. And IT is a chAllenge because getting to things aren't as easy like you can get a year adding to an apple mode out. But again, i'm using that out for plug in to pull that off.

And it's not easy like where is these other apps make IT so easy? So like I was thinking, when IT be nice for the hypothetical that appointment, if I had only to the appropriate note in the calendar, right? So I could just pull IT up while sitting there.

Well, I could do that very fast in a city, in flash room, flash, no plane flash, most Young things we're taking on here. But IT takes a little electra work on apple notes and Franklin to do IT on the iphone. It's even more work because I don't have an offered plugging.

I've got a kind of go through and go through the mechanics of sharing the note but then not share but that that generates the URL. I mean, apple doesn't make IT as easy as some of these other tools. yeah.

And I think that is what the things like. Again, you could do IT via shortcuts where you are, you know, you grab the no, and then you use to get link to which works for shortcut. S M, pretty sharing the worst for notes as well, which like a generates the sharing. Lincoln then know is so you can copy IT. But still that's a whole bunch of extra steps.

And you know that's not necessary worth IT but for something like uh the vet note for for your dog, that note can now also be shaped with your wife because it's in notes yeah and that's something that your wife can IT will immediately get understand that there doesn't need to be an explanation of what this is and why it's important, how works and so and so forth. It's just here to know about the dog and all the previous vet visits because I you know I have to go to a thing and you're taking the dog to the bed today. And that IT .

that that happened to me. I was at our town on business and and the dog got sick. And so the kids, we're going to take the dog because of that.

And I share that apple and they had everything I did you know with very easy. So yeah, IT is an interesting time with P. K, N. There's lots of ways to create the data, to show the data. I think the platform, your pic is going to definitely impact what kind of automation you do. But if you bring some an open mind to IT, I think all of the things we talked about, how automation options and if you're intimidated by the idea of P, K, M, IT puts a moderation behind IT and IT gets a lot easier.

Yes, absolutely. And you know, automation is really great tool for A P K M because IT can allow you to quickly ah grabe um things. And so as well one old thing I will actually mention, David.

Uh because this is something I use all the time and I forgot about IT until literally just now um is uh you are A O linker on the back up APP store IT allows me to light right click on a page and copy A A markdown link to that page from safari or I can select text um and I can uh you know I can link that um and I will copy that as well and that is just a really nice useful it's a very little tool um and that is the sort of automation that is really nice and easy to start with. You are a link er for safer specially supports, adding like a whole bunch of different formats to your right look menu. Um so you know you have a company wiki that has like a particular syntax uh for um links, then you could have that in savory as well.

So you can write like and copy for wiki, copy for P K M whatever IT is you want copy as mark down link you know whatever you like. But that is you know that's a sort of place where it's really to get started with a full hold of these things. And then later you can go on to figuring out like an automatic way to add tags to certain kinds of note store to fund these notes over here until work P, K, M versus your personal P K M and so on.

But starting t start simple and then grow from there is definitely what i'd say for this, because A P, K, M is only as good as the data inside of IT. And if you're just junk IT up with a lot of use of status that you never want to come back to and you never want to organize, then it's it's not going to be a an amazing system for you. So yeah, start small and work work your way up.

And that that kind of explains our own evolutions because my original ability and hold everything was great until IT wasn't because I don't want the veteran stuff showing up in a search for the other stuff I do in that database. And like you just kind of know when it's time to to split these things out.

Yeah .

okay, well, we are the automated podcast. You can find this really thought of him slash automated uh, we are going to have an automated max episode day for the folks that uh are our subscribers. Automated max subscribers can and free extended version on the show.

We're going to be talking about artificial intelligence and automation of voice to text in that today, as we mentioned, we all have one episode left of the anomalies or and dinner run, sadly. But what we feel like a good body of episode des in the archive here, if you are an automated or max subscriber and you have questions about IT, you can transfer that subscription to another shower. I think they even even have a refund system. Let really know you should have got an email, so that should be handled. But if you have any problems, let us know as well, we'll make sure you get handled, and otherwise we will see next time.

Get by, folks.