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Ask HN: How do you store the knowledge gained in a day?

65 points dennisy | 3 comments | 13 May 25 18:23 UTC | HN request time: 0.641s | source

Each day I (and I assume most knowledge workers, devs, creatives) read many articles, papers, code snippets, AI responses, discord messages etc.

At the end of the day some of this information is most likely lodged in your brain and the digital version can be discarded. However some of it should be retained manually in some system - or at least I feel it should.

What approaches do people use to consolidate and store this information to allow all tabs etc to be closed for the next work day?

1. JohnFen ◴[13 May 25 18:52 UTC] No.43976324[source]▶
I don't accumulate tabs (I rarely have more than two open at a time), so I don't have to do anything to allow them to be closed. I just close the browser.

With your larger question, though, if there's specific information that I feel the need to keep locally, I add that to a wiki that I run. If information is in a non-online form (books, etc.), all I need to do is remember that it's in there. I don't need to remember the information itself because I can look it up at will. For everything else, I don't worry about it at all. If I found it online once, I can find it online again should I need it again.

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2. dennisy ◴[13 May 25 19:02 UTC] No.43976415[source]▶
Ohh, I really wish I also had this attitude (YAGNI)!

But do you not believe there is some value in trying to store some of what you found / learnt each day, to allow you to make some new connections in the brain the following days?

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3. JohnFen ◴[13 May 25 19:56 UTC] No.43977009[source]▶
> do you not believe there is some value in trying to store some of what you found / learnt each day,

Sure, but I retain some of that without having to do anything special. I have no need to remember everything. My brain seems to know better than I do what is worth remembering and what isn't anyway. I trust it.

Retention is even more likely to happen if it's information that I actually used that day, and if it's really valuable information, then I probably have used it immediately.