I’ve been trying a lot of PKM tools (Obsidian, Notion, etc.), and they’re great once things are organized.
But most of what I actually need to capture day-to-day is much smaller and faster:
- quick thoughts
- links I don’t want to lose
- random snippets
- stuff I don’t have time to organize
And this is where everything starts to feel… slow.
Capturing should be instant, almost no friction.
But most tools immediately push you into structure: folders, tags, decisions…
So either I don’t capture at all, or I dump things and never find them again.
Lately I’ve been trying to separate the two:
- one layer just for capture (fast, no thinking)
- another for organizing later
Curious how others here handle this.
Do you separate capture from knowledge building? Or use one tool for everything?
That “slider” idea is actually really interesting. I think that’s exactly what’s missing in most tools… they treat notes as static, but in reality a lot of them are tied to a moment. Like sometimes I don’t even need the full content, just a small trigger is enough to bring everything back. That’s also why I started thinking more in terms of a “timeline of captures” rather than structured notes… still pretty rough, but it feels closer to how memory actually works.