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?
Yeah weekly notes are a nice middle ground. I tried something similar for a bit, and it definitely helps reducing the friction at capture time. But I noticed that over time those notes tend to become kind of dense… like everything ends up mixed together and it’s harder to go back to a specific thing. Maybe it’s just me, but after a while it still felt like I was doing some form of “light organization” upfront. Curious if that ever becomes an issue for you or if it stays manageable.