Workflow concept for information workers

[Tamagotchi 46]

Using note taking software as an external brain.

Where our brain falls short

Efficient workflows for gathering and synthesising information are important for information workers. Our memory is less than perfect. Here is one approach outlined by Readwise in three blog posts.

Quotes:

• Integrate might also mean enhanced creativity resulting from the serendipitous juxtaposition of seemingly unrelated ideas. Creativity is notoriously hard to pin down, but some have suggested that it is nothing more than making connections that no one else has noticed. As they say, "You don’t have to reinvent the wheel, just attach it to a new wagon." 
• The concept of a reading workflow might also sound somewhat theoretical, but if you look closely, they're actually quite common in practice. From Maria Popova's idea index to Ryan Holiday's commonplace book to Tiago Forte's Progressive Summarization, great readers across time have relied on clever, external systems to compensate for their inherent forgetfulness. In fact, it is rare to meet a great reader who hasn't developed some sort of reading workflow (whether they call it that or not).

Learn more here: How to Actually Use What You Read

From <https://blog.readwise.io/reading-workflow-part-1/?ref=dashboard> 

Notion approach with Windows heritage

Notion does much but not everything. With integration and embedding, it is the centre of an information system that enables new creative outputs. Below are two mind maps: what it can do, and how to make it work. Notion does not have workflows predefined. You will have to think it out yourself. This is why it is useful to design workflow around proven frameworks. Agile would be one example of something that could be done in Notion.

In this case, the task is the gathering of information from many sources, linking it togethering, finding it again, and synthesising the information to produce many useful outputs. This could be a video script, a report, a webpage post, academic research, or writing a book.

Notion - what it can do - features of Notion

https://whimsical.com/notion-what-it-can-do-7fh2vXKePCXo4d2iNbn3Ls

Notion - making it work for this workflow

https://whimsical.com/notion-making-it-work-QhrZR8fGutmfvAssVE54U3

[DTLow 5,728]

29 minutes ago, Tamagotchi said:

Notion approach with Windows heritage ... Notion - what it can do - features of Notion ... Notion - making it work for this workflow

Why are you posting this in the Evernote forum?

[GrumpyMonkey 4,318]

4 hours ago, Tamagotchi said:

Using note taking software as an external brain.

Where our brain falls short

Efficient workflows for gathering and synthesising information are important for information workers. Our memory is less than perfect. Here is one approach outlined by Readwise in three blog posts.

Quotes:

• Integrate might also mean enhanced creativity resulting from the serendipitous juxtaposition of seemingly unrelated ideas. Creativity is notoriously hard to pin down, but some have suggested that it is nothing more than making connections that no one else has noticed. As they say, "You don’t have to reinvent the wheel, just attach it to a new wagon." 
• The concept of a reading workflow might also sound somewhat theoretical, but if you look closely, they're actually quite common in practice. From Maria Popova's idea index to Ryan Holiday's commonplace book to Tiago Forte's Progressive Summarization, great readers across time have relied on clever, external systems to compensate for their inherent forgetfulness. In fact, it is rare to meet a great reader who hasn't developed some sort of reading workflow (whether they call it that or not).

Learn more here: How to Actually Use What You Read

From <https://blog.readwise.io/reading-workflow-part-1/?ref=dashboard> 

Notion approach with Windows heritage

Notion does much but not everything. With integration and embedding, it is the centre of an information system that enables new creative outputs. Below are two mind maps: what it can do, and how to make it work. Notion does not have workflows predefined. You will have to think it out yourself. This is why it is useful to design workflow around proven frameworks. Agile would be one example of something that could be done in Notion.

In this case, the task is the gathering of information from many sources, linking it togethering, finding it again, and synthesising the information to produce many useful outputs. This could be a video script, a report, a webpage post, academic research, or writing a book.

Notion - what it can do - features of Notion

https://whimsical.com/notion-what-it-can-do-7fh2vXKePCXo4d2iNbn3Ls

Notion - making it work for this workflow

https://whimsical.com/notion-making-it-work-QhrZR8fGutmfvAssVE54U3

Hi. It seems to me that almost all of your posts on the Evernote forums are about how to leave Evernote. Ultimately, it is up to Evernote what to allow in their forums, but from one user to another, I’d like to ask you to stop posting about how to leave the app, because your point has already been made—there are other options out there. If you would like to use the other apps, we wish you the best of luck with them. The information you are posting seems genuinely helpful for other information workers, but please post about other apps in other forums. Thanks.

[lanscs 2]

Hi. It seems to me that almost all of your posts on the Evernote forums are about how to leave Evernote. Ultimately, it is up to Evernote what to allow in their forums, but from one user to another, I’d like to ask you to stop posting about how to leave the app, because your point has already been made—there are other options out there. If you would like to use the other apps, we wish you the best of luck with them. The information you are posting seems genuinely helpful for other information workers, but please post about other apps in other forums. Thanks.

I would think Evernote and EV users would find this info useful. Rather than a "how to leave EV" post, the poster has emphasized across many posts there is no one size fits all solution and explores methods of making information capture useful. I've delved into this topic myself as my EV notebooks span twelve years and tens of thousands of notes, clips, emails, etc. One example he has not mentioned is the Zettelkasten method of notetaking. He has not mentioned Zetlr, or Zotero, The Brain mindmapping, to mention a few. None of these will offer a complete solution to everyone, but it is to Evernote's benefit to understand how to make the program more useful in a burgeoning information environment. EV has been my capture method of choice all these years, but knowing how to go beyond capture and be able to answer my wife's question, "What are you going to do with all that information?" really concerns me. Maybe some EV users are not bothered by that. I'm pretty sure some are.

His points about EV v. 10 failings are well taken as EV was a daily part of my workflow and now that has been broken.

[PinkElephant 6,792]

It plainly is a question of perspective.

If somebody enters new into the circle of EN users, he probably thinks „Wow, a lot of nice features, maybe I would like to have this or that, but in general thumbs up“. And there is a still pretty generous free model to use (somewhere I read in a competing service „50 free notes, and then it is subscribe, or you‘re done“).

We have a lot of disgruntled voices in the forum, but very few of them (if any) are newbies.

The users from back then say „ I a missing this, my workflow got broken there, what a mess“. All true, for me as well, but for all of us EN does offer a solution: Wave the magic wand, install legacy, get back to work. Why not simply ignore  there is a version 10 in the field, watch it as a sort of extended beta that happens while you use what you know. 

And now for the tricky part: There are features that will not work in the future, and they are stated in the release notes. There are other features that are not said to be discontinued but where positive signals are missing. If any of these are make or break items, you can start to prepare to switch. You will probably find it is not that easy to find a replacement, but this is another story.

If not, just sit it out and wait maybe 6 month while the next releases roll in. My feeling is that it was a rough start, but keeps getting better. Then it means one day switch from legacy to v10 rel. XX, and that is it.

[lanscs 2]

24 minutes ago, PinkElephant said:

The users from back then say „ I a missing this, my workflow got broken there, what a mess“. All true, for me as well, but for all of us EN does offer a solution: Wave the magic wand, install legacy, get back to work. Why not simply ignore  there is a version 10 in the field, watch it as a sort of extended beta that happens while you use what you know. 

If it were a matter of features, yeah, sit back and watch and wait for features to be reincarnated. Trouble is, it is not just a matter of features. EN is slow. No getting around that. Some slowness is still workable as a tradeoff. I have a Yoga 11" that I carry with me almost everywhere. Eight gb of RAM and mostly adequate processor that gets me 6-7 hours of battery. I don't primarily use it for content creation. But taking onsite with all my notes for support solutions is invaluable. EN v. 6.25 uses 1-2% CPU and 154 mb RAM; EN v. 10 uses 92% CPU and 80-90% RAM. That's not a tradeoff. That's a deal killer.

[PinkElephant 6,792]

As I said: If there are features you can’t do without, then pick your choice.

Personally I think there are other Electron-based apps (among them some that are hyped here as EN alternatives) that seem to do it better. Maybe EN will get a hook on this as well. Maybe not ...

You will find that the selection of apps that work from a local take-along data base is not large.

[DTLow 5,728]

1 hour ago, lanscs said:

His points about EV v. 10 failings are well taken as EV was a daily part of my workflow and now that has been broken.

 

19 minutes ago, lanscs said:

If it were a matter of features, yeah, sit back and watch and wait for features to be reincarnated.

For me, it's a matter of using the Legacy product - there's no change to my workflow

The Version 10 product is a work-in-progress; imho it's not ready for general use   
I'm not considering using it until the work is completed

[lanscs 2]

I'm still using legacy of course. But I've been a beta tester. I've given my feedback. I've watched and waited. I found the beta unusable and so I was surprised when the beta testing ended and suddenly became the live version with the slowness and the resource hog problems intact. If it's still a beta product, why make it live with the problems inherent in beta projects? I think that's what has alarmed me, EN decided to go live with a product that was nowhere near usability. Everyone here saying, "Yeah, but legacy..." are recognizing it's not usable. I'm perfectly okay with using legacy and waiting for a beta to become fully baked, but by going live with an unusable product EN seems to be saying, "We don't really know how to solve the problems."

[PinkElephant 6,792]

It is not unusual to have a period of overlapping versions. GoodNotes did it last year, when they switched from 4 to 5. They released v5 with a reduced set of functions, and said they would upgrade the new client step by step. It took them 6 month until they had everything duplicated. And they made the clever move to keep both versions available for iOS users as well (had to trick it, because iOS normally won’t allow).

So it would be OK what EN does - if there would not be that catastrophic communication behavior, that lets us users in the dark.

GoodNotes made it way, way better. I had an issue with the new release, contacted support, got the information it will be fixed, OK, ticket closed. 3 weeks later I received an e-mail from their support, telling me that the issue I had claimed was now solved, and asked me to install the latest update. For me best practice.