How Bear App Helps Me With Knowledge Management

If you’re anything like me, you probably can’t imagine your life without a Note-Taking App.

I’ve been taking notes on both work and personal stuff since I can recall. Constantly writing things up, adding next positions to “must-read”, “must-see” or “must-think” lists. In the meantime using Hackpad (now Dropbox Paper), Simplenote, Notion, Apple Notes, list goes on.

At some point, the Evernote became an obvious choice but it turned out to be too complex, offering too many superfluous features. 

Taking notes became overwhelming and brought chaos into my thoughts and plans. I was juggling between all those tools trying to manage my scattered knowledge and waiting for a better solution to appear. 

And then the Bear app came. 

Like with most new tools, Bartosz showed it to me. I remember seeing it for the first time, probably somewhere on my Facebook wall as it started to be trendy among my network. Finally, I decided to give it a try because of a beautifully designed interface, fair price and a desktop client option. 

Source: https://bear.app/

Why the Bear? 

After using it for a few months now and I’m falling in love with it more every day. Why? 

• It works offline which is gold. 
• It’s a bit hacker. You can tag every section and subsection by writing a single slash (I know, it’s nothing but it speaks to my developer’s strings). 
• It enables easy topics selection and works like a markdown. 
• You can keep loads of a given topic-related content under one category and it’s still neat and tidy.
• You can export one, some, or all notes to a variety of formats. 
• You can easily create to-do lists, tick every check box and see all your tasks clearly. 
• It’s truly pleasant to use. The design is really beautiful and was appreciated by The Apple Design Award. It’s polished in every detail and works in no time.

That’s my life organised by tags

I use it for creating notes from meetings, one on one sessions and I’m able to keep the same note under various hashtags, e.g /Jan is under 1-on-1, Growth team and People.

My categories? Interesting books, articles, podcast recommended by others. Inspiring quotes. Topics I want to to delve into or currently on my mind. As Bartosz put it: database for life.

Work-related stuff as well as personal lists and insights. All in one place. 

By assigning multiple tags to it, a note can belong to multiple contexts (“What I read in January 2019” or “What I read on China”)

Top highlight: It facilitates knowledge management. 

When is the Bear app for you?

If you’re always on the go. 

When you love taking notes. Love doing research. Love gathering resources. And want to do it with pleasure. 

When Dropbox Paper or Notion loads relatively slowly or you lack the Internet connection.

When Apple Notes are not enough. 

When you want seamless experience, without pressure. 

When you’re passionate about knowledge gathering and your mind is buzzing with countless ideas. 

The Bear app is highly likely to finally enable you to make those ideas reality. 

Last but not least, if you want to use meaningful software on a daily basis. 

The Bear app became my database for life dynamically developing with me and not for quids would I change it.