Tools for Thought Are Game Changers

Let's Get Factual about Tools for Thought #tft

The theme for this month's newsletter is Tools for Thought of #tft. This has been something that, via a tool called Roam Research, has changed my life considerably over the last 2-3 years. I'll share my top three tools at the end of this newsletter and a couple of more besides. But, first, what's this all about?

This space has been progressing very rapidly over the last couple of years. Tools like evernote have given way to tools like Roam Research, Notion, and Obsidian. Now we have Tana, Napkin and more.

All of these tools are variations on the theme of note taking and each has their own flavor. But, the real tl;dr in all of this is linking. So, what's the big deal about linking and notes?

Linking is the absolute superpower that all this new breed of TFTs bring to bear. Unlike Evernote where content goes to die and be forgotten these tools work. Here is a short video example of how I use Roam Research for daily business journaling.

The true power of this very simple method emerges over time when a colleague calls you and mentions someone. You type their name in and can see every linked and unliked reference in your notes nicely available and organized and say something like, "oh, yes, back in May of 2021 Joe promised to send us the thing. But, he didn't do that. I called him again in July and he didn't pick up the phone. So I brought Mary into the project. She's been doing a great job and I've had a meeting every week with her for the last 6 months and here's all the wonderful progress.

The amazing thing is that it's all linked in a graph. All the top TFTs use graph database models under the hood. So, your notes become sort of a social network of their own and, eventually, an extension of your own brain. That is why some call these tools a second or other brain. Here is an example visualization of a portion of one of my graphs. This picture depicts over 1000 meetings I've had as of this writing with well over 300 people. No,

that's not a typo, I have a lot of meetings with a lot of people it turns out. And now, I can tell you pretty much what I talked to each one of those people about and how that connects to all the others. This has solved any number of problems for me with my day to day work life.

If this sounds a little like a CRM, well, in some ways it is but it is SO MUCH MORE! Honestly, I can't imagine why I would use personally use a SaaS CRM like Hubspot or Salesforce anymore for my needs. It would be a data siloed pale in comparison version of my graph that I have curated over time.

How to Get Started?

I can comfortably recommend three TFT's that are in production right now because I have personally used them and they work.

Roam Research - Really the tool that, in my opinion, redefined the genre and set the tone for so many to come. Roam Research is currently my primary TFT. I've been releasing a series of videos on my YouTube channel on the uses cases. That will take a while but I'm working on it!

Obsidian - This tool appeals to a crowd that very much prefers its user interface over those of the outliner style like Roam Research.

Notion is a TFT that takes more data centric approach. If you like tables and think in a more relational database or spreadsheet kind of way this can really appeal.

Honorable mention, a new tool not yet generally available called Tana.

This beast, Tana, is like if Roam Research and Notion had a baby. They have been incredibly thoughtful about search/query functions and information display. I'm full on experimenting with this right now for my key use cases and it's impressive I must say!

OMG WHAT DO I DO?

Play. My recommendation is simply to try them all. Do something simple like the business journaling process I shared in the video above. Just commit to entering notes into the system every day for a few weeks. All of these tools share the common theme that they do not really start to shine until there is data in the system.

Do not worry about breaking things. You can't really. Just assume your first efforts in each of these tools are play. Just play. Break things. Delete it all. Start again. Watch Youtube videos on how to use the tools. Once you get the basic an incredible amount of possibilities will open up for you and you will begin to create an extension of your brain in a graph database based note taking tool.

It is life changing when it really hits and your use cases start to bear fruit (links) and that's a fact!

About this Newsletter; Factual

This is my first LinkedIN newsletter. I kept it short, light, and conversational. I shared something that has really mattered to me. So, do me a favor and leave me a comment. If it helped you in some way, please share it with a friend. What good is writing a newsletter if nobody reads it!? What did you like? What did you not like? What would you like hear more about? What do you need?

See you in December when we get Factual about AI!

Factual is a newsletter created by Kent Langley.