Sam Barton on using PKM tools well, AI knowledge graphs, digital gardens, and decentralized identity for truth

“AI will allow us to triage increasing amounts of information so that we can identify what we should dive into in more detail and extract value from.”

– Sam Barton

About Sam Barton

Sam is a product manager, a personal knowledge management expert, host of the deep dive podcast Talk of Today, and also a product manager for two major products in Ross Dawson’s startup Informivity.

Website: Sam H Barton

Twitter: @Samhbarton

Apple Podcast: Talk of Today

Spotify: Talk of Today

YouTube: Talk of Today

What you will learn

• Utilizing technology for efficient note-taking (02:28)
• Personal knowledge management with Roam, Notion, Logseq, and Obsidian (03:47)
• Using Readwise and Todoist for workflow and note-taking (04:59)
• Exploring connected note-taking apps – comparing Obsidian and Notion (10:09)
• The power of externalizing thoughts through knowledge management tools and AI (12:46)
• The future of personal knowledge management (13:32)
• Externalizing knowledge to make it accessible and effective (15:20)
• The potential of digital assistants and notetakers to assist in managing information and improving productivity (15:45)
• How generative AI helps users dive into more beneficial information (17:24)  
• Features of the “Ideal Tool” that provides automatic AI summaries for sources (18:38)
• The need for the ability to discern authorship and authenticity (22:47)
• The probable emergence of personal tutors and new forms of libraries (24:13)
• Tool recommendations to thrive on information overload (27:20)

Episode resources

• Roam Research
• Notion
• Logseq
• Obsidian
• Readwise
• Todoist

Transcript

Ross Dawson: Sam, it’s awesome to have you on the show.

Sam Barton: Hey, great to be here, Ross.

Ross: You are passionate about trying to work well with lots of information and manage your knowledge and so on. How come? Where did all this start for you?

Sam: I’ve always loved technology. I’ve always tried to keep abreast of all of the latest updates and just check out new tools and how they work. I think I stumbled into it in a way because I was using all of these different tools, and they had all of these capabilities, and as a consequence of using these tools, I started amassing a collection of notes rather easily because of the automation that some of these tools made available. Suddenly, I had lots of data to work with and I thought, this data can be put to use in a way.
I was working on various different things. I always work on various different things, for better or for worse, so having a way of going through the information that I have and organizing it in such ways that it’s actually useful. I was running a podcast, I was studying, I was working, so I had lots of balls in the air and I needed to find a way to keep those balls in the air.

Ross: What was the first software that you found useful on that journey?

Sam: That’s a good question. Roam Research captured my imagination. It got me very excited for this world of personal knowledge management, though it wasn’t as useful as I was expecting it to be. Notion is an app that I have been using consistently for the past few years. Even though it hasn’t gripped me in the same way, as some of these other tools, I have found myself using it the most for getting work done and tracking things. In the past, and currently, I use tools like Roam, or if not Roam, now Logseq or Obsidian. We can get into those later if you want. I’ve been using those for managing notes like book notes, podcast questions, and a whole array of things. Basically, stuff that I capture online, and then Notion is where the production happens.

Ross: How about in terms of the idea captures? You always come across something cool or interesting, which is stimulating, but you don’t necessarily know where or how, then where would you put it?

Sam: My workflow at the moment is I take advantage of Readwise. Readwise is an app that does a variety of different things. It’s evolved recently. The big thing is it allows you to capture content in the various areas that you come across it online, on Kindle, and elsewhere. It deposits that information automatically into a note-taking app of your choice or in the Readwise app itself. I had a Twitter addiction, I deleted it recently. That was a good and bad move, I think, because I’m less plugged in. But what I would do is if I came across anything interesting, I would just send it to Readwise, and I would have it tagged with #inbox so that I would know when I go into my notetaking app, I need to process this, I need to put this in an area that makes sense. I’ve also used Todoist to play that role as well. If I come across something, I would just throw it quickly into Todoist and tag it with the relative tags: work, podcast, or whatever, and I’d get to it later. I will say that my process is not perfect and it definitely needs a bit of work.

Ross: Nobody’s process is perfect.

Sam: Yes, I still have lots of frustrations with mine. For one, remembering to process your inbox is a chore. Maybe it’s one of those things that you just have to do.

Ross: Where’s the inbox?

Sam: My inbox was Logseq. Logseq is an open-source free version of Roam Research. That was where I was initially. I’ve moved to Obsidian recently because with these connected notetaking apps, you can hashtag or link items, do a quick search, and filter for many different things, and that’s one way of organizing and getting access to content. But folders are still very useful I’ve come to discover. Being able to just put something in a folder and access it in some hierarchical manner is very useful. From what I’ve learned, or from the research that I’ve done, Obsidian is the best app that allows you to make the most of both worlds.
You can organize things hierarchically in folders, but you can also, with tags, surface things when you need them. I’ve started moving to Obsidian. I do have some gripes with it but it’s high customizability and getting into the weeds and owning your data. I contrast it with Notion, where everything’s set up in a very structured way, but you don’t own your data so it’s not as future-proof. I’m currently in that space of tossing up whether or not I stick with Obsidian and just let that be my home for everything or I just bite the bullet and go with Notion because the returns initially will be greater. But in the future, having complete control over my data is the way to go.

Ross: I use Obsidian, Notion, and Google Docs amongst other things. That’s always one of the issues, either you’re choosing a central platform, a single platform for everything or you’re making a decision about what goes where. At the moment, there’s a logic as in Obsidian is for me more of the idea. Here’s the idea, this little snippet, a reference or an image, or something which I can go, organize and get access to whereas Notion is where the structure happens. As you talked about Notion being that place where work gets done. I don’t think Obsidian is a work-getting-done tool. Though I’m sure some people put it to a good effect in that way. Just working out the boundaries as to if no one told us at all, then how do you continuously rebalance what goes where?

Sam: It frustrates me because having everything in one place is very powerful, just being able to manage, let’s say, all of your resources, reference notes, and everything, and then just being able to seamlessly integrate that. Let’s say I’m writing an essay, a workflow for me would be to read various books or PDFs and highlight them. My workflow allows for all of those highlights to be automatically added to my second brain, so Obsidian or Logseq. A really useful workflow is just being able to take all those highlights and then just put them into my working document, so that I can write with all of the content right there. But unfortunately, it doesn’t work like that. I end up having to get all those notes there, and then move to Notion, and then port everything over there and try reworking it.
The reason why that’s a problem. It doesn’t sound like a problem. That’s normal and that’s how it normally happens. But the benefit of these connected notetaking apps is that you can see the providence. Where did that note or insight come from? If I’ve got a highlight, this highlight came from this book in this section, and it’s really easy to reference and look at later. In the future, I could say, where are all the places that I have referenced this highlight in all my work? And maybe there are 1