Building a Personal Knowledge Management System

The Problem

After a decade of writing, researching, and learning, I had thousands of notes scattered across Evernote, Google Docs, physical notebooks, and random text files. Finding anything required archaeological skills. Something had to change.

Choosing the Right Tools

I evaluated dozens of tools before settling on a hybrid approach:

• Obsidian for long-form notes and knowledge graphs
• Notion for project management and databases
• Custom Python scripts for automation and import/export

Why Obsidian Won

Obsidian's use of plain Markdown files means my notes aren't locked into any proprietary format. The graph view reveals connections between ideas that I never would have noticed linearly. And the plugin ecosystem is extraordinary.

The Migration Process

Migrating 10 years of notes was a 3-week project. I wrote Python scripts to convert various formats to Markdown, deduplicate entries, and create a consistent tagging system. The code is available on my GitHub.

Daily Workflow

Every morning, I spend 15 minutes reviewing yesterday's notes and linking them to existing ideas. This daily practice of connecting knowledge has dramatically improved my writing and thinking.

Results After 6 Months

My writing output increased by 40%. Research time decreased by half. Most importantly, I'm making connections between ideas from different domains that I never saw before.