Second Brains I Have Tried And Left

SBIHTAL

• Roam Research
  • was really fascinating and taught me a lot, except:
  • it requires connectivity
  • it loads slow and slowly
  • they wouldn't let me self-host for < $500
  • forces content into outline format
  • isn't pretty, hard to restyle
  • feature rich, but hard to customize
  • too prescriptive
• Athena or whatever they call the open source roam
  • shares most of the issues above
• Obsidian app
  • convinced me to return to markdown after exporting my Roam graph
  • too opinionated and constrained in a single Mac app
  • I soon started to wonder if I could use Obsidian and … … … Foam?
• iA Writer + Cloud (Dropbox => iCloud => Google Drive)
  • iA Writer got me started on markdown which has been wonderful
    • also the minimal writing environment kept me coming back for years until I finally began to feel like a writer
    • One must write without tethers, pomp, or pretense, or there is little point. #gems
  • cloud storage kept my second brain portable from device to device
• TextEdit.app + Dropbox
  • my go-to in law school
  • not sophisticated, but served its purpose
  • my study guides became complex Roam-like outlines