App Discovery: Zettlr -- a Markdown Editor / Linker to create your own Zettelkasten

Zettlr, available at Zettlr.com, calls itself "one stop publication workbench". I find it just a good app to get yourself organized

To put it simply, Zettlr is a Markdown editor that allows for easy cross-linking and hierarchical file organization. On the left, you have a "workspace" file manager that shows you all the files with folders. In the middle is the main editor window with tabs so you can handle multiple files. On the right is extra info, such as outline view, linked view, external references, and so on. 

Markdown is just plain text with some simple tags added, so that's very easy to learn and the app is quite fast even on slow hardware. 

Zettlr has some extra powers such as Zotero integration for citations. Need to cite an internet article? Use the Chrome plug-in to add it to Zotero, edit it to add some meta info in Zotero, then you can cite it in Zettlr full Academic style. In fact, that's why Zettlr calls itself one-stop publication workbench... you can write your notes and your articles in Zettlr, then export it to LaTeX and have it published. 

But Zettlr is also an excellent way to implement Zettelkasten (German for "slip box"), aka "digital second brain", where various bits of knowledge, with cross linking, and citations, becomes a creative cloud of inspiration for you to write papers and articles... once you've built up the contents. The more entries in the slipbox, and the more cross-linked they are, the more they should inspire you to write.

If you want to implement Zettelkasten in Zettlr, start by creating a folder, call it Zettelkasten if you want. Under that, create 3 folders: Fleeting Notes, Literature Notes, Permanent Notes.  Please research Zettelkasten on how you actually use those folders. 

Zettlr has many other power features such as templates/snippets and projects that's beyond the scope of this article.

App Discovery: Obsidian may be the best Evernote alternative, with MUCH MUCH MORE POWER through community plug-ins

Obsidian and rings among rocks, via Unsplash

Obsidian started out simple: a way to link and hierarchically organize a bunch Markdown (.md) files which themselves can contain links to other Markdown files, photos, videos, URLs, and much more. However, with a bit of tweaking, it became a full notetaking and note organizing app. And with additional of graph view, it became a visual tool as well, that lead many thinkers calling it "building your second brain". 

And it's free. 

There are two features that the company charge for, such as Obsidian Sync, and Obsidian Publish, but as a personal user, you don't need those features. Sync lets you clone your entire "vault" of Markdown notes and replicate it to other devices such as those of your collaboration team mates with full Git integration, while Publish turns, with a few tweaks, your vault into a public Wiki or Knowledge base, that you can edit on the fly. Personal uesrs don't need these. These are really for companies, which can also purchase at the cost of $50 per year per user, commercial license to receive priority support. But remember, personal use is free, forever. 

And it accepts "Community Plug-ins", developed by the Obsidian community that turns Obsidian into a Kanban board, adds omni-search across entire vault, enhances editing capabilities, quick citing of Wikipedia, and much much more. 

There is a way to migrate data from Evernote to Obsidian, but it's not a quick process, as you need to re-tag and re-arrange almost everything. But once you do, you'll find yourself wondering why you waited so long to do it.