I wish to have a discussion and some help on how I might leverage the whole bi-directional linking structure of my graph. How would I go about finding connections or whatever?!
The graph view is completely unhelpful for this. And maybe the structure of my graph is wrong in the very basis of it, that’s fine feedback too.
However I just feel like I get no extra value out of my graph at the moment.
The problem is not that I cannot find my notes, my graph has enough structure to find whatever it is I’m looking for quite easily.
The problem is that I cannot extract any extra value out of the information I have put in.
I have read a lot in the past and articles etc. would often state that given enough time things will “emerge”. Well, I’ve been using Logseq for nearly a year and things are not “emerging” (I find that a very vague way of putting things anyway and I never found anyone concretely explaining what they mean with it)
In a very unhelpful way, here’s what my graph view looks like:
You can make out three neat sections, these are pages tagged archive (orange dot), pages tagged games (grey dot) and 1 namespace (blue dot).
The unconnected pages are my dairy tag, start page, and 3 tags to classify notes (exploration, investigation, insight).
And everything else is simply a mess!
So this view is not going to help me reach my goal at all
Then my question is, how else would I go about leveraging all this data I have collected. A major chunk is just life data really, but there are also some notes here and there. (would love to leverage that life data though)
As you might have suspected, no atomic notes here though
Are those required for this?
My graph right now uses the PARA method for structure, while I log things using ideas taken from the Bullet Journal Method.
My hierarchy consists of:
PARA
specific Area (tags:: Areas)
page related to area (area:: Area)
Projects, resources and archives generally don’t even have subpages.
My deepest linking is with the area Hobby as Hobby is more a level between PARA and a specific hobby. (e.g. PARA > Hobby (tags:: Areas) > games (area:: Hobby) > specific game (area:: Hobby subject:: games) )
Love to hear all your thoughts on this
I know this is a bit vague, but I’m not sure how to make things more concrete. Happy to provide additional information.
I have the same problem. The graph includes too much unrelated nodes, while lots of useful information is left out. I wonder if it’s possible to
build a subgraph with control of which notes are included, by means of a query
customize annotation of each note, mayby by a specific property
customize relation and placement of notes
represent the subgroup as a page or whiteboard.
I’m trying to take Zettelkasten notes in logseq. A graph of the notes will be of tremendous help to me.
If anyone familiar with developing plugin finds the features necessary, please try to implement them.
Nope because I’m on mobile 99% of the time so I don’t really use plugins.
I’ll give it a try on PC later. For this purpose I don’t mind trying plugins as it is not for every day use.
My issue is not necessarily with the graph view per se. I’m just using it to illustrate in this case.
My issue is more broad, in the sense that, I do not know how to extract extra value from what I have regardless of the workings of the graph view.
Yes, my concern is more about a specific use case. I have tried graph analysis. It lacks features 2~4. I’m trying to manage whiteboards manully, for now.
Projects & Areas as per the PARA method. Connected nodes have tags:: Projects or tags:: Areas.
projectNameHere has the properties as follows:
tags:: Projects
area:: Home
subject:: roomName
A project is a project and relates to a specific area and has a specific subject. In this case the real project relates to some home remodeling of a specific room
Then as per the Bullet Journal method I have a monthly page.
In my real graph this would have all my weekly information (agenda, goals, highlights) and my monthly goals & highlights.
For this sample it is filled with just the basic:
These types of connections show up in my actual graph as well.
Goals are only added to these pages. Highlights is a bit tricky.
For example say I played Tunic on Monday, Friday and Sunday. I will have journal events for this on each of those journal pages. Then for that week I would have a highlight “Played Tunic” and then also for the month I’d have a highlight “Played Tunic”.
I don’t like this approach honestly. And it is a dilemma I have between a weekly/monthly overview of the journal events I find important and having all these extra connections.
Alternatives:
Use block references
but which block then in the example I gave? the Monday one?
Use queries
when returning blocks I would have all three events
when returning pages, for games this works, for other events I’d lose the context.
when returning :block/content only, it doesn’t always use distinct correctly
??? some other method?
As you can imagine a lot of the mess of my graph is due to this. A lot of connections go to either a PARA method specific page, or a month specific page.
Would I have to go through every month specific page and exclude it from the graph?
Or is there a better method to my madness
Should PARA pages be included or excluded?
For my games I use:
area:: Hobby
subject:: games
Maybe this is redundant? Should it only be subject:: games? I think that would be the correct hierarchy, instead of using area as games has not been specified as a specific area, but is part of the Hobby area.
So this should improve the noise ratio of my graph. Is this a good approach I should consider doing with my actual graph?
I guess the improved graph follows this logic more.
I feel that is not necessarily true for something like my notes on specific games. Due to the volume of notes it makes sense for a game to have its own page. But it’s not going to be connected much beyond that unless I find some reference to another game or something like that?
This is the problem that occurs with my month pages, as most things get connected to at least 1, but often multiple month pages. Hence I wonder if Month pages should be built differently entirely, or should they merely be hidden from the graph?
I believe you mean the Hobby > games > Tunic > Hobby thing here. I agree.
It should probably just be Hobby > games > Tunic
Can you give a more concrete example? I can’t quite wrap my head around this one.
Going by your analogy I think my graph is for the most part structured like a hierarchy. Door Tunic on street games connected to road Hobby in town Areas. So I wonder how do I do this differently? If that could be beneficial. How would I have the graph structure itself?
You kind of lost me here. I mean I follow what you’re saying in theory, but I don’t quite understand what that would look like in practice?
Agreed. And I recently ran into a conflict. Consider the “logbook” (not the Logseq one!) where would that live?
In the journal
It is what I did in a game on a certain day
On the page for the game
they are notes for the game and it can be useful to have all of them in one place
linked references also contain other links and so the notes may not be as easy to read that way.
It’s not just games, but also something like therapy sessions.
I had this on my journal pages, but referencing the logbook became difficult when I wanted to read/see the timeline to reflect on it. So I started putting in a Logbook block with links to the journal pages and under the reference blocks with my notes.
- ## Logbook
- [[journal]]
- note
I feel there could be reasons for either approach in this case. I feel it is a bit of a gray area. However for me to get value out of this logging I do, I need it to be together.
I talked a lot about games, because I feel this is the most direct example and similar to other daily uses (for example a bike ride, or art).
However there is also some actual knowledge stuff in there which is to say articles I read with my notes in them.
Having typed all this… I guess the two main structural questions I’m dealing with are:
is the PARA method structure a good framework for me?
should I hide the PARA pages in my graph?
should I do things differently? if so, in what way?
PARA just seemed useful for organizing things in 4 broad categories and letting all other structure emerge from that.
It prevents me from falling into the trap of a very granular hierarchy structure. (which is what I had with files and folders in the past)
how do I structure my monthly overview pages in a useful way?
should I hide these from my graph?
or should they be completely different so they won’t show up in the first place?
This type of information is hardly useful in anything other than statistics.
Having to question it that much, it’s a yes, hide them to reduce the noise.
Yes, it is redundant. Both in games and in projects.
Cannot “leverage Logseq’s linked structure” without enough links. Linked knowledge on a game could be elements of its genre, reasons that you play it, any lasting effects on you, etc. Think of a wiki on either the game itself (like those found online) or the game in relation to you (few games are more than time-killers). Days and hours don’t make for interesting articles.
Yes, triangles are the smallest case of “everything connects to everything else”.
This is for homework, to see how the paths emerge.
Your illustrations help indeed.
It does. Well done.
These are steps to the right direction. Clarity gets improved gradually. Here are some more steps in moving from indices to concepts:
I get what you’re saying here. Especially in the context of the rest of your comments. It makes me rethink my entire structure/graph.
Not necessarily to throw it out the window entirely, but more so in the assumptions made and execution of my structure. So I will have to consider and revisit this as I work on creating a better graph.
Agreed. It has been something that’s been bothering me on some level. (why do I even log this) And at the same time I do love my statistics. So then the question becomes, what exactly do I need for those statistics and what does that look like in the bigger picture.
This makes me ponder bigger question on my assumptions, as already stated. I will have to give this more thought.
I think this is a better starting point to work on this more. (Redundant connections for example)
Ah! I didn’t immediately recognize it for projects, but seeing your example below totally made that clear to me.
One more item to add to the possible improvements list
This was such a revelation in all its glorious obviousness! I had never thought about it in these terms/possibilities!
Thank you for this. It gives a whole new perspective.
Very true!
Making them singular reminds me of my work standards in regards to table naming conventions so yeah I see that one clearly. Though it makes me wonder about the page itself
My games page has an overview of my games (through queries). I guess maybe it doesn’t matter so much whether that is named games or game.
As for capitalization… yeah my graph is very inconsistent there. I never gave it much thought when I should have.
Really helps make some things clear. Thanks!
I guess this is very true. And maybe why I ran into my dissatisfaction.
YES! that whole section cleared up so much and gave a lot of things to ponder about. Thank you.
I will give your post more thought and see about slowly improving my graph.
So I was just working on the graph a bit… and… something just clicked into place, in my brain.
I was considering/testing out a structure of type:: and cluster:: (I didn’t like the part-of type naming).
So I was going through my projects. type:: project, cluster:: hobbyroom
Page hobbyroom type:: room, cluster:: appartment
Page appartment type:: house
Page room cluster:: house
Then I came to another project… type:: project, cluster:: livingroom
Page livingroom type:: room, cluster:: appartment…
Oh snap! I’m building a house or put another way, these projects are now actually linked, directly and logically.
Indeed not. I’m just trying to see the possibilities as well as trying things out. And definitely no more than necessary.
I’m trying to use a general structure (maybe that is wrong?) to classify pages.
Something belongs to something else, either hierarchal or in context.
To give some more abstract examples, writing on my blog is part of writing. Buying a new freezer is part of my physical inventory (which would relate to my house eventually).
Doing my taxes is part of my finances.
I wish to avoid making a new property key for every little thing. Only doing so when it adds some extra value. In this case cluster is always to mean the page is part of this collection/other page/give it a name.
Now that I think on it, I guess the “part of” falls apart a bit when looking at it from a project perspective.
It was also something I was questioning when trying to classify a treatment I had. In so much that I have a page dedicated to my personal experience of said treatment, and a page that is dedicated to an article about that treatment (reference page). And I was unsure how to define their relationship. It is not that my experience is part of the article or vice versa. Nor is the article a type of the experience or vice versa. So my “standard” links so to speak don’t apply here. There is a relationship however.
So I was thinking of a more “natural” link. Something like “[article]([[pagename]]) with further information about this treatment”.
I just meant directly as in there is a path between the two projects. Specifically it made me realize I have two projects related to my house. Where this link was not so directly/obviously/logically present before.
Would that be more in the sense that “I happen to have this page and that page and they happen to be related”? Rather than “I have this page and it relates to”?
In other words would I already predefine relations or would they only be made when I have two pages I can relate.
To stick with an earlier example. Suppose I make a project page for my hobbyroom. This is the first page of my graph that I make. So there is no relationship yet. Then later on I make a project for my livingroom. This relates to hobbyroom in the sense that they are 2 rooms in the same house. I could relate both to being part of my appartment. They would now have a path between them.
So in this question, when is this path made? Is hobbyroom at time of inception related to appartment. (The relationship with livingroom is not made deliberately) Or is this relation made in response to the creation of living room. (The relationship is made deliberately)
If the former, what relationship do we define at the moment of page creation? Those we know? But that could potentially lead to trying to model all of reality. Just one? The most significant in the context?
The latter would require deeper thought, but also relying on memory.
I suppose it makes sense that should I query all types, but I get results that are not actually types but something else that would muddy the waters.
Still I guess for me it is a big mindshift to not need to have everything very strict and “one way”
That’s gonna take some work to get around because I do feel it would be valuable in the end.
Lots of connections are (right now) deliberately broken, so it make sense lots of things just “float around”.
I have worked on removing all the triangle connections from the hobby page (blue dots).
The dark blue star is my games page with all the games connected to it.
I’m pretty happy with my progress, but I’m far from done
Anyway I ran into an interesting question. About my cats
So I have 3 pages. 1 with information related to both cats and then 1 page for each cat with their personal information. For example I want to track which cat puked when, so in the journal I would have [[Rox]] puked, probably because of reason.
In the cats page I would have the recurring tasks like food prep or clean the litterbox. And in the journal when it is about both cats, I’ll use that page reference as well. Took the [[cats]] to the vet.
Now I have a project related to my cats. Therefore I want to link this project to the [[cats]] page. While on the project page I might reference [[Rox]] and [[Sky]] individually as well.
This would create a triangle. (after all [[Rox]] is one of my cats and thus a link between his page and the [[cats]] page exists)
In such cases would it then be better to be more specific and not use the [[cats]] page? Both in the journal and the project.
Logseq (this page is a bit cluttered and I need to come back to it)
Zettelkasten
PKM
Project / my own stuff
Mijn notitie systeem
To declutter, thinking on what we discussed. It seems to me that
Zettelkasten should link to PKM (it is a PKM system)
Therefore the two articles on Zettelkasten would link to Zettelkasten instead of PKM, a more specific relationship.
However this cross relationship would still exist.
In “Introduction to the Zettelkasten Method” I mention both “Folgezettel is More than Mechanism” and “Progressive Summarization” in my notes about this article.
“[[Zettelkasten]] is more work upfront than [[Progressive Summarization]]. It requires more effort and pre-planning. On the other hand it also creates more value up front.”
“There is more to it than that, see [[Folgezettel is More than Mechanism]]” (in response to the article’s explaination of Folgezettel)
I feel these are fair relationship. Would this result (the triangles) in this case be ok, or am I missing something important?
(I find that a very vague way of putting things anyway and I never found anyone concretely explaining what they mean with it)
so I don’t really use plugins.
