How valuable is a digital second brain when you can’t make it remember what you need?
After spending hours logging your thoughts and expanding your collection of notes, seeking through them probably gets difficult. The search bar you once loved now yields little useful. You like the ease of writing in Logseq, but finding back things gets increasingly frustrating.
Does this describe you? Then you’ve joined the right course!
Just like it requires skill to properly use search engines like Google and DuckDuckGo, it’s a skill to search your personal notes. By joining this course, you’re taking an important step to take ownership of your stored knowledge.
Maybe you’ve just heard of the term query, or maybe you’re a veteran programmer. Regardless of your current skill level, you will learn something in the coming two weeks.
Once you’ve gone through every lesson and challenge, you’ll know:
- How computers (especially Logseq) seek through information
- How to structure your notes to increase findability
- How to use templates to guarantee a proper structure
- How to use queries to gain insights from notes
- How to use queries to power knowledge workflows
In the rest of this lesson, you’ll learn some basic definitions. This ensures we’re all on the same page and you start to see the possibilities of structuring and searching your notes.
Learn to converse with databases
Logseq is a database. While your notes may look like an outline within Logseq, or a collection of plain text files on your computer, under the hood Logseq is actually a database.
Logseq being a database means there’s a lot of data about data (metadata). Not only does Logseq keep track of the actual note text, but it also keeps track of what (grand)parents a block has, what links the block contains, and what other blocks link to it.
Understanding what data Logseq keeps about each block allows you to properly structure and navigate your notes. So even if you’re a total beginner and have only a few notes, having some basic knowledge about Logseq’s inner workings will pay off in the long term. But don’t you worry; you won’t have to become a programmer to become proficient with Logseq.
What are queries?
A query is just another way of saying “request for information.” Probably the most common type of query is the search terms you type into search engines like Google and DuckDuckGo.
Did you know that with search engines, you can search very precisely using keywords and filters?
A beginner search engine user may write a Google query like this:
highlights or notes from How to Take Smart Notes
An experienced Google user would likely write something like this:
highlights OR notes "How to Take Smart Notes"
Likewise, we can use keywords and filters in Logseq to request information from it. The way to write this request may be different in Logseq, but the question is exactly the same as the examples above:
{{query (and [[How to Take Smart Notes]] (or [[highlights]] [[notes]])) }}
The language you speak (well, write) to a computer to request information is called a query language. But, computers are dumb and can’t fill in the blanks. So when communicating with a collection of digital information, you have to be very specific about what information you want. That’s what you’ll learn in this course.
How can you harness the power of Logseq queries?
Tomorrow we’ll start simple by learning about Logseq’s basic data structure (its outline and links). In the days after, we’ll move on to how computers think using Boolean logic. Finally, we’ll get a clear picture of the grammar of Logseq queries.
Next week is all about applying what we learned to a series of build challenges. From Monday until Friday, you’ll get a daily challenge to build something useful with Logseq’s query language. We’ll provide you with a simple graph of example notes and help you write precise queries.
While you’ll receive the lessons in your mailbox, you don’t have to do them alone. There’s the #queries forum where over 150 fellow learners will be posting their experiments, asking questions, and providing help.
Let’s finish this first short lesson by reflecting on what you’ve learned.
Exercise
Answer the following questions in writing. Post your answers in this forum thread for today, and take some time to read the answers of others. Take note of who has similar learning goals like you, as this will come in handy next week.
- What is a query?
- What are query languages, and can you name examples of query languages?
- What are some query languages you’ve worked with in the past?
- Why do you want to learn how to write Logseq queries?
Next: Why you should link and indent your notes
After all this talk of databases and structure, you might wonder if you’ll ever be able to work with your mess of notes. So tomorrow we’ll start with the best practices for structuring our notes. Hint: it’s all about [[links]] and indentation (Logseq is an outlining tool after all!).
Yes I do!
