This video is sponsored by Rize. So this is Heptabase. It's a visual
note-taking apps that is rapidly getting the attention of the internet. It combines
some of the features of modern note apps and whiteboard apps.
It reminds me of Ryan Holiday and Robert Greene's writing methods, but digital.
If you're someone who likes to organise information visually by moving cards,
drawing, making mindmaps or flowchart, you might want to try this out.
There are lots of things I like about Heptabase.
First one is that it already has a Readwise integration. If you read a lot, you probably
have many highlights. Readwise can centralise all your highlights from different books and articles
and export them to your favourite note app. Most new products tend to lack this integration,
but Heptabase has it already, which means you can populate the knowledge base with your highlights
right away. Plus, it lets you import your notes from other apps. Most note apps lets you export
your notes in markdown, so you can do that and import them into Heptabase. They have a
dedicated import option from Obsidian too. So you can start from where you left off.
How it organises the reading highlights is nice too - you can see them all from
the highlight tab where you can search for keywords. I have thousands of highlights
but it's surprising how smooth and quick the loading is. Plus you can
attach a note to each highlight which is great for remembering the context.
When you're creating a mindmap or writing up a document, you can open the sidebar where you can
search for highlights. Now you can just keep on writing while looking at those highlights
for reference. But also you can drag and drop them to the whiteboard to organise them freely.
So this is the second thing I like. The ability to put as many notes as you want
on a whiteboard and then organise cards freely. To get the most out of Heptabase, you want to
create a new whiteboard for every topic you're learning, or for every project you're working on.
Then use the sidebar to search for materials you can use for the topic. This could be a
note you made before or highlights from books or pdf documents you uploaded. As you search,
you just need to drag and drop them to your canvas to collect the resources.
Now, what you can do is to move the cards around or draw lines to connect them which makes it
easier to understand how they are related. But if you feel it's too cluttered,
you could group them together by selecting multiple cards and clicking on "create section".
I find this really helpful as most visual note-taking apps can feel too messy at times.
What's more, you can edit the arrows to make them more meaningful. It's possible
to change the colour of the arrows and even the shape and thickness. But if you want to
describe the relationship between the cards more explicitly, you can add labels. As you
repeat this, you will be able to build up a pretty neat map of the information you have.
But if you want to have more proper structures, you could use the table view or board view.
They will definitely come in handy for organising certain types of information or managing projects.
Easy navigation and smoothUI I also don't want to forget
to mention how smooth and intuitive the user interface is. There are keyboard shortcuts for
almost everything, so you can navigate the app super fast. If you remember all the shortcuts,
you should be able to move around, gather information and write much
faster than using a mouse or touch pad. It's a small detail, but something that can save
you hours every week. Also, this simple and intuitive design makes it easier to focus.
By the way, if you want a help improving your focus, you should check out Rize. It's
my favourite time-tracking tool to use whenever I work or study.
At the start of a working session, I start a focus timer and then get to work. You can see how long
you have been working and how much time you have left on this little floating bar. Then if you get
distracted, it will give you a nudge to get back to work which actually helps a lot. I also love
that it offers a wide range of focus music such as Lofi and bi-neural beats. You don't have to
open Spotify or Youtube for it. This combination of focus timer and focus music is perfect for
getting into the zone and staying there. Once you're finished for the day,
you can have a look at the daily report and see how productive you were. Since Rize automatically
tracks and categorises your work activity in real-time, you don't have to manually enter
anything. You can focus on analysing your data instead. This really helps you understand how you
get distracted and what you can do to improve. After a few days of using Rize, it understands
how you work and what you do. So it'll be able to notify you exactly when you should take a break
based on your activity so you can avoid burnout. Rize is available for Windows and Mac,
so give it a try if you're looking for a way to keep your focus and build better
work habits. You can download it from the link in the description or from the QR code on the screen.
Now another cool thing about Heptabase is that you don't have to put everything
on a whiteboard. Sometimes you come up with a random idea you want to remember,
but not sure what it is for. In that case, you can use the daily journal to
jot it down. Daily journal is now one of the essential features of most note apps,
but many visual note apps don't have it which was my biggest frustration.
So having a place where you can write anything regardless of its purpose is really helpful.
Then when the time comes to use the idea, you can open the daily journal on the sidebar,
search for it and then create a new card to use it in the whiteboard.
This ability to turn a block of a note into a new card is also another key feature of
Heptabase. One of the most effective ways to manage your personal knowledge is to create
atomic notes. Atomic notes are notes that have no more than one idea in them which
makes it easy to memorise them and use them for writing. In order to make atomic notes,
you typically need to break down a big note into smaller blocks.
So this feature is perfect for that. When you have a long note or highlight,
you can start by identifying important concepts, and then break them down into atomic notes.
Now you can reuse them in any other whiteboards. If you look inside one of
the cards, you can see where exactly it was used. If you want to learn the idea of atomic notes,
I highly recommend reading some of the articles about it as well as Heptabase's tutorial pages.
Heptabase is also cloud-based, which means you can access your notes from any device.
It is in fact available on every platform. I think it's important that you can access your
notes and write things or retrieve information quickly. So having these options is a big plus.
Heptabase definitely feels like a top-notch tool. But there are some cons. For instance, it's not
great at managing your tasks. You can create todo items in your notes, but you can't add a deadline,
priority or anything. So if you want to use it for that, you might need a separate todo app.
Also, more and more note apps are adding an AI feature that helps you write faster. Notion for
example have a lot of AI writing options that are really good. But Heptabase doesn't have that
yet. The only thing they have for now is this AI assistant which is kind of like AI-powered
search function. So you can ask about information you have in your knowledge base and it will help
you find it. It is actually kind of useful because I think it uses semantic search, meaning it will
fetch information that doesn't necessarily match the keywords you entered, but is semantically
similar. It's kind of cool because you don't see this type of AI use in most note apps. Plus,
you can always use an AI writing browser extension if you need a help writing faster.
Finally, this is completely subjective, but sometimes I feel lost whenever I'm using a
visual note app like this. On a whiteboard, I tend to forget where I put things and finds it
too messy. I'm also not a huge fan of having to zoom in and out to see things. So I usually prefer
a typical simple note app where you can organise things with bullet points or something like that.
Maybe it's just because I'm used to it. But it really depends on your preferences.
This year I've seen many amazing note apps come out, but Heptabase is definitely one of the most
impressive. The way it combines a visual and text-based note app is really cool. Also I
love the core concept behind it. You should read their vision because it helps you learn how to
learn better and more effectively, as well as why this app is designed the way it is.
Anyway, thanks for watching! If you liked this video, please leave a like and subscribe.
Thanks. See you in the next one.