Summary: this post is mostly for self reflection. I my first impressions (likes/dislikes) after using Roam, a note-taking app with good “linking” features. I also use this post to think about some Roam-related decisions (should I look into competitor apps, should I upgrade to Roam’s lump sum “Believer” plan).
I’m trying out Roam and liking it so far. I started using it when I started working on a research project in order to reap the full benefits.
Before I list pros and cons, I should clarify that I am a novice at Roam. I know I am not using Roam close to optimally, and probably some of the disadvantages I’ve listed are due to my lack of knowledge rather than problems with Roam. (Feel free to tell me where I am Being Wrong on the Internet because then I will learn more about Roam!)
Advantages of roam:
Organization system makes it easy to want to write. There are “daily” pages which you I can tab to at any time by pressing Alt+D. Or, I can create “topic” pages for a book I’m working through, a concept, whatever. So when I open Roam to work I know I’m either learning something and taking notes in Roam, or maybe writing my miscellaneous ideas in my daily page.
It feels fast. Better than google docs or Overleaf. Difference between offline environment barely noticeable (meaning occasionally I get a big lag spike because of an internet problem on my end, rather than a constant amount of noticeable latency).
Search results are fast and relevant. If you’ve written those words before, they’re easy to find. Admittedly my graph is small since I’m new so I’ll have to wait and see whether Roam scales.
“Page links” are useful. I thought it would be annoying to get in the habit of linking [[Some Concept]] every time I say it but it actually isn’t. Worst case I can write first and link later. I think it’s genuinely useful to be able to click [[Some Concept]] and see all places I’ve mentioned it—this is helpful if I want to refresh my understanding of a concept for example.
“Block links” are even more useful. Roam notes are a bunch of nested bullet points and a block is a single bullet point. Each block has a reference code. If you paste that reference code elsewhere, the same block appears (but underlined and “linked” to its source). I find this super super useful because often my brain is writing and thinks “wait this is just X thing I’ve seen / written before”. With block references I can just paste that block in (or a link to it). It’s so much faster than my previous workflow, which was scrolling up through my ideas document, or even browsing different files, looking for where I’d written that thing before.
TODO list. There is an easy shortcut (Ctrl+Enter) to add a block to my TODO list. So it’s easy to go and look at all my TODO items on different pages. This is great if I am writing something and want to make a note to come back to a point without breaking out of flow.
Disadvantages of roam:
LaTeX needs two dollar signs. Also Roam’s LaTeX is clunky. If you write two dollar signs, it autocompletes the next two, but you can’t advance through those by pressing dollar sign—you have to use the right arrow key instead. I wish there was a setting to use Overleaf-style input instead.
Some features which seem like they should be intuitive are not intuitive. Most notably I still am not comfortable with moving blocks and the side panel.
Limited offline functionality (I think?). I thought Roam was only supposed to work if you were connected to the internet. However it actually seems to work fine if I am temporarily disconnected from the internet, which is great! TODO (I’d be pressing Ctrl+Enter if I was in Roam☺) is experiment with this and see how offline I can go.
Works fine but not great on mobile. It’s decent but just slightly clunky in browser. I think I would be more likely to reference my graph if there was a smooth mobile app than if I had to open my phone’s browser and get to the appropriate page every time.
Some shortcuts are counterintuitive. It’s hard for me to remember all the Shifts, Tabs, and Ctrls. And then Ctrl+Shift+o is how you open links for some reason? This is kind of unfair criticism since every feature-heavy platform takes time to adjust to but it’s a current bottleneck of mine for sure.
Some stuff seems to require using the mouse. For an app with so many shortcuts you’d think there’d be shortcuts for thinks like “paste current blocks’ reference into clipboard”. It’s hard to reliably right-click the tiny bullet point (necessary for grabbing the block reference) so this is a bit of a time waster.
Something I am uncertain about is whether I should switch to a cheaper competitor app. I have money but not that much money. $15/month is worth it to me since Roam seems to be increasing my productivity, but also maybe a free competitor app with Roam’s linking capabilities would also increase my productivity by the same amount.
Something else I am uncertain about is how to make the decision of whether to stay on the monthly plan ($15/month) or switch to the Believer plan ($500 for the next 5 years). In order to make this decision I feel like I need to both quantify how much Roam will actually improve my productivity and whether cheaper competitor apps will improve my productivity by the same amount. It’s worth mentioning that the Believer plan comes with extra features (including “offline mode”)—but it’s hard to know how much I will like this without actually purchasing the Believer plan.
I feel like in order to compare which of two apps is better I need to spend a long time (say 6 months) getting fairly good at each app. Otherwise, I will just be comparing how shallow the learning curve is for beginners.
So, my current plan is to go all in on Roam for the next 6 months and give it a fair shot. Then after that I will explore/exploit competitor apps, spending an amount of time on them proportional to how likely I think they are to beat Roam.
>>Each block has a reference code. If you paste that reference code elsewhere, the same block appears
>>It’s hard to reliably right-click the tiny bullet point (necessary for grabbing the block reference)
I never need to do this. If you type “(())” [no quotes] at the destination point and then start typing in text from the block you’re referencing, blocks containing that text will appear in a window. Keep typing until you can see the desired block and click on it to insert it.
If you type the trigger ”/block”, the menu that appears contains four fun things you can do with blocks.
Summary: this post is mostly for self reflection. I my first impressions (likes/dislikes) after using Roam, a note-taking app with good “linking” features. I also use this post to think about some Roam-related decisions (should I look into competitor apps, should I upgrade to Roam’s lump sum “Believer” plan).
I’m trying out Roam and liking it so far. I started using it when I started working on a research project in order to reap the full benefits.
Before I list pros and cons, I should clarify that I am a novice at Roam. I know I am not using Roam close to optimally, and probably some of the disadvantages I’ve listed are due to my lack of knowledge rather than problems with Roam. (Feel free to tell me where I am Being Wrong on the Internet because then I will learn more about Roam!)
Advantages of roam:
Organization system makes it easy to want to write. There are “daily” pages which you I can tab to at any time by pressing Alt+D. Or, I can create “topic” pages for a book I’m working through, a concept, whatever. So when I open Roam to work I know I’m either learning something and taking notes in Roam, or maybe writing my miscellaneous ideas in my daily page.
It feels fast. Better than google docs or Overleaf. Difference between offline environment barely noticeable (meaning occasionally I get a big lag spike because of an internet problem on my end, rather than a constant amount of noticeable latency).
Search results are fast and relevant. If you’ve written those words before, they’re easy to find. Admittedly my graph is small since I’m new so I’ll have to wait and see whether Roam scales.
“Page links” are useful. I thought it would be annoying to get in the habit of linking [[Some Concept]] every time I say it but it actually isn’t. Worst case I can write first and link later. I think it’s genuinely useful to be able to click [[Some Concept]] and see all places I’ve mentioned it—this is helpful if I want to refresh my understanding of a concept for example.
“Block links” are even more useful. Roam notes are a bunch of nested bullet points and a block is a single bullet point. Each block has a reference code. If you paste that reference code elsewhere, the same block appears (but underlined and “linked” to its source). I find this super super useful because often my brain is writing and thinks “wait this is just X thing I’ve seen / written before”. With block references I can just paste that block in (or a link to it). It’s so much faster than my previous workflow, which was scrolling up through my ideas document, or even browsing different files, looking for where I’d written that thing before.
TODO list. There is an easy shortcut (Ctrl+Enter) to add a block to my TODO list. So it’s easy to go and look at all my TODO items on different pages. This is great if I am writing something and want to make a note to come back to a point without breaking out of flow.
Disadvantages of roam:
LaTeX needs two dollar signs. Also Roam’s LaTeX is clunky. If you write two dollar signs, it autocompletes the next two, but you can’t advance through those by pressing dollar sign—you have to use the right arrow key instead. I wish there was a setting to use Overleaf-style input instead.
Some features which seem like they should be intuitive are not intuitive. Most notably I still am not comfortable with moving blocks and the side panel.
Limited offline functionality (I think?). I thought Roam was only supposed to work if you were connected to the internet. However it actually seems to work fine if I am temporarily disconnected from the internet, which is great! TODO (I’d be pressing Ctrl+Enter if I was in Roam☺) is experiment with this and see how offline I can go.
Works fine but not great on mobile. It’s decent but just slightly clunky in browser. I think I would be more likely to reference my graph if there was a smooth mobile app than if I had to open my phone’s browser and get to the appropriate page every time.
Some shortcuts are counterintuitive. It’s hard for me to remember all the Shifts, Tabs, and Ctrls. And then Ctrl+Shift+o is how you open links for some reason? This is kind of unfair criticism since every feature-heavy platform takes time to adjust to but it’s a current bottleneck of mine for sure.
Some stuff seems to require using the mouse. For an app with so many shortcuts you’d think there’d be shortcuts for thinks like “paste current blocks’ reference into clipboard”. It’s hard to reliably right-click the tiny bullet point (necessary for grabbing the block reference) so this is a bit of a time waster.
Something I am uncertain about is whether I should switch to a cheaper competitor app. I have money but not that much money. $15/month is worth it to me since Roam seems to be increasing my productivity, but also maybe a free competitor app with Roam’s linking capabilities would also increase my productivity by the same amount.
Something else I am uncertain about is how to make the decision of whether to stay on the monthly plan ($15/month) or switch to the Believer plan ($500 for the next 5 years). In order to make this decision I feel like I need to both quantify how much Roam will actually improve my productivity and whether cheaper competitor apps will improve my productivity by the same amount. It’s worth mentioning that the Believer plan comes with extra features (including “offline mode”)—but it’s hard to know how much I will like this without actually purchasing the Believer plan.
I feel like in order to compare which of two apps is better I need to spend a long time (say 6 months) getting fairly good at each app. Otherwise, I will just be comparing how shallow the learning curve is for beginners.
So, my current plan is to go all in on Roam for the next 6 months and give it a fair shot. Then after that I will explore/exploit competitor apps, spending an amount of time on them proportional to how likely I think they are to beat Roam.
>>Each block has a reference code. If you paste that reference code elsewhere, the same block appears
>>It’s hard to reliably right-click the tiny bullet point (necessary for grabbing the block reference)
I never need to do this. If you type “(())” [no quotes] at the destination point and then start typing in text from the block you’re referencing, blocks containing that text will appear in a window. Keep typing until you can see the desired block and click on it to insert it.
If you type the trigger ”/block”, the menu that appears contains four fun things you can do with blocks.
Ah, that is a big timesaver. Thanks!