- Published on
Nine Korean Reads for Anyone Who Has Switched Note Apps Five Times — It Was Never the Tool
- Authors
- Name
- Youngju Kim
- @fjvbn20031
- Why the notes never pile up, no matter which app you use
- How this list was assembled
- Read these before choosing a tool
- Zettelkasten, where connection comes first
- Retrospectives, the step that turns records into change
- Related writing on this blog
- Limits of this list
A note on language. Every linked piece below is written in Korean. The descriptions here are mine, in English, but the destinations are Korean-language pages.
Why the notes never pile up, no matter which app you use
The path of anyone who has tried to take note-taking seriously looks roughly the same. Start with Notion, build a database, move to Obsidian when it gets heavy, install plugins, pick a theme, refine templates. About two months in, the tool looks magnificent and you realize there is very little inside it worth retrieving.
This is not a discipline problem. The problem is that storing and understanding are different operations, and the tool only helps with storing. A document you copied and pasted is not your knowledge just because it now lives in your vault. These pieces confront that gap directly.
How this list was assembled
An editorial pick by one person, not a ranking. I have no way to measure view counts and did not try. I selected on three criteria.
First, I prioritized writing about the structure of note-keeping over tool usage. Official docs are more accurate for shortcuts and plugin lists. What you need here is judgment about what to write down and why.
Second, I preferred pieces recording the author's own trial and error. Writing about what failed and what changed as a result is easier to follow than a showcase of a system that already works.
Third, I opened every link and checked it. Candidates that would not load, demanded a login, or whose content did not match the search snippet were dropped. One candidate was discarded because the site simply would not connect, and pages whose main purpose was selling a book or a course were excluded too.
Every link was opened and verified on 2026-08-12. Personal blog posts can disappear or change addresses.
Read these before choosing a tool
All three discuss Obsidian, but the real subject is not the tool. It is the wall the person using it runs into.
A short review of using Obsidian
Clien — 재생불가 · January 7, 2024
A freelancer describes losing material every time they changed workplaces, and how that led them to settle on a locally-stored note tool.
Read this if — every job change left your past work stranded in someone else's account.
What makes this good is that it is explicit that the tool was chosen for ownership, not features. If files sit on your own disk as Markdown, they survive a change of employer and a service shutdown alike. And the conclusion does not stop at praising the tool; it moves toward the point that without a classification philosophy, nothing you write will behave differently. Short and unadorned, which makes it a good first read on this topic.
Why you should use Obsidian
Brunch — Lucy · March 25, 2024
Covers speed and data ownership from the perspective of someone handling a very large volume of notes, while warning about the customization trap.
Read this if — you already use Obsidian and your day disappears into settings.
The virtue here is recommending a tool while naming its biggest danger in the same breath. Highly configurable tools make it easy to forget the purpose, and every additional plugin raises the cost of maintaining the system. Because it speaks from experience about what actually breaks at scale, even someone with few notes today can see what to guard against. Efficient, in that you do not have to find the pro and con articles separately.
Two months with Obsidian: a review and deciding what to change, day one
Velog — 이주영 · September 12, 2022
After two months, the author recognizes that copying and pasting does not produce knowledge, and resets their approach.
Read this if — your note count keeps growing but you never reopen any of them.
This is the most candid account of failure on the list. It starts from the confession that despite applying every attractive template and feature, the result was unsatisfying, and arrives at the conclusion that the problem was the author's method, not the software. The next step chosen is Zettelkasten, which leads naturally into the following section. A piece that changes direction mid-course is more useful to follow than one presenting a finished system.
Zettelkasten, where connection comes first
If the previous section concluded that you need a classification philosophy, the answer named most often is Zettelkasten. Read together, these two give you both the logic of the method and a feel for it in practice.
Understanding and using Zettelkasten, part 1
Brunch — Jeremy · April 22, 2021
Explains treating notes as external memory to grow ideas, and how to structure that in a digital tool.
Read this if — you have heard the word Zettelkasten but have no idea what to actually do first.
The strength here is that it does not stop at introducing the method; it explains why the constraints are necessary. The rule that one note holds one topic looks inconvenient, but it is what lets you slot that note into a different context later. The demand to write in complete sentences works the same way: a note your future self cannot interpret may as well not exist. Because it shows a concrete setup in a specific tool, it reduces the blankness of the first build.
#14 The second brain, Zettelkasten
Seoul Alien (서울외계인) — Hochan Choi · April 22, 2021
A newsletter piece introducing the origin and principles of Zettelkasten, alongside the author's own attempt using paper cards.
Read this if — you are tired of software talk and want the principle itself first.
It covers the same subject from the opposite direction, which makes it a good pairing. This one starts not from software but from the original form: paper cards and a box. That makes it clear what remains regardless of which tool you use. Because it traces the historical context of why the method took this shape, you gain a basis for judging what to preserve and what you may safely alter when adapting the rules to your own situation. Newsletter length, so it is not a burden.
Retrospectives, the step that turns records into change
Notes piling up are useless if behavior does not change. A retrospective is the step bridging record and change, and these four handle that step at different intervals.
How to run a KPT retrospective, and thoughts on retrospectives
어쩐지 오늘은 — 변성윤 (Seongyun Byeon) · June 5, 2023 · with 2024 additions
Compares several retrospective formats centered on KPT, arguing that following through matters more than the format.
Read this if — you have run a few retrospectives and each one ended as a reflective essay.
The longest and most practical piece on this list. It goes beyond introducing formats to name where retrospectives fail: if the Try items are not written as concrete actions, the same problem reappears at the next retrospective. Personal, project, and team retrospectives are treated separately by interval, so you can read only the part matching your situation. It is persuasive because it records how the author has adapted the format over long use.
A collection of retrospective methods that are easy to start
Velog — Hinolog · January 28, 2025
An introductory piece comparing retrospective intervals and several representative formats.
Read this if — you want to start doing retrospectives but cannot decide on a format.
If the previous piece is depth, this one is a map. It separates intervals from daily through half-yearly and pairs each with a suitable format, so you can first pick a size you can sustain. The mere fact that multiple formats exist helps, because someone for whom KPT does not work may find words in a different frame. The length is right for sharing when you first propose retrospectives to a team.
Daily work retrospectives in Notion
Brunch — 노이noey · October 7, 2023
Introduces a very lightweight daily work retrospective and the structure that keeps it running.
Read this if — even weekly retrospectives slip until you stop doing them.
The core is not the method but the decision to shrink it. Lowered to a single score and one line of reasoning per day, you stop skipping it on busy days. It then shows, with the actual working views, how those short records become material you can re-examine from several angles later. The tool is Notion, but the idea ports to anything. If you have repeatedly failed at retrospectives, this reduction strategy may be the most realistic answer available.
Project retrospective
Velog — osdsoonhyun · June 10, 2023
An actual retrospective written after a multi-month team project, listing what went well and what did not.
Read this if — you want to see a finished retrospective rather than another methodology.
Where the previous three describe method, this one is the artifact. Daily records and thorough code review are named as things to keep; not consulting official documentation first and abstracting prematurely are named as regrets. That such specific items emerged at all demonstrates the conditions for a good retrospective. Worth reading to see the shape of one before writing your own.
Related writing on this blog
Further reading here on records and documentation.
- Why Diátaxis gets mistaken for four folders — on why mixing several purposes inside one document collapses. The same argument applies to personal notes.
- Systems over goals — if retrospectives keep failing, suspect the structure rather than your willpower.
- Pre-performance routines — on the role ritual and repetition play in making recording a habit.
Limits of this list
Six of the nine cluster into three strands: Obsidian, Zettelkasten, and retrospectives. Adjacent subjects such as time management and task management lacked candidates that survived verification, so they are absent this time. Rather than padding, I published only what I checked.
And reading all of these will not make notes accumulate on their own. What these authors have in common is not that they found a good method but that they admitted their own approach was not working and tore it up once. Before switching tools again, it is worth checking for that point first.