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Best learning app with integrated task management for Academics?
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Posted by Paul Korm
May 19, 2025 at 12:59 PM
MarginNote 4 is very good for working with, annotating, taking notes on single or multiple PDFs grouped together.
Posted by Darren McDonald
May 19, 2025 at 02:41 PM
@Amontillado, thanks so much for your detailed reply.
Allow me some time to ingest the learnings in both your reply and your blog so I give the proper response you deserve.
“Object outlining” ... you have me intrigued! :)
Amontillado wrote:
Darren, you do me great honor.
>
>Devonthink support often says they don’t believe DT is a note-taking app
>but I don’t understand why it isn’t.
>
>For note-taking, I imagine I use it much the way Obsidian users do.
Posted by Lucine
May 20, 2025 at 06:47 PM
Paul Korm wrote:
MarginNote 4 is very good for working with, annotating, taking notes on
>single or multiple PDFs grouped together.
>
>https://www.marginnote.com
>
>
That looks excellent! Is there anything similar for web/windows?
Posted by Paul Korm
May 21, 2025 at 01:03 AM
MarginNote is Mac / iPad only.
A similar option, for Mac and Windows, is LiquidText
Lucine wrote:
>That looks excellent! Is there anything similar for web/windows?
Posted by nathanb
May 29, 2025 at 05:40 PM
RemNote checks all these boxes. It’s built for academic learning with very good PDF integration.
It doesn’t have a formal task manager built-in but it’s got full table/metadata tagging capability (like Tana) so you can design it to be a task/project manager.
I’m not an academic, I’m an industrial project engineer. I use it primarily as a project manager with inline project tasks as well as a “long term knowledge tree” with embedded spaced repetition to internalize key facts and concepts.
Related topic: Spaced Repetition is a mis-applied and under-appreciated 2nd brain tool that’s changed my life.
I use “spaced repetition” in place of “note reviews”. It’s why I love RemNote. I’m very bad at intentionally reviewing my notes with any consistency. I’m even worse at reviewing “opinion notes” like intentions, habits, mantras, priorities etc I want to internalize. SR has become my personal hack for this deficiency. There’s a lot less friction to me idly flipping through some SR cards when waiting at the doc office than to try and remember that my “new habit” note exists AND to feel like reviewing it right now. With SR I can sneak in micro-reviews randomly during the day with way less resistance and trick myself into reviewing my stuff.
Imagine replacing all that time doom scrolling facebook, bluesky, reddit etc and scrolling through a random feed of your 2nd brain instead. Obviously the 2nd thing isn’t the same level of dopamine hit but it’s a much lower threshold habit to activate than…actually reviewing a specific list.
I feel like it’s increased my working memory and general brain function. For a long time I tried to externalize as much info as possible into my 2nd brains.
Our meat brain is for having ideas, not remembering them, right? That approach turned me into an overwhelmed scatterbrain. My brain forgot how to remember things. This new hybrid approach has started to reverse that. Obviously I can’t/shouldn’t memorize my digital brain but I CAN memorize key points AND consistently remind myself of the scope and shape of my digital knowledge tree. Feels good to let my brain spread its wings again and flex a bit.
Our meat brains are still the GOAT of making magical idea connections but it needs INTERNAL material for that. I had forgotten how good our brains actually are at internalizing a huge amount of info without a downside. For example I’m HORRIBLE at remembering names. I found that locking in some names with SR made me much better at remembering names in general. Does having 30 more names “locked in” reduce how much other stuff I can know? Oddly no, it seems to have the opposite effect. All I had to do was “wake up” that part of my brain again. When I’m doing cards on a regular basis I have less brain fog and feel much more engaged and effective. Spaced Repetition, applied generally, is great brain exercise and can make all your digital brain “evergreen”.
Most people think SR is only for learning rote facts. Of course it’s great for learning names and state capitals. But it’s also great for…EVERYTHING ELSE.
Keyboard shortcuts, quotes, jokes, favorite memories, bucket list, bible verses, etc.
Another of my many shortcomings is remembering arbitrary decisions and sticking with them. Such as:
-where does my favorite screwdriver live?
-where do I store/index my car maintenance records?
-what tag do I apply to “someday maybe” project ideas in Remnote?
-when’s the best time to look at my calendar/tasks for tomorrow
-where am I tracking my dog’s monthly flea/tick treatment and where’s the reminder
Those administrivia things where the final choice doesn’t matter as much as consistently sticking with that choice. My dumb brain has a really hard time remembering the choice I made about it last week. The next time the thing comes up my dumb brain just churns through the trade-offs again and re-enters the same indecision loop. I drive myself crazy doing this.
Simply adding a SR tag to “you decided to do X this way because of Y” is the way through. It doesn’t even take that many card reviews, which is the magic of spaced rep. I’ll see it often at first and I’ll remember my choice just fine. Eventually I’d forget but the magic of SR will remind me before it’s lost to the void again.
The reason that SR within RemNote is superior to standalone SR apps like Anki/Memrise is because RemNote “cards” live within your notes. That way, when I see the reminder card “the dog’s records and plans are here” and my brain inevitably thinks “but wouldn’t x work better for this?...” I can simply jump right to the note tree that led to that decision and see that I had this same genius idea about 6 months ago and decided against it because of
. So instead of changing the card I simply write a “check in” comment to my future self making fun of my self for trying to get myself stuck in a loop again.
It sounds silly but doing this has made me realize that what I often believe are new ideas are actually a small number of repeat thought loops that keep haunting my mental space at the expense of real progress. I’m finally able to break those loops now.