For one and a half year, I built and used a personal knowledge base that works in my terminal and a web browser. I have found some interesting things:<p>* if we go overboard, organizing, not learning, often becomes the goal in itself.<p>* searching is far more effective than organizing. My knowledge base became a buffer for my web search.<p>* a knowledge base needs to be local first and open source because learning is for life, and services and software come and go.<p>* we will never one day sit down and read our knowledge base.<p>* a personal knowledge base enables us to simply share a piece of knowledge with others. Doing so saves time when complex ideas need to be conveyed.<p>* adding ideas to a knowledge base is like committing to a source control, reducing my cognitive overhead.<p>Ultimately, having a personal repository of knowledge has helped me learn and save time.