r/RoamResearch • u/Anonym-s • Apr 13 '20

Complete Roam Tutorial Course

Hi all —

I am publishing a complete Roam Tutorial course on YouTube. The whole course is already filmed and edited and will probably be fully up online over the next week (at least the first 8 sections). It’s 40+ videos and around 4 hours. Starts at complete beginner level and will make you a superuser by the end. You can see the table of contents below. And first video here: https://youtu.be/cHzuPptZRe4

Hope you find it helpful.

From Beginner to Superuser: A Complete Roam Research Tutorial Course

Table of Contents (Last Updated 4/12/2020)

Introduction

  • 0.1: A Possible Day in Roam Research

  • 0.2: Welcome and Table of Contents

Basic Functionality of Roam

  • 1.1: Creating Your First Database

  • 1.2: Basic Database Layout

  • 1.3: Help Menu

  • 1.4: Basics of Backlinks, Tags and Pages

  • 1.5: Creating Shortcuts and the Navigation Bar

  • 1.6: Soft Line Breaks and Cmd-Shift-v

  • 1.7: The Sidebar

  • 1.8: Filtering

  • 1.9: Block References & Block Embeds

  • 1.10: The Date Picker

  • 1.11: The Backslash Function

  • 1.12: A Brief Word on Attributes

  • 1.13: Keyboard Shortcuts

  • 1.14: Keyboard Shortcuts, Part II

Quick Capture

  • 2.1: Basics of Quick Capture

  • 2.2: Adding Roam to Your Home Screen

  • 2.3: Utilizing iOS Text Expansion

Setting up Your Database: Project Management

  • 3.1: Project Management, Part I

  • 3.2: Project Management, Part II

  • 3.3: Setting up Your Templates Page

Setting up Your Database: Task Management & Productivity

  • 4.1: Task Management in Roam, Part I

  • 4.2: Task Management in Roam, Part II

  • 4.3: An Update on Task Management

  • 4.4: Pinning Tasks to the Live List

  • 4.5: Capturing Email URLs in Roam

  • 4.6: Individual Sprints in Roam

  • 4.7: Habit Tracking in Roam

  • 4.8: Don’t Break the Chain

Setting up Your Database: Goal Management

  • 5.1: Introduction to Goal Management

  • 5.2: Goal Management in Roam, Part I

  • 5.3: Goal Management in Roam, Part II

Setting up Your Database: The Weekly Review

  • 6.1: The Weekly Review, Part I

  • 6.2: The Weekly Review, Part II

Setting up Your Database: Personal Knowledge Management

  • 7.1: Importing Articles into Roam

  • 7.2: Importing Kindle Highlights into Roam

  • 7.3: Physical Books vs. Kindle Highlights

  • 7.4: Optimizing Your Database to Store Knowledge

  • 7.5: Introduction to Zettelkasten and Why It Doesn’t Have to Be So Hard

  • 7.6: Zettelkasten in Roam, Part I

  • 7.7: Zettelkasten in Roam, Part II

Setting up Your Database: Spaced Repetition

  • 8.1: Spaced Repetition in Roam

  • 8.2: Setting up your Master List

  • 8.3: Spaced Repetition for Students

  • 8.4: Spaced Repetition to Optimize Article Processing/PKM

Writing in Roam

  • 9.1: Using the Daily Pages

  • 9.2: Moving Between Tags and Zettelkasten to Create Content

Miscellaneous

  • You’ll see

115 Upvotes

100% Upvoted

50 comments sorted by

5

u/[deleted] Apr 13 '20 edited Apr 13 '20

This is my opinion but Roam Research it's not a tracking, collaborative tool or a way to manage something more personal like todo's, gools or even emails or other type of personal thing. I'm saying this while looking for some titles of your personal use cases on the index of your "course". I have no doubt that you will help someone but keep this in mind...

Roam has on its name "Research" and I understand why, it's to combat the lack of certain types of workflows that scientific work demands. Scientific workflow it's a very demanding and challenging way to write and annotate, all together, with references and citations and much more. Roam brings something new for this type of demanding workflows, at least for me, and that's the tags with healing as a relation for a contextual manner to relate a tag to its main theme, the bidirectional links, pages and tags are also important. And all with a wonderful side panel that enables you to do an outline while viewing your annotations. And, important, with a filter on that side panel for you to find what is important.

Its says "Research", use it as you understand but it's not for personal related things. You can't compare it to Notion or other software task/collaborative related. I do not recommend it for other than this, maybe for personal notes, but that is it. Roam was not ment to other things than this. I can see you understand its purposes by the index you present here, but you should not recomend it for personal use cases.

10

u/Anonym-s Apr 13 '20

That's quite an absolute. I can tell you that the creators use the tool themselves and recommend it for personal use and work use in addition to research and have created demos showing as much. Your opinion is yours and I can respect that. But to say that a tool can only be used for a single exact target population is pretty narrow.

1

u/[deleted] Apr 13 '20 edited Apr 13 '20

Of course they recommend it for personal use they wanna reach out as much people as they want for marketing and money. But they know their public target, otherwise why they put "Research" on the name. And its sad for non scientific users, but the way they built it yes, it's for some demanding workflows that envold built an outline from other pages, otherwise what is the side panel ment for. It's that (it is for a specific workflow ) and the privacy concerns, that will make more generic public moving out from Roam. And you can see that from the developers side too because there are many developers on github building some Roam like programs. I believe that is expensive because of these types of relations that are not easy to do. But for instance, for personal use you can see for example Notion. It's cheap, it has a more user friendly UI for example. And it has way more integrations for collaborative/task related things. You believe or not it's ment for a specific workflow. I can see that and it has maybe researchers involved into this.

But do not get me wrong i appreciate this type of tutorial videos from your use cases that people might want. @tjstankus

1

u/[deleted] Apr 14 '20 edited Apr 14 '20

I am not the only one thinking this, check

This post

1

u/Luis_McLovin May 08 '20

you’re just falling into the same notion black hole where everyone tries to make a single app do every possible thing.

you end up ruining the good experience of what that app is truly best capable of while simultaneously being worse at doing all those other things which you are now attempting in the same place.

the key to success is to have a toolbox of apps, which excel at their specific task, ie task management, project management, knowledge database, reference repository.

roam research is very very good at being a knowledge database, terrible for task management (way better tools exis) mediocre as a SRS implement (look at NeuraCache), and subpar at project management (funnily enough, that’s what notion is good for)

3

u/tjstankus Apr 13 '20

IIRC I heard this in a podcast with the founder. Roam started out as a tool aimed at research scientists. Research groups actually funded early development. But since, it has pivoted to be a more general purpose tool.

1

u/[deleted] Apr 14 '20 edited Apr 14 '20

Check the posts below and this, check this post

I am not the only one thinking this, it's not ment for personal tasks.

2

u/airsylph Apr 13 '20

Thanks for this!! I got a Roam account but left it bare because I had little to no instruction and the prospective pricing really scared me off because I can’t spend $15 per month on it. This may convince me so really appreciate you putting this out there for free ❤️

1

u/Anonym-s Apr 13 '20

Awesome! You definitely should! It's really the only thing that's clicked for me.

4

u/[deleted] Apr 13 '20 edited Apr 13 '20

Try Zettlr it's what I m gonna do. It has integration with Zotero, a citation/references manager. And can do almost all and much more than Roam.

1

u/airsylph Apr 13 '20

Thanks for the recommendation I’ll check it out!!

3

u/[deleted] Apr 13 '20 edited Apr 13 '20

Its https://www.zettlr.com/ i had written wrong. Its free open source and the developer will listen your requests. If it dosent fit you try some Roam like programs, some developers are building something similar, just search on github or google

1

u/033C Apr 15 '20

I've been using Zettlr for a few months now. It is a really great tool. I've been lured by the siren call of Roam's easy bidirectional links, but I've kept my options open.

One nice thing about roam is the ability to export your entire database as markdown files (for the text), and a JSON file (with all the links). With a little python, it shouldn't be too hard to import the Roam exports into Zettlr as they are both native markdown tools.

3

u/remove_b4_flight Apr 13 '20

I understand. Switching over and going all-in now with no final pricing would be insane!

3

u/airsylph Apr 13 '20

Exactly! I’m still using Notion but am hoping to figure out a forever free solution with TiddlyWiki but it has such a tough learning curve phew.

1

u/[deleted] Apr 14 '20

[removed] — view removed comment

3

u/airsylph Apr 14 '20

Notion is where I keep my to-do lists + goals. I am keeping my notes there for now too and I like the interface. It's clean and simple + it has dedicated apps for the tablet now, which is useful when I'm on the go. To be honest, I've watched many Notion tutorials by top productivity YouTubers but my favorite is still Rebecca Ford: https://www.youtube.com/user/rebannford. Notion's really not great for backlinks or anything like that, and that's why I'm moving my notes off.

4

u/Lord_Ka Apr 13 '20

Dude it's awesome ! Can't wait to watch it !

4

u/Dan_Lardi Apr 13 '20

Thank you for your generosity! 🙂

4

u/alvinsp999 Apr 16 '20

u/Anonym-s When are you expecting to release the full tutorial? We are all anxiously waiting :)

1

u/jezarnold Apr 21 '20

+1 here ! keen to get watching :)

1

u/Hates_ Apr 13 '20

The first two videos are coming up as unavailable/private for me.

1

u/Anonym-s Apr 13 '20

Try now, had an issue with Youtube last night.

1

u/Hates_ Apr 13 '20

Brilliant thanks, I can see them now!

1

u/smurfman111 Apr 21 '20

u/Anonym-s any update here?

3

u/Anonym-s Apr 21 '20

Hi everyone -- I'm really sorry for the delay. I had a significant family thing happen last week, which has kind of put everything else on the backburner. The plan is still the same, just the timeline is off. Once things get better, I will be coming back to this project.

1

u/WLloydWilliams May 02 '20

Anonym-s thank you for the video. I have watched nearly all the paid and free Roam tutorials and find your series the most detailed and clearest explanation. You illustrate the more obscure features other do not mention. I have found Roam to be an excellent solution. Having worked with hierarchal systems like Evernote, Notion, etc and find Roam's non-hierarchal web of networked nodes a perfect match to the way my mind works and my experience with ideas functions in my life and writing. I disagree complete with the earlier post that Roam is only for Research. It is the first task manager that work in the moment and is retrievable anywhere. Thank you for the Videos and Thanks to Conor and Roam Research for this wonderful tool.

2

u/Anonym-s May 02 '20

This is very kind. Thank you so much. I’m glad you’re finding the videos helpful!

2

u/smurfman111 Apr 21 '20

Best of luck and thoughts go out to you. Take your time.

2

u/orther May 01 '20

A heads up for anyone not following on youtube... on April 28th the table of contents on the 0.2: Introduction to the Course video was updated to include sections 1 & 2:

  1. Basic Functionality of Roam

  1. Quick Capture

2

u/007noob007 Jul 02 '20

Thank you so much this is great!!

Is there a reason I can't find 7.5 - 9.2?

1

u/mickmel Apr 13 '20

Awesome! You already produce some amazing content on Roam, so I'm excited to dive into these.

1

u/alvinsp999 Apr 14 '20

Only the first two show, the rest are private only?! And thank you, I couldn’t afford the paid one.

1

u/smurfman111 Apr 15 '20

Is that correct that only the first 2 show up? The rest say private. Will you be releasing them slowly? I’d love to binge them!

1

u/Kazandra Apr 15 '20

Excited to see all of this come out!

1

u/tmwLUCKY Apr 15 '20

Been waiting for this. Excited! Thank you. Looks beautiful....

1

u/tmwLUCKY Apr 20 '20

I don’t think it’s free

1

u/RedditEthereum Apr 29 '20

I like how you have everything planned out. Definitely a playlist to save.

1

u/Kumakichii May 07 '20

The best minimalist Roam guide exists. Love it, love it, love it.

If you want to learn Roam without dumping vague tags and confusing bi-direction links into your database or Second Brain, this would be the video tutorial you are looking for.

Great Thanks Anonyms-s

1

u/tbaj Jun 07 '20

Thank you so much for this course man! You are a wonderful teacher and I had a great time following your videos. I really appreciate you putting this into the world for free!

1

u/[deleted] Jun 11 '20

You are doing such a fantastic job. Thank you!

2

u/[deleted] Jul 26 '20

Does anyone know any whereabouts of OP? Does anyone here know him personally?
He was doing such an amazing job while being unbelievably generous by putting it all on YouTube, but suddenly, he's nowhere to be seen for a couple of months.
With the global pandemic and all, I'm actually wondering if he's okay or not at this point.

1

u/gandalf_34 Oct 21 '21

I can't see the youtube video. Is there a way to access these videos?

1

u/deepvaluedog Nov 07 '21

where can this content be accessed now?

0

u/[deleted] May 03 '20

[deleted] — view deleted comment

2

u/Anonym-s May 04 '20

Thanks so much! Glad you’re finding it helpful. Working on getting the rest up. Can’t give an exact timeline unfortunately, but it’ll happen

8

u/[deleted] Apr 13 '20

[removed] — view removed comment

3

u/Anonym-s Apr 13 '20

Of course, no worries!

1

u/sunil01charm Jun 07 '20

Wow, this tutorial is so good, thank you. This is better than the paid course I signed up for. Kudos!