Roam Research: The Ultimate Thinking Tool

Roam Research is a new piece of software that I’m very excited about. In this article I’ll dive into what it is, how it’s different from other note-taking software, how I’m using it, as well as a playbook on how you can get started in the most efficient-manner. 

I’m calling it now: This software will fundamentally change Academia and the way note-taking is done. In fact, it’s already gained a cult-like following in the productivity community in only 9 months and has a $200 million valuation. Roam is different from any other note-taking app (Microsoft Word, Apple Notes, +/- Notion) because it works similar to how our brains work— Associative Thought. Real learning happens when we’re able to connect what we’re learning at that moment to similar or tangential concepts we learned in the past. The faster we can make the connections, the faster we can learn.

Most note-taking apps get in the way of this because they silo off our notes. — ie you can only see what you typed into that specific document. For example, let’s say you wrote a paper in college related to X topic, and then 8 years later you were reading about something similar to X topic. The only way you’d be able to remember what you learned previously is to manually go find that paper. This is incredibly frustrating and more like you won’t find that paper out of laziness or you misplaced it.

Roam is completely different— you can literally link to previously written notes within whatever note you’re writing at that time. You literally start to associate your thoughts in real-time. The more you type into Roam, the more concepts you store in there, the bigger and stronger your Roam Brain becomes. 

Let’s take an example from notes I took on Dr. Ryan Grant, a Physician-Entrepreneur I was interested in learning more about. I started off doing what anybody would do: I researched him and found various articles and papers about him. Now, let’s go into my notes from one interview I watched about him: