How Logseq Introduces Event Sourcing to Note-Taking

Logseq is the closest thing to event sourcing in note-taking and knowledge management. It is opposed to traditional top-down note-taking, where you’d start with a blank slate and end up with an entire coherent train of thought. In Logseq, one pieces their ideas together out of many disparate bits they have added over time. This is thanks to Logseq’s support of backlinks and its built-in journal.

The journal removes the pressure of writing something all at once, or else the thought will vanish.

I've recently changed the style of how I journal in @logseq. Rather than collecting everything in a single tagged block, I create multiple tiny ones, each relating to the particular task or thing I'm working on at the given time. This helps me keep in line with what I've done. pic.twitter.com/TRjQiFuKIS

— Preslav Rachev (@preslavrachev) November 4, 2022

Instead, it encourages the user to write down the tiniest bit of information that will contribute to an ongoing story and link to that story. Over time, the story will grow enough for the user to start synthesizing all the back-linked pieces into a single line of thought.

One of the killer features of @logseq: everything is a collection that just waits to be discovered. Like how I recently figured out I'd been collecting materials on sustainable city development without even knowing it ;) pic.twitter.com/DYAGCSuR61

— Preslav Rachev (@preslavrachev) October 24, 2022

Event sourcing is a technique for storing data that emphasizes keeping the sequence of events leading up to the current state rather than the current state itself. This allows for a complete reconstruction of the system’s state at any given time.