Notion AI, Mem, Readwise: Why Note Tools Are Not Advisors
Notion AI, Mem, Readwise: Why Note-Taking Tools Aren't Advisors
I have highlights in Readwise that I've never read again. I have Notion databases that are, objectively, works of art. Beautiful architecture. Zero actionable output. I have a Mem account that I'm pretty sure I still pay for and haven't opened since last spring.
I'm not alone in this. The PKM (personal knowledge management) industry exists because founders and knowledge workers are drowning in information and desperately trying to impose order on it. The tools are good. The instinct is right. But there's a category error underneath all of it.
A library is not a mentor.
Readwise resurfaces your highlights. That's genuinely useful. But a highlight is a data point. What you need, when you're facing an actual decision, is synthesis: someone who can say, "here's how three of your trusted sources have approached this same question, and here's the tension between their perspectives."
Notion AI can help you query your notes. But it's querying what you wrote, about what you read, filtered through how you chose to capture it. If you highlighted the wrong thing, or didn't highlight at all, or captured a summary instead of the insight, the query returns garbage.
Mem has a similar problem at a different layer. It helps your notes find each other. That's nice. But connected notes are not the same as curated, synthesized, expert perspectives delivered in the context of a specific question.
The gap between storing and using.
Here's the actual problem: most founders are excellent at consuming information, but the gap between storing and using knowledge is enormous. We subscribe to things. We read things. We save highlights. We build elaborate systems for capturing what we've learned. And then we make decisions based on gut instinct anyway, because no knowledge tool has ever successfully answered the question "what would Lenny Rachitsky advise me to do about my pricing?"
The answer to that question requires three things: knowing what Lenny actually said (he publishes a lot), understanding which parts apply to your context, and being able to retrieve it at the moment you need it, which is not when you're doing your weekly review.
An AI advisory board changes this by working from curated expert sources directly, not from your notes about those sources. It ingests the actual content. It understands your business context. When you ask a question, it synthesizes what your curated board of experts has said about that topic, filtered through what it knows about you.
That's not a note-taking tool. It's a different category entirely.
Keep your PKM system. Add an advisor.
I'm not arguing that you should cancel Readwise. The highlight resurfacing habit is genuinely useful for learning. Notion remains the best place I've found for project management and documentation. Mem is interesting if you have a large, interconnected knowledge base and the patience to maintain it.
But stop expecting any of them to give you advice. They're not built for it. They're built to make you better at capturing what you've already encountered.
An advisory board is built for the moment when you need to use it.
Keep Reading:
- Adviserry vs. Notion AI vs. Obsidian: detailed tool comparison
- Second Brains Are Broken: why knowledge management systems fail
- 10 Best AI Tools for Building a Personal Knowledge Base: the full landscape of knowledge tools
