I seem to notice these posts every month or so and there's some new tool recommended (Foam! Roam! Obsidian! zotero!) and I'll download said tool, try it out for a few minutes and think "Hmm, ok, that might be neat" and then promptly forget about it.

I thought you were being silly with “Foam,” but it really is a thing...

I am a random crusader here to say that Foam is the greatest of all such software (every other option gets at least one such crusader, its only fair)

Not everyone sees every post! someone in another comment literally said: “I hadn’t heard of Zettelkasten until today”.

Fair enough, I'm glad it helps people!

Responding to your experience: I completely agree, this type of system is too detailed / intricate / involved for me to get much use out of it...I get distracted from getting anything done by all the preparation—it’s just productivity porn I use for procrastination.