• Main website
• Bluesky

Andy's notes

Here's someone who's thought a lot about the kind of writing that Obsidian allows, related to (but as he says different from) Zettelkasten. Somewhat vexingly, he doesn't collect all this thoughts on this in one place but encourages one to follow links. Fine. Here's some of the things I've got that are useful. (Also, looks like he wrote his own linkage platform, the nutter.)

The point I think that's key to remember: everyone's process is going to be different, organic - there's little point trying to transplant entirely someone else's approach.

But that doesn't mean you can't steal ideas. Thus.

• List of what 'evergreen notes' 'should' be. Trying to avoid 'shoulds', but it's a usefule starter.
• Better thinking, not better note-taking. "The goal is not to take notes—the goal is to think effectively. Better questions are “what practices can help me reliably develop insights over time?”, “how can I shepherd my attention effectively?" "
  • So what does this look like? Having to feel one's way through how atomic to go with separate chunks, how they link.
• This gets at why this whole process is feeling easier for me, I think. It turns the writing process upside down, a little bit. Create speculative outlines while you write. "Normally, we start an outline when we start a writing project. This forces us to start with a blank page. By contrast, if we write new notes every day and notice how they relate to each other, these can accumulate into potential writing projects. When an outline feels “ripe,” we can pluck it and turn it into a manuscript without the exerting herculean start-up effort that comes with a blank page."
  • It all sounds very lovely and emergent doesn't it? But I think the point is, it's very intentional, but classically Jacobsy: the good things come from "accident fuelled by intention" (my own Jacobs summary sentence) - you have to turn up, be human, think. But there's a layer you allow to grow. But but turn up.
  • He quotes Ahrens on the emergent point: "Developing arguments and ideas bottom-up instead of top-down is the first and most important step to opening ourselves up for insight. Steven Johnson, who wrote an insightful book about how people in science and in general come up with genuine new ideas, calls it the “slow hunch.” As a precondition to make use of this intuition, he emphasises the importance of experimental spaces where ideas can freely mingle."
  • Which feeds back into the List of writing questions - finding ways to allow those slow hunches to accrete and see where they go isn't always easy given the baggage we carry about "what writing is". Despite decades at this, it's still really hard. So again - use tools that short circuit the effort, like that list.
• This on the executable strategy for writing nails the exec-function-reducing aspect. "A naive writing process begins with a rough inkling about what one wants to write and a blank page. Progress from this point requires an enormous amount of activation energy and cognitive effort: there’s nothing external, so you must juggle all of the piece-to-be in your head." Instead, make it more like editing than composition, combining notes and thoughts.
  • This seems to already be easier for #socialoperatingsystems stuff. I'm not having to ask the "why am I doing this, where is it going?" question in the same way. Though those are still interesting questions, they're live and organic ('let ideas and beliefs emerge organically') not a gate I need to pass before continuing. "Walk asking."
• Relatedly, the executable strategy piece points out: "If you’re stuck in your writing because you’ve become confused about one of your ideas, you won’t be able to write 500 words for your manuscript. Instead, you need to spend more time thinking about the idea. A manuscript is a challenging place to do that."
• This one has some deep implications that I'm only just starting to notice as I play with new approaches: metacognitive supports as cognitive scaffolding. "Learning requires metacognition, but environments can take some of that metacognitive burden off of learners’ shoulders." He mentions that teachers can provide the function of executive control in classrooms, allowing students to learn. The question is what other structures / scaffolds are there? That piece talks a bit about gamification too (to more tightly link reward/test structures).
• Writing notes for yourself by default. disregarding audience is super-useful too and again feeds back to the List of writing questions. He writes eloquently about the barriers that go up, sometimes subtle, but powerful enough to stymie progress, if thinking something is 'public'. What's interesting is how we can play around with that - as live exobrain pages do. I don't intend them for public consumption directly - I'll decide what ends up on the live blog - but I do see content here as part of the sinews of that. I'm not sure quite what's going on with it, that weird sort-of-Bauman-synoptic-I-can-be-seen blurred line. Obviously, there are plenty of cynical takes one could have. But let's not be cynical!
  • Regardless, that is a very good principle he has: "write notes for myself 'by default,' and only 'opt into' writing notes for an audience explicitly."