This goes over my head a bit, but I suppose they are discussing the concept of something like a personal wiki; if so, https://wiki.xxiivv.com/site/about.html is my favourite.
I think self-cataloging is fundamentally masturbatory. On its face, there's nothing wrong with keeping notes or searchable records. But letting the record become the goal - organizing, re-organizing, polishing, theorizing - feels wrong in a way I can't articulate.
Self-cataloging can be become a method of procrastination. But that doesn't mean that there is no value to be found in methods like Zettelkasten. The activity of looking through your own Zettelkasten has the potential of creating associations and sparking ideas. That can be very valuable and requires some care of your notes. But trying to find the perfect taxonomy for your own notes is foolish mistake. The technical limitations of the original Zettelkasten, makes refactoring the notes to the current approximation of the perfect taxonomy such a huge task, that it is usually avoided.
A nice example of a limitation that supports creativity.
My notes are never long-form, and I envy people whose notes look publication-ready. I think in lists and mnemonics.
My work involves so much context-switching that I ended up building a weird system just to keep continuity. It’s basically an outliner inspired by MaxThink for DOS. At its core, it’s text plus structure: a tree you can revisit non-sequentially, with time anchors when they matter. It helps me survive interruptions and gaps without losing decisions, context, or long-running threads, and it helps me correlate my digital notes with my paper notebooks.
To support the “thinking” part, it also has some goodies for shuffling, sorting, splitting, and joining lists in place to help with ideation. I’m working on the fourth incarnation now.
I recorded a demo a few months ago to share with a friend. It’s not my best recording because I was recovering from hand surgery so typing was weird: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N9HX3G69Xdo
I may open-source it once I’ve worked the bugs out.
As someone who thought they used obsidian somewhat well, I feel like a caveman/casual after reading that.
I mean that as praise, it reeled me in as both a puzzle (what am I even reading right now) and a conclusion (the bleeding edge of obsidianmd space is like XKCD straws).
6 comments
[ 2.5 ms ] story [ 23.7 ms ] threadA nice example of a limitation that supports creativity.
My work involves so much context-switching that I ended up building a weird system just to keep continuity. It’s basically an outliner inspired by MaxThink for DOS. At its core, it’s text plus structure: a tree you can revisit non-sequentially, with time anchors when they matter. It helps me survive interruptions and gaps without losing decisions, context, or long-running threads, and it helps me correlate my digital notes with my paper notebooks.
To support the “thinking” part, it also has some goodies for shuffling, sorting, splitting, and joining lists in place to help with ideation. I’m working on the fourth incarnation now.
I recorded a demo a few months ago to share with a friend. It’s not my best recording because I was recovering from hand surgery so typing was weird: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N9HX3G69Xdo
I may open-source it once I’ve worked the bugs out.
I mean that as praise, it reeled me in as both a puzzle (what am I even reading right now) and a conclusion (the bleeding edge of obsidianmd space is like XKCD straws).
You know, that thing that they are trying to kill.