Writing System

  1. Write about concepts, don’t couple to books, authors, etc. Concepts allow you to come back, revisit, & refine.
  2. Link notes together at every opportunity, densely linked notes force us to make connections & relate concepts.
  3. Notes should be atomic, i.e. about one thing as much as possible.
  4. This is where we develop our own ideas about things, “do your own thinking”, & return to them over time as they are challenged & evolve.
  5. Look at the graph, follow backlinks, & add notes that abstract over many other notes, i.e. distillation & analysis. Add topic outlines to other notes, indices.
  6. This happens every day in the morning & potentially again every evening. General scratch note-taking goes on all day though.
  7. Draw a note from the inbox according to the described method or, if something in particular is on your mind, time-box it first, but once you run out of things you want to write about, while there is still time, start drawing items still in the inbox. (implies not drawing things added to today)

How can this system be improved?

  • Create spaced repetition inbox system. Use size of recent editions to determine frequency of appearance in thinking sessions. Currently our inbox is small & auto sorts to most recently modified. We can probably get along with this system for the meantime.
  • Create random topic selection mechanism for improving inbox.
  • Name my version of this Zettelkasten|Evergreen system to something mind palace like that is appealing to me.
  • Programming sessions should probably be conducted in a similar manner. Could they also be dispersed over these same concepts in code blocks & while added to project files? If it’s a concept I’m familiar with, I should copy & paste, but if it’s something challenging, it’s a good chance to refine knowledge.
  • Should we fit pomodoro timers into this somehow? We probably should do that given the finiteness of time.
  • Improve markdown styling through time & speed as well.
  • This system should make use of the Diagramming System