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IMO Search Engine is the food pantry. local knowledge repositories are good for any domain specific knowledge thats really hard to find elsewhere online
Pretty graphs, but I wonder how it stands up to the tests of the real world. I've personally tried to use mind maps (a bit more general than solving technical problems) but gave up pretty quickly. I think part of the problem was the technology itself, mind map apps are mostly desktop only and the mobile experience navigating a 2D diagram is kind of clunky. The other part was just laziness, after building a mind map f…
Now I just need to learn how to go back through them.
I built my whole system on a Google Sheet, but I'm experimenting with building myself an App instead- something I would never have been able to accomplish or even been willing to start if I didn't have this second brain helping me.
The lessons I've learned from this:
1. Being pro-active on things instead of reactive makes everything easier. Each action takes less work because there's no worry or guilt associated with it. Just a small amount of planning to make myself pro-active is a worthy investment.
2. Putting things I need to remember into a system and then forgetting about them, trusting that my system has it under control, removes a huge cognitive load from me. I have more energy to use elsewhere.
3. Building a system that evolves to fit my needs, being flexible with myself, rather than trying to jam myself into someone else's system has made it work at all. That's why Google Sheets is awesome as a prototype tool for this.
I've tried to incorporate some of the ideas of the "second brain" and it didn't really give me that much. My lessons: 1. It's always super helpful to write things down. Taking notes from what I read/learn is a great way to verify that I understand it. It sharpens my thinking. 2. However, maintaining the "second brain" is a lot work. It's not only about "linking" together notes. You also need to maintain some consiste…
Particularly to your point (2), the problem I've seen with most systems is they are not simple to maintain. Contrast this with "Getting Things Done", which is practically the simplest productivity system I've ever used that accurately works, where you have only two chores:
1. Write down tasks as they come up 2. Flesh them out later with as little metadata as possible (typically, at most, a project + due date if necessary)
The Zettelkasten mirrors this in a lot of ways. It has the advantage of re-writing your notes in your own words (your point (1)), but it is very simple to maintain. You re-write, make links to other notes in your existing setup, and you're done. Your notes should be as context-less as possible (which causes you to think further), and you should generally be able to relate it to GTD's daily "review" process.
A big point of clarity is the Zettelkasten is against "organization" - everything falls into the box. Ahrens talks in depth about how folders, categories, and even tags can be very limiting - you think about the metadata more than the actual content, which gives us a headache to maintain. A system should be as friction-less as possible if we want to actually use it.
Additionally, he does address your (3) to some extent, but it seems like you've figured out what these thoughts are, and resolved that they probably aren't worth fleshing out further (beyond maybe your proof-of-concept, fail-fast demo). I imagine if they are worthy ideas you probably would elaborate on them further.
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I've been using it for a while now, and I can personally attest that it's been very helpful, especially as I've progressed into more architectural/design work, and less direct day-to-day coding.
Pretty graphs, but I wonder how it stands up to the tests of the real world. I've personally tried to use mind maps (a bit more general than solving technical problems) but gave up pretty quickly. I think part of the problem was the technology itself, mind map apps are mostly desktop only and the mobile experience navigating a 2D diagram is kind of clunky. The other part was just laziness, after building a mind map f…
I moved from mind maps (I used and liked FreeMind) to indented outlines in plain text files when I realized I wasn't really losing anything to map the nodes to headings and the edges to sub-headings. I can capture the same relationships, keep it synced to everywhere via cloud storage, and I don't need special software beyond a text editor to look at or edit it. Now I just need to learn how to go back through them.
time required to curate a local pantry of information is just too high and mostly benefits decline overtime unless that information is very complex to remember and so specific to your domain that you wont find a quick solution online. IMO Search Engine is the food pantry. local knowledge repositories are good for any domain specific knowledge thats really hard to find elsewhere online
My technique to combat that has been combining my own notes and making use of Pocket to have copies of resources that I think are interesting.
My second brain is the 400 browser tabs that I have open
You might have meant this as a joke, but I honestly think this is a better way of doing things than a rigourously designed system of organisation and workflows and all that. There are a million ways to approach this kind of thing, and whilst browser tabs aren't nessecarily the best way, they're certainly up there
So I have a browser window per "thing" that I'm dealing with, with a whole bunch of tabs, and when I'm done with the thing, the browser gets closed and the tabs go away.
My second brain keeps moving. For example, I have a great setup with Notability on an iPad. Except after a few months, I start typing stuff into Workflowy. No reason, I just reach for a different tool. A few months later I'm in a random text file and then back to Notability. I don't know why I do this. One thing that sorta helps is implementing the Jonny Decimal System so that all the different pieces can be indexed.…