Note 2000!

Will

Time to celebrate. I did it! 2000 notes seemed like an insurmountable hill to climb when I started but one step (or note) at a time and I made it to this milestone. Now the 3000 note milepost is within sight.

Thanks for all your help.

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Note 2000

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Below is the capture of my dashboard that I watch. I'm a bit of a quantitative geek.

GeoEng51

@Will

A fitting note #2000!

My wife and I discovered the benefits of walking on thinking while we were raising 5 children (especially in their teenage years). Whenever a difficult issue came up with 1 or more of the kids, we'd go out for a walk to discuss the situation and any solutions or actions we needed to take. My oldest daughter said that: "We always knew how serious the problem was by how long you were gone"

It's only one "step" to apply the same technique to benefit our creative thinking.

prometheanhindsight

Congrats! That's awesome!

ctietze

Cheers, here's to the next 2000! What's the date of your first official note in your Zettelkasten?

Sascha

NICE!

Will

@ctietze said:
What's the date of your first official note in your Zettelkasten?

Read to learn and think better [[201811081947]]

It now has a YAML, links, references, and tags. I ought to preserve this for prosperity. At the time, I remember I was deep into Stoicism. Still am.

ArchiMark

Holy Moly, Will!

That's quite a milestone!

And thank you for the sharing you do here and in videos.

Best,

Mark

Phil

Congrats @Will!

John

After having lurked and been generally AFK for the greater part of last year, I've come back to see this milestone. Congrats @Will and if I may ask where do you get that nicely formatted statistics dashboard from? I might have missed you talking about it due to my away-time....

Will

@John said:
After having lurked and been generally AFK for the greater part of last year, I've come back to see this milestone. If I may ask, where do you get that nicely formatted statistics dashboard from? I might have missed you talking about it due to my away time...

Welcome back @John, we've missed your insights. I particularly connected with your comment, "...when I approach a book (electronic too) topological, i.e., I want to read about only select parts instead of reading it from A to Z, then an index is indispensable. It can make a difference between a rough experience and the task being a breeze." I now only read those parts of books that interest me. I start by reviewing the chapters and quickly abandoning the chapter if it doesn't hold my interest and wonderment. I hadn't remembered the advice on checking the index, but now I will. Sometimes reading might mean reading the index! Life is too short, and there is too much to read.

Nope, no one has asked about my dashboard. It is a Keyboard Maestro macro, and I started developing it very early in my zettelkastening adventure. Here is a link to that lonely discussion.

https://forum.zettelkasten.de/discussion/786/zettelkasten-statistics

This newer iteration is a snapshot of a template I use when journaling in Bear. It has morphed from that old Keyboard Maestro macro, slowly tweaked over time. What I like about this is the reveiw opportunites. The links launch searches in The Archive in a side by side two-window workflow with Bear and The Archive in each. Quick, fun and efficent. I can demo but the macro would take some massaging to be sharable.

Wait for it. This is a big GIF. Sorry, the text is hard to read.

John

Hi @Will thank you so much for the nice comment on what has sticked with you of all the random things I sometimes feel I spew out. I actually had to use the forum search function to see where I might have said that. It was in this topic: https://forum.zettelkasten.de/discussion/938/are-you-using-the-keyword-index-in-books

Thanks for sharing the link and description of your updates since you made the original KM macro and the GIF. I've bookmarked that topic and will look into it in the coming weeks. If I've got a question I know where to ask!

JoshA

Hey @Will, congrats! Your posts are always so insightful and inspiring.

If you don' t mind me asking, is there a reason you journal in Bear and not in The Archive? I am having a lot of success using a "daily working log"¹ note that acts as a frictionless place to drop descriptive observations, ideas and questions that arise throughout my day (to be processed later). I noticed you mentioned keeping a daily note in an early post, so I'm wondering if there is a reason you keep them outside your slipbox?

Cheers!

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1. https://notes.andymatuschak.org/Daily_working_log ;↩︎

Will

@JoshA said:
Is there a reason you journal in Bear and not in The Archive?

No reason. In fact, I do journal in The Archive also. Just not in the same way.
In Bear, I'm journaling my day, planning, reviewing what I've done, etc. Bear is where I've migrated my Evernote functions, and I use it as a readme later service.

I also create a daily note in The Archive. I call these Ideation Logs. These have different and specific purposes. I find Matuschak's notion of working with my ideas so helpful, and I want to do that in a separate space from plain old journaling. And I still want to plain old journal.

When I work with my 'Ideation Logs' that I create in The Archive, I don't plan or review. They are for recording, playing with, and developing ideas. Spontaneous and serendipitous ideas. I leave this open-ended for the day and the following day as part of my daily journaling process (traditional style). I'll refactor yesterday's Ideation Log' into atomic notes. I haven't decided yet rather shred the old logs once refactored or not. Most end up being just shells once all the ideas are atomized.

Phil

Thanks as always Will for the inspiration, and in particular the links to Andy Matuschak's notes. Although I've run across his site before, I've never really delved into the material there. It's a wealth of insight and advice, especially when it comes to strategies for reading, writing about what you read, and creating durable and low-friction ZK notes.

henrikenggaard

Congrats @Will ! So cool with the 2k notes! Thanks for all the insightful comments on the forum.