Share with us what is happening in your ZK this week. June 12, 2024
Swimming with Ideas
This is yet another opportunity to share with your friends what you are working on. Add to this discussion by telling us about your zettelkasten journey. Share with us what you're learning. Sharing helps me and, hopefully, you, too. It helps us clarify our goals and visualize our thinking. And sometimes, a conversation sparks a magical moment where we can dive into an idea worth exploring. I'd love to hear more from you. 🫵🏼
Here is a report on the ideas I'm exploring with my ZK and why I'm here:
The difference between who I am now and who I was five years ago is largely due to how I've spent my time along the way.
How does my note-taking tie into my writing? More intimately, how do ideas get into my thinking? They do so in two ways: fast and slow. The adage, "Nothing can be improved until it exists. You have to have something to improve," combined with "As long as I do something rather than nothing, I'm making progress," has significantly improved my writing workflow. I am now less hesitant to produce a first draft. Seeing rough, confused, silly, distorted, and wrong ideas in a first draft allows me to identify where my gaps are—both in understanding and in my ability to communicate those ideas. John McPhee's notion of four drafts to writing was a revelation for me. It showed me that the first draft is just the beginning, a place to put all my thoughts on paper, no matter how imperfect. By embracing this messy first step, I can better refine my ideas in subsequent drafts. This process of iterative improvement has transformed my approach to writing, making it more fun, invigorating, and effective.
As a positivist, I value the affordances in my world and the benefits they bring. In some areas, self-imposed limits help me form positive habits. For instance, limiting my calorie intake balances my energy levels with my health. This kind of restriction is beneficial and fosters discipline. However, imposing limits in other areas can be counterproductive. Take the mutability of notes, for example. Refactor a note with the idea that you are improving it. When I refactor a note, I often end up refactoring the entire associated idea chain. Improving one part of the idea improves the whole concept. This process of continuous refinement without rigid limits enhances the overall quality of my ideas and their expression.
With Python/Keyboard Maestro, I'm developing a little program that scraps my archive for lines containing highlighted text and presents them on a second monitor for reference and prompting. This works in every writing environment.
Here is a "little" preview."
Search results for "little" in the list of L-Super Slogans.
- Frank Lloyd Wright: "Many wealthy people are little more than janitors of their possessions." [[201901040641]]
- "Spend as little time as possible talking about how other people are wrong." - Tyler Cowen
- It's incredible how little I need an opinion about anything if I just go about my day enjoying every little thing quietly.
- everyday do a little of what I love
- I underestimate the costs of these little distractions.
- If I move the needle a little bit towards more moments of noticing and less automaticity, I'll have a richer life. This is a positive feedback loop that, once started, would hopefully snowball.
- I underestimate the costs of these little distractions. These add up quickly. Their cumulative effects are not felt until the build-up has disrupted activity.
Search results for "little" in the list of Twenty Questions.
- Q. How to live? A. Use little life hacks to improve fractionally each week
Search results for "little" in the list of Luhmann Certified Note Categories.
- Noel Notes - Notes to add a little holiday cheer in the winter months.
Search results for "little" in the list of Writing Actions.
- Delete words that mean little or nothing [kind of, really, actually].
Search results for "little" in the list of Unbeleivable.
belittles belief
Search results for "little" in the list of Texting.
NLL nice little lady
Books I'm reading or read this week:
- Brooks, David. How To Know A Person [[202405260654]]: The Art of Seeing Others Deeply and Being Deeply Seen. First edition, Random House, 2023. BookShare
- Weihenmayer, E., & Levy, B. (2019). No Barriers [[202406021529]] (The young adult adaptation): A blind man's Journey to Kayak the Grand Canyon (First Edition). St. Martin's Griffin. #YAL_research BookShare
- Sedaris, David. Me Talk Pretty One Day. 1st ed, Little, Brown & Co, 2000. Libby Audiobook
- Scdoris, R., & Steber, R. (2006). No end in sight: My life as a blind Iditarod racer (1st rev. ed). St. Martin's Press. [[202406102027]] BookShare #YAL_research
- Bauermeister, Erica. The School of Essential Ingredients. Berkley Books, 2013. Libby Audio Food themed. Libby Audio #food
Ear Candy - Music I'm listening to:
★★★★★
The "My rolling ten-day zettel production" is produced by a script for attachment to my daily journaling template. I do my journaling in Bear to keep personal journaling separate from my knowledge work.
Let me know if you would like to see, discuss, or critique any of these notes.
My ten-day zettel production
–––––
Zettelkasten Statistics
★★★★★
1312855 Total word count
20116 Total link count
3982 Total zettel count
★★★★★
10-day trend: 13/8 ⬆︎
100-day trend: 112/161 ⬇︎
1.95 notes/day since day zero (20181114).
I have 25 zettels in my proofing oven.
–––––
13 new notes have been created in the last ten days.
Beginning writing immediately 20240611
- Rather than waiting for exhaustive research or perfection.
B-No End In Sight 20240610
- The triumph of the human spirit against seemingly insurmountable odds. #YAL_research
In Defense of Radical Self-Betterment 20240610
- Celebrating the process itself rather than focusing solely on the outcomes.
Slang Terms for Women's Breasts 20240609
- The evolving cultural and societal perceptions of women's breasts through the lens of slang terminology.
Copy Editing the Third Draft 20240609
- The importance of iterative improvement in writing.
Pareto Principle tied to note-taking 20240607
- A small portion of activities, particularly note-taking, are emphasized, which significantly enhances intellectual development.
Jack Kerouac on Kindness 20240606
- This sheds light on the concept of eternal, unchanging bliss and unity with the universe.
A-Draft No 4 20240605
- Thinking tools for the iterative process of writing and the importance of meticulous revision.
John McPhee's dictionary tip 20240604
- John McPhee's approach to writing highlights the power of precise language and the dictionary's transformative potential.
The Problem with Easy Technology 20240603
- Technologies shape our future. Choosing convenient over challenging tools leads to the atrophy of our skills.
Narrative Theory 20240603
- Narrative theorists examine how stories help us make sense of the world and how we interpret these stories.
Why An Easier Life Is Not Necessarily Happier 20240603
- Embracing complexities and difficulties enriches our lives, offering true fulfillment and growth.
Baking Bread, Finding Meaning 20240603
- Focal activities require skill, engagement, and social interaction, providing a more enriching experience than passive consumption
- Focal activities require skill, engagement, and social interaction, providing a more enriching experience than passive consumption
Will Simpson
My zettelkasten is for my ideas, not the ideas of others. I will try to remember this. I must keep doing my best even though I'm a failure. My peak cognition is behind me. One day soon, I will read my last book, write my last note, eat my last meal, and kiss my sweetie for the last time.
kestrelcreek.com
Howdy, Stranger!
Comments
I've three open questions in my workbench, I've already passed all of them under the millstone obtaining floor, now I've to find the time to solidify my ideas about them making bread.
1) the impact of immutability into the Zettelkasten. It's the second time I'm facing the issue, the discussion opened recently here gave me new grain to transform into floor
2) I've watched this video,
and it has made the spark fly about the potentiality of daily notes that I didn't realized in the past.
In this week I'm trying to use them, it's a practice that I didn't use because of its drawbacks in my context.
3) related to the second point, I'm developing my thoughts about benefits and drawback of daily journaling vs thematic journaling.
Doing daily journaling seems silly but hides many pitfalls, at least in a software like Obsidian that is not a true outliner.
All of these questions are related to my use of Zettelkasten, I don't have these days other uses than using Zettelkasten on itself.
These weeks I'm very focused on zettelkasten themes, spending a lot of time. I don't consider it a waste of time, rather an investment. Zettelkasten has really become the engine of most of my activities, so it becomes strategic make it more effective.
I've spent hours developing in the last two days thoughts about the question in the topic opened by FernandoNobel on Contextual Thinking.
It's a lot of time spent, but no free lunch.
Some months ago I went very much faster with my old mindset on reading and watching, but I obtained very poor results. That was the waste of time
Hey it's my first time actually contributing to one of these threads!
I am at one of the major conferences in my field, so it is a big switch from the usual academic mode of attacking very specific problems largely alone or in a small team.
I have been writing much of my fleeting notes on a little notebook and transferring some of the more interesting pointers as zettels during downtime. I have written about topics such as:
Random scribbles that do not warrant their own zettel will simply go into a sort of permanent fleeting note after I'm back, just so I can search it up again if needed.
I am making minor research progress, as I tend to ruminate on problems constantly in the background. As per usual, I am working on these problems in my head and scratch paper, and writing down any single "unit of progress" into a single "digital slip" each.
In the long term, I am trying to make some steady progress at order statistic theory, which is exposing my weakness in statistics and probability theory beyond CLT. It is, of course, worked out on paper then each "unit of understanding" is put onto a digital slip.
Here goes. Disclaimer: I am not a philosopher.
Philo2024061113 Daniel Dennett's moralized compatibilism
During a talk between Daniel Dennett and Robert M. Sapolsky, Dennett asked Sapolsky, "Don't you want to be held responsible?"
The Perspective of Homo Economicus
If I were homo economicus—for example, a wealthy member of the capitalist class with the ability to influence the political and legal system in my favor—whether I wanted to be held responsible for my actions depends on my opportunity cost. Homo economicus wants to avoid responsibility for his actions and desires others to be held accountable. The last thing homo economicus wants is to pay the total cost of production; others should bear that cost. Homo economicus is a rational, self-interested utility maximizer, though not necessarily moral. The social order in which homo economicus operates remains sustainable as long as there are significantly more individuals who labor for homo economicus and absorb the costs he avoids paying than conversely.
Moral Position and Social Order
Dennett advocates for a social order where individuals are held responsible for their behavior. For Dennett, "free will" means exhibiting competencies that align with this desired social order. He might argue that this is what "Ordinary people mean by free will," though this empirical assertion is debatable. Dennett's compatibilism assigns praise and blame based on the intentional stance under which the beliefs, desires, and intentions of persons who exhibit the requisite competencies explain their behavior. Dennett's approach is "moralized" because, for Dennett, maintaining social order and promoting ethical behavior depends on holding individuals responsible. However, this idealized social order only applies to some (e.g., only to Anglophone philosophers). International relations and the global economic order often diverge significantly from the social order Dennett justifies through the intentional stance.
Determinism and Responsibility
Both Dennett and Sapolsky are determinists, but their views on responsibility diverge. Dennett believes in the pragmatic benefits of holding people responsible, arguing it fosters a functional society and promotes moral behavior within the constraints of determinism. In contrast, Sapolsky emphasizes that biological and environmental determinants beyond individual control leave no room for free will. According to Sapolsky, society will benefit to the extent it avoids assigning praise and blame.
SEE ALSO
[[Philo.2c7a.0.22.1016]] The Epistemic Values - Learning, Knowledge, Understanding
[[Philo.0000.0000]] Philo.0000.0000 Philosophy and Religion
#compatibilism #hard-determinism #determinism #robert-m-sapolsky #daniel-dennett
GitHub. Erdős #2. Problems worthy of attack / prove their worth by hitting back. -- Piet Hein. Alter ego (1st-order): Erel Dogg. Alter egos of Erel Dogg (2nd-order): Distracteur des Zettel, HueLED PacArt Lovecraft. I have no direct control over the 2nd-order alter egos. CC BY-SA 4.0.
@Will I hope you don't mind me following you on GitHub. It's just that when I read your casual "I'm developing a little program that scraps my archive for lines containing highlighted text and presents them on a second monitor for reference and prompting" I just about jumped out of my chair with excitement. That's a great idea.
@Hamish, I am delighted to have you follow me on GitHub. The Writing Prompt Search is working great. It is tied to a Keyboard Maestro macro. I have it look through particular groups of Markdown files for lines that contain the highlighted keyword.
Please let me know if you get it installed and working and if you have suggestions for improvements. If you have questions, I will do my best to answer them.
Will Simpson
My zettelkasten is for my ideas, not the ideas of others. I will try to remember this. I must keep doing my best even though I'm a failure. My peak cognition is behind me. One day soon, I will read my last book, write my last note, eat my last meal, and kiss my sweetie for the last time.
kestrelcreek.com
@andang76 Thanks for the link to the video. I am very interested in Logseq, so I followed that up with several other videos, downloaded it, and tried using it. Logseq has a lot of nice features; I'm still deciding whether or not I can include it in any of my workflows. A lot of its capabilities are included in NotePlan, which I use extensively, but there is a nice simplicity to Logseq which may make it suitable for certain applications.
Just a warning about the video for anyone else tempted to watch it—it is painfully slow and awkward; I could only take so much.
This is wiki-like software, in which I've tried before to develop a Zettelkasten. I found that approach cumbersome and I didn't like the result, compared to The Archive. I'd be interested to hear how you use logseq to develop your Zettelkasten.
I've started my Zettelkasten section about music
I still don't know how it will develop. My starting intention is writing how songs and artists resonate in me day by day.
My first note has title "It all started by listening Hurt from Johnny Cash"
The note contains only a link to the song video, for now.
@Will this is both beautiful and succinct:
I also never noticed your metaphor of a "proofing oven" in the Zettelkasten stats before. Love it
My Zettelkasting is focused on web development in this cycle. The Zettelkasten website has been extended and its styles been tweaked continuously for a decade. A lot of fixes and workarounds are obsolete -- and we plan to make the first impression more, well, impressive and tell visitors what the ZK is about.
As all things, it's an iterative process and it's next iteration will be live this week.
Zettel stats per month since the start of this year:
While the past week has been slow (had the flu, and didn't add many notes overall), the majority of new notes this year have been about Zettelkasten research targeting programmers, and insights into the structure and process of programming as a craft and discipline itself. I'm really excited to have people experience this and gather feedback when it's ready.
Author at Zettelkasten.de • https://christiantietze.de/
Hi everyone,
My ZK is in big movement right now. I really enjoyed working with analog one, and I learnt a lot. Now, I feel the need to test a digital one, to compare my workflows between two.
Why?
Let me tell you a story.
I had a professional examen to obtain a new certification. It was really important for me, and I was quite tensed. The examen took place into a city where I didn't live and I needed to take the train, so I took a really minimalist bag, and I put it into my hotel. The city was next to the sea, and I wanted to see it before going to bed, so I was out, only with a small bag and went to read some part of my lessons on the beach. I really, really love the sea. I feel the urge to note something and there... I did'nt have my journal. Only my lessons and my smartphone.
I don't like to work with my smartphone but the fact is this is the only thing I carry everywhere, even at work. So capture is quite easy, with taking photos and other medias.
Back at home, I thank about a way to capture ideas with my old and tired smartphone, and to implement a digital Zettelkasten.
Going back to Obsidian was an option, but I pushed it away. My brain recorded the many tries to obtain something with it. I needed something new which allowed me to work around with a journal, to capture anything into it and to create some Zettels on the fly if I needed it. I needed a synchronization between my devices, a private one.
So I choose Logseq, with this workflow centered around a daily page note and a "river" view of them with some of the past ones under it. The outliner style of the software helps me a lot to give some order to my daily thoughts. I can record my logs like my workout sessions, sleep, weight, cycle, mood. I can connect my daily logs with my zettels without friction, without switching between software and I really appreciate it.
What I really, really love is that a page can become a hashtag and every hashtags are pages (and you can find a list of every hashtags with a plugin). This feature missed me since Tiddlywiki. Like Tiddlywiki, I can have a native query system to call some notes thanks to arbitrary metadatas and so one.
The software recognize "namespace", with is wonderfully convenient to me as I love to keep together some of thematic notes :
Plants/Aromatic/Mintwhich create a "Hierarchy" section at the bottom of notes. I also use it for authors :Neil Gaiman/Anansi Boys- the hierarchy section of the page "Neil Gaiman" listsOk so I have Logseq on my phone and on my computer.
I use Syncthing to synchronise them. It is an open source software, crypted without any servers.
Some extracts of my newest Zettels :
Listening, reading...
Just Different
Thanks for sharing. Here's mine. Comparing the two, I have an average of 2.577 times higher wc/note than you do. I can think of three explanations.
1. You focus more on coding notes, which typically have a low word count.
2. A big part of my focus is writing skills. I've captured many short examples of excellent writing.
3. I'm just more verbose.
Scratch Pad
330.88459609/128.37412587=2.57750223301
Will Simpson
My zettelkasten is for my ideas, not the ideas of others. I will try to remember this. I must keep doing my best even though I'm a failure. My peak cognition is behind me. One day soon, I will read my last book, write my last note, eat my last meal, and kiss my sweetie for the last time.
kestrelcreek.com
Hello. This week I’ve been playing with Mermaid charts. One of my first diagrams is a simplified Zettelkasten model:
Here’s the code for Mermaid:
Based on this model, it was easy to create a final sketchnote:
Edmund Gröpl
Writing is your voice. Make it easy to listen.
@Edmund, I wonder where we got this idea? I, too, have been exploring charting with Mermaid. What got me started was your post and the quadrant chart you presented. Seeing the ideas presented in this fashion inspired me to think about how I would arrange the ideas I have about the impact of ZK activities and different levels of involvement. That exercise has turned out to be more involved than originally thought, requiring lots of contemplation.
This example was much easier to pull off and is open to criticism, mockery, and critique.
Here’s the code for Mermaid:
flowchart TD A[Zettelkasting] --> B(Read) B --> C{Use writing to think} C --> D[One Note \n A Proxy for One Idea] C --> E[A Structure or \nOutline Note] C --> F[A writing project] D --> G[One object of attention] E --> H[Thinking Canvas] F --> I[Use ZK as writing partner]Zettelkasting-Tools GitHub
Will Simpson
My zettelkasten is for my ideas, not the ideas of others. I will try to remember this. I must keep doing my best even though I'm a failure. My peak cognition is behind me. One day soon, I will read my last book, write my last note, eat my last meal, and kiss my sweetie for the last time.
kestrelcreek.com
Yes Will, that’s my experience too. Thinking with words and sentences is one part of my Zettelkasten. The other part requires charts, diagrams, sketchnotes and other types of visuals.
Edmund Gröpl
Writing is your voice. Make it easy to listen.
flowchart TD A[Zettelkasting] --> B(Read) B --> E1[Tools for thinking] E1 --> C[Writing] E1 --> E2[Re-writing] E1 --> E3[Connecting] E1 --> E4[Drawing] E2 --> E6[Writing is \n re-writing] E3 --> E7[Hidden \n connections] E4 --> E5[Ideas, \n not art] C --> D[One Note, \n One Idea] C --> E[Structure or \n Outline Note] C --> F[Writing \n project] D --> G[One object \n of attention] E --> H[Thinking \n Canvas] F --> I[ZK writing \n partner]Edmund Gröpl
Writing is your voice. Make it easy to listen.
@Edmund said:
This code reminded me of a three-node graphviz diagram that I posted in another discussion. Both diagrams are basically
input -> outputdiagrams, but in my diagram nodes represent different documents (or sets of documents) and edges represent different processes. I'm not sure what the edges represent in your diagram: temporal relations (AprecedesBprecedesC) or information processing? Perhaps you could label the edges. Also, "Read stuff" is not necessarily the only input to a Zettelkasten; original research can also be an input.@Loni, I've also been playing around with Logseq this past week and finding a lot to like about it. I need to learn more to comment further, but it's good to hear there's someone I can compare notes with!
More frolicking with the Mermaid. Turns out she is a tool for thinking.
New and improved (or not). I've combined and expanded on @Edmund's thoughtful input.
@Andy makes an important point about the flowchart's lack of "edge" detail. If I understand the node/edge paradigm, I've not described any process of how we get from node to node, say from One Note, One Idea to One Object of Attention. I'll have to research this more. Mermaid doesn't seem to have support for callouts between nodes. Of necessity, these "edge" descriptions would be wordy, and the space is crowded.
Here’s the code for Mermaid:
flowchart TD A{Tools for Thinking} A ---> C[Writing] C --> E2[Re-writing] A ---> E3[Connecting Ideas] A ---> E4[Drawing Ideas] A ---> J[Diagraming Ideas] J --> K[Grafts, Tables, Mindmaps] E2 --> E6[Writing is \n re-writing] E3 --> E7[ Serendipitous \n connections] E4 --> E5[Ideas, \n becoming art] C --> D[One Note, \n One Idea] C --> E[Structure or \n Outline Note] C --> F[Writing \n project] D --> G[One object \n of attention] E --> H[Thinking \n Canvas] F --> I[ZK writing \n partner]Zettelkasting-Tools GitHub
Will Simpson
My zettelkasten is for my ideas, not the ideas of others. I will try to remember this. I must keep doing my best even though I'm a failure. My peak cognition is behind me. One day soon, I will read my last book, write my last note, eat my last meal, and kiss my sweetie for the last time.
kestrelcreek.com