[Journal] Knowledge Work - Sascha

Sascha · October 20

Entry: 2025-10-20 Experimenting with turning a private practice into a social practice.

When I was still active in various online forums for training, it was part of the routine for many athletes to keep an online diary. Interestingly, a lot of the most interesting discussions branched off from these diaries. So, I like to start this as an experiment.

Back then, it was part of the forum member's post training routine: Cool down, drink the protein shake and then check the diary for comments and submit your last session there.

Scholarly journaling is a practice that seems to become trendy occasionally, but seems not to stick. I wonder if it is because of the implementation problem: Whatever isn't self-reinforcing has to be implemented carefully by developing habits and maintaining them.

What if it becomes a social practice? Social practices are indeed self-reinforcing.

This is at the core of this experiment: If scholarly journaling becomes a social practice, will it become a more stable practice? And if yes, what are the effects of it?

Sascha · October 20

2025-10-20 The conventions of a public journal in a forum based on fitness journaling

This is just from my recollection:

The owner of the journal sets the goal and objectives of the journal. There is no hijacking allowed. If the owner of the journal feels that something should be put in another thread, he asks the moderators to separate discussions from the journal.
The journal is half-public. The audience is the community. That means that you can't expect to be completely in control or that your journal is kept super tidy. For this, you have private journals. In the forums back then, typical practice was to keep a private version of the journal and copy each entry to the respective thread.
There is a tension between the activating nature of public journaling and access to content in a forum. If a lot of interesting stuff happens in the diaries, they become the centre of attention and topic-centered organisation suffers a bit. Everybody of the community takes responsibility of resolving the tension by sometimes opening another thread and linking to the journal's entry that sparked the idea.
A journal is more intimate than typical forum communication. That means that the tone should be softer and chosen more careful.

Sascha · October 20

2025-10-20 The Start of a Morning Practice

This week I am starting a morning practice, similar to Andy Matuschak's morning practice. I am more comfortable with lots of interrupted hours, sometimes pushing 8-10 hours with 8-10k words. This is no longer available to me. My day is fragmented and time is scarce.

That means I have to make sure that I hit lots of birds with one stone.

The current thread of my morning practice will be processing Edward de Bono's How to Have a Beautiful Mind.

My first concern is that I will have a hard time mixing reading and processing in the same time slot. I thrive with mono-mode working. Just reading or just processing. But I'll have to read on some days, when I process books that are less easy-structured than this book.

Chances are that I will be less thorough with my processing?

But the benefit is that I might get into the habit of journaling regularly after the session.

GeoEng51 · October 20

@Sascha I don't properly understand what you are suggesting here. Is it to take one theme that you are studying and entering into your Zettelkasten (zettel by zettel) and post it here, to see what feedback you get on your process from the forum members?

Sascha · October 21

2025-10-21 Slowly building the structure notes on debate and discussion

This morning was the second morning thinking practice. As I expected: I have a hard time to get into deep thinking mode. But it is too early to tell if it is just a habit thing or if I have to add some techniques to the morning practice to make it work.

Today, I processed the section How to Agree in de Bonos How to Have a Beautiful Mind. Short, very clearly written, yet felt like a slog. My major criticism is the beauty framing. It feels like a shortcut, skipping a more careful justification.

But I got some material for the scaffolding of the structure note on debate and discussion.

Some of the key terms:

Empathetic Exploration: Exploring the other person's position for anything that you can agree with the goal of building rapport.

Coherence Exploration: Exploring the internal coherence (coherence is more than just consistency and I like it better than that term) of the other person's position

Later: Record a podcast on the hero's journey. There is an interesting overlap between self inquiry and knowledge work. There is good reason to say that self inquiry is nothing else than knowledge work, though I don't go that far.

Today, I will have to push myself to get this right. The problem I am facing is that possibility slips into orthodoxy quite easily. In the quest to live a good life, it seems to be easy to submit to an all-encompassing approach and mistake a useful tool as gospel.

The major struggle will be to make sure that I don't leave the concrete steps in the fog. I have the tendency to think that the practical implications are obvious, when they aren't.

@GeoEng51 The idea is even less structured.

This is a sample entry from a training diary:

Morning II: Easy run, 25 min

**Morning II:

A Boxpistols 8x3x15
B Ringdips 8x5x20

Noon:

A1 Lateralflexion, neck 3x10-20
A2 Cuban Rotation 3x10-20
A3 Torture Twist 3x10-20
A4 Leg Curls 3x10-20
A5 Calf Raise 3x10-20
A6 Sup-Pron, Hand 3x10-20

Comment: The easy run went as planned. The strength block was way harder than it should be because of muscle soreness from yesterday's workout. I think the next weeks will be better, since I won't deal with soreness any more. The stability block was very good and I felt strong. However, I might change the leg curls because I can't progress here more.

This is roughly the structure: A what you did and B what you think about that.

I don't think I can be as pure in structure as in fitness, but the idea is the same: I report what I did and what I think about that. And whatever interesting sparks based on that is welcomed. The dynamic kicks off when a couple of people start their journal.

Sascha · October 22

2025-10-22 A slog

Today, everything feels like a slog. For some reason, I woke up at midnight and couldn't fall back asleep. Strangely, I had a tension headache, which is quite uncommon for me.

Monades and Holons. I made the grave mistake of not jumping right into the morning practice, but became distracted by Monades and Holons. Not the baddest distraction. However, it can become a problem in the long run. My morning practice needs to be aligned with the rest of my work.

This morning belongs to the translation of the book.

I created one entry for my party manifesto. I pretend to write one to alleviate the tension I feel when reading about politics and the urge to engage in political communication, which I detest.

nikpanaousis · October 22

@Sascha said:
I created one entry for my party manifesto.

Is this a private endeavor? Or something that you plan to explore publicly?

c4lvorias · October 22

Oct 22

My existential crisis spilled to my Zettelkasten work too. I am questioning why I gather information at the beginning. Now, reading a Turkish sociology of science book named "Looking at the Social World from the Perspective of Biological Science" when translated which starts with an overview of Comte & Herbert Simon's work and how they structured sociology with respect to a biological grounding. One point struck my attention that the authors claim that sociological phenomena should give meaning to all other phenomena, and we have to understand the nature of nature to improve human condition and transform their inhumane environment to their advantage.

I've always struggled with internalizing new information, something rooted in my DID. As it gets better, I feel like something is missing in my knowledge work. I am waiting for a shift & reconfiguration in my understanding about why to engage in Zettelkasten work at all.

I can't help thinking about level 4 understanding and the LessWrong sequence about how to make your beliefs pay rent. Probably still thinking in a top-down-y way since I try to find an umbrella principle too early.

Sascha · October 23

2025-10-23 How to disagree

Initially, I wanted to process the section "How to disagree" in de Bono's Book. However, I got sidetracked by an idea that occurred to me when I discussed different training plans with a client.

In a nutshell, some plans offer various "lanes" that you can drive on with different fuels. Some plans use volume as fuel, others use intensity, willpower or consistency. From the bird's eye view it doesn't look actionable. However, I could deduce a lot of guidelines that either help you to build different plans based on their archetype or evaluate if the plan even follows the basic guidelines.

I wonder if I get repulsed by de Bono's book because of the repeated mentioning of the beautiful/ugly dichotomy. It is a completely unnecessary moralisation. Or, at least, feels like it to me. I'd be much less antagonistic if the category of charisma or likeability were at the base of the judgment.

@nikpanaousis I don't know. Perhaps, I will do it just for the lolz. But, true to my apolitical mentality, I write more about the underlying technicalities like "Inflation introduces a zero-sum game between the state and the people" or how to remove unnecessary fluff from the criminal law (often inspired by my wife who is a judge). So, it would be quite unspectacular. Not sensationalistic enough for a bigger audience and I lack the credibility for the expert audience to be interesting for them. The only reason right now that I can muster is to increase my portfolio to elevate my personal brand.

@c4lvorias I think the dichotomy of bottom-up and top-down is solved by just shifting. Example: When I pick books to be processed I invest plenty of time to build a plan on how it helps me for specific goals or areas of my life. But after all the preparing, I put my head down and just process the book as if it is an end in itself. The choice and preparation is doing the job of aligning my future actions with my purpose. Then I trust the alignment and just go.

The same is true for training: I am very meticulous when I plan my training. But then I put my head down and just focus on one session at a time, either executing reps and sets as planned, or just aim for the specific feel that tells me that I got the intensity right.

Mauro · October 23

@Sascha said:
2025-10-23 How to disagree

Initially, I wanted to process the section "How to disagree" in de Bono's Book. However, I got sidetracked by an idea that occurred to me when I discussed different training plans with a client.

In a nutshell, some plans offer various "lanes" that you can drive on with different fuels. Some plans use volume as fuel, others use intensity, willpower or consistency. From the bird's eye view it doesn't look actionable. However, I could deduce a lot of guidelines that either help you to build different plans based on their archetype or evaluate if the plan even follows the basic guidelines.

I wonder if I get repulsed by de Bono's book because of the repeated mentioning of the beautiful/ugly dichotomy. It is a completely unnecessary moralisation. Or, at least, feels like it to me. I'd be much less antagonistic if the category of charisma or likeability were at the base of the judgment.

@nikpanaousis I don't know. Perhaps, I will do it just for the lolz. But, true to my apolitical mentality, I write more about the underlying technicalities like "Inflation introduces a zero-sum game between the state and the people" or how to remove unnecessary fluff from the criminal law (often inspired by my wife who is a judge). So, it would be quite unspectacular. Not sensationalistic enough for a bigger audience and I lack the credibility for the expert audience to be interesting for them. The only reason right now that I can muster is to increase my portfolio to elevate my personal brand.

@c4lvorias I think the dichotomy of bottom-up and top-down is solved by just shifting. Example: When I pick books to be processed I invest plenty of time to build a plan on how it helps me for specific goals or areas of my life. But after all the preparing, I put my head down and just process the book as if it is an end in itself. The choice and preparation is doing the job of aligning my future actions with my purpose. Then I trust the alignment and just go.

The same is true for training: I am very meticulous when I plan my training. But then I put my head down and just focus on one session at a time, either executing reps and sets as planned, or just aim for the specific feel that tells me that I got the intensity right.

If we want to publish our journal as well, should we make a different post or write it here?

Sascha · October 23

@Mauro, please open your own journal.

Sascha · October 23

2025-10-23 What about my favourite phrases

As I am editing the manuscript (last round, finally getting the hang of it), I am wondering why many of my favourite phrasings seem to be inefficient. Typically, my writing in German is described as relatively accessible. Even when I write about abstract philosophical concepts, you can still read them without needing any expert knowledge. However, AI translation of my German texts is very bad. My explanation is that I use many words in a particular way that is "not average". As a German, you can perfectly contextualize these slight deviations; it might even be the reason why my writing style is somewhat unique (minus the typos and grammar errors...)

It might also be why I struggle to express myself in English.

One of the next books to be processed is Zinsser On Writing Well. Perhaps, it might be a nice experiment to then process two of the most iconic German style books and see how they compare.

I don't like learning languages, but I am tempted to learn a language based on the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis.

Sascha · October 24

2025-10-24 Getting impatient

Still working my way through de Bono's How to Have a Beautiful Mind. I demoted the book. I read it quickly (a bit more carefully than skimming it) and just let myself be inspired.

There is a section about "shooting questions" and "fishing questions", which are terms for closed and open questions. If I am steelmanning, I think de Bono wants to provide a feel by offering a metaphoric perspective. However, this is a stretch. The section would work for me better if he'd just explore the epistemic differences between those question types.

Perhaps, I take next morning and try to rewrite the section as an exercise?

To support my morning practice, I am developing a template for a self-education controller. It is basically a document that helps you to develop your self-learning strategy and update it. I don't know yet if I am onto something.

Sascha · October 24

2025-10-24 Split Screen > 2nd Screen

This is my final conclusion, for now. I don't know if I failed or the setup failed me. However, I prefer a split screen over a 2nd screen by a big margin. I originally thought that the physical separateness would benefit me. This turned out to be wrong.

So, if I wanted to improve my work place, a bigger screen would be the way to go (currently 24 inch)

Sascha · October 24

2025-10-24 Does Being Mediterranean Make You More Confident?

Reading de Bono, I caught myself thinking that he was French. This repeated error made me think: It is a particular assertive style of writing that leaves out a lot of background reasoning and is completely unapologetically making ethical claims.

I have written one article as far as I can remember with a similar mindset (on the concept unconditional responsibility) and a couple philosophical ones in which I felt that I even bumped my chest during writing.

But whenever I read french philosophers, de Bono or Nassim Taleb, I get the feeling that this is the default mindset for them.

Sascha · October 25

2025-10-25 Saturday are tricky

My personal life hack is that I understood and accepted the power of habit. Currently, five days a week, my morning is very similar: Waking Up, Shower, walk the dog (running), 2h of morning practice, getting daughter ready for kindergarten, training, work.

Just on Saturdays, I can't do it. I have to do a big grocery shopping trip which takes up roughly an hour. Then my family is home and I can't train properly because of my kids. It sounds fragile, but I feel way less efficient on Saturdays. So, during the next weeks, my task is to clean up Saturdays.

I am growing dissatisfied with de Bono's How to Have a Beautiful Mind. It feels repetitive, too. So, I am looking forward to finishing the book quickly and moving on.

Today, I listened to a political podcast and it was a delight to listen to the emeritus. Calm, measured, the opinion seemed to organically develop bottom up from his thinking. I was very impressed.

This was a reminder why I considered reading de Bono's book. I am fascinated by learning how to think. So, I will take some minutes to explore some syllabi with AI for various topics. My current favourite is informal logic.

I miss the time when I could decide to dive into a topic for weeks at a time for many hours per day. 2 hours in the morning is a lot. But the need to take urgency into account and the time constraint (2 hours vs 10 hours back then) feels like a too tight corset.

Sascha · October 26

2025-10-26 Sunday Morning

Officially, I have leisure time from 0400-0700. However, I couldn't resist thinking about the difference between Obsidian and The Archive. I am using Obsidian as my writing app for a while now and I think that I will continue for a while.

Strangely, Obsidian never seems to nudge me towards atomic notes. I feel a pull towards longer writing pieces which was prevalent right from the beginning (I am testing periodically all of the main software solution to keep up to date).

I can't put my finger on it and it might be possible to solve this nudge with a specific layout. But I am wondering.

This morning I worked on a podcast script, so I have smooth sailing when I record it next week.

Mauro · October 26

@Sascha said:
2025-10-26 Sunday Morning

Officially, I have leisure time from 0400-0700. However, I couldn't resist thinking about the difference between Obsidian and The Archive. I am using Obsidian as my writing app for a while now and I think that I will continue for a while.

Strangely, Obsidian never seems to nudge me towards atomic notes. I feel a pull towards longer writing pieces which was prevalent right from the beginning (I am testing periodically all of the main software solution to keep up to date).

I can't put my finger on it and it might be possible to solve this nudge with a specific layout. But I am wondering.

This morning I worked on a podcast script, so I have smooth sailing when I record it next week.

In what way do other softwares nudge you towards atomic notes?

Sascha · October 27

2025-10-27 Bad Day

This morning was cut short, because my daughter woke up early. I will dedicate this morning to editing, and later I will have to do handicrafts with my daughter. So, little happens in my mind today.

@Mauro I have not clue other than my intuition. I can switch between Obsidian and Archive and will get an immediate feeling. But I don't now the mechanisms. It might also have something to do with feature richness, the layout, etc.

Perhaps, it is just conditioned. When I use wiki software, for example, I tend to build longer pieces also.

So, nothing helpful right now from my side.

Sascha · October 28

2025-10-28 Revisited Folgezettel

I took this thread to revisit the topic of Folgezettel.

I think that at this point in time, 90% of what I could achieve by engaging with the topic once again would be rather theoretical. The 10% would amount to an article bringing everything together systematically, so there is one source that governs the current state and addresses the various position.

Again, my daughter cut my morning practice short.

Sascha · October 30

2025-10-30 Finished de Bono's How to Have a Beautiful Mind

Book in finished. Didn't get a lot out of it. Still a little bit about tactics, agendas.

I feel the benefits of my morning practice already. I feel sharper. I also get back my sense of time that I had: when I read, I don't feel that time flies by. It is as time slows down a lot. A big relief for me, since I feel that I never have enough time.

Today, I shall decide what to do next. Improving English writing skills was planned. However, I don't know how to operationalise it. Processing On Writing Well seems not promising. Most likely, I would need to extract writing exercises from my notes about the book.

Sascha · October 31

2025-10-31 Informal Logic it is

Thanks @Andy for one of many awesome literature references!

I decided to process Groundwork in the Theory of Argumentation.

It feels almost cozy to engage with a philosophical book. The only downside: It will be annoying to be cited, since it would be good practice to group each article under the Sammelband.

Even just the first paragraphs allowed me to sharpen some of my concepts (for example: Obligation). Philosophy is a true blessing for the mind. I truly wonder what would the world be if we'd be educated with a classical syllabus from an early age.

Now, back to the manuscript.

Sascha · November 3

2025-11-03 Refactoring

This morning I found myself refactoring the notes relevant to the book I am processing. So, I got my round of spaced repetition done.

There is a video by Nicole van der Hoeven about this topic. Perhaps, I will create my own version of it.

Sascha · November 4

2025-11-04 Sleep Deprivation and Self-Learning

Today, I couldn't do a good morning session since I had a unpleasant insomniac night of sleep.

However, I took the chance of restructuring my day to download an audiobook version of Nietzsche's Genealogie der Moral and listen to it to a longer than usual dog walk.

I will listen to this audiobook for 8-10 times (roughly 40 hours of listening time) to take a deeper dive. In preparation, I will process four AI-created documents created by this prompt:

Act as my philosophy tutor.

I will listen to Nietzsche's Genealogie der Moral for a couple of weeks as an audio book. I plan to do 8-10 rounds of listening. I read Genealogie der Moral twice, but it was a long time ago. So, treat me as someone who knows the basics, but has limited understanding.

Create an executive summary of the book that will prepare me for the lecture of Nietzsche's work.

This summary should have the following sections:

Summary

The most important concepts

The most important arguments for Nietzsche's Position

A narrative summary of the whole book.

Create 20 questions that I try to answer before I will listen to the book. Make sure that these questions are open-ended and are designed to spark thinking processes and I can answer them somewhat with limited knowledge of Nietzsche's work.

I didn't process the documents yet. So, I can't tell how I will change the prompt.

Sascha · November 10

2025-11-10 The poor state of ethical reasoning and the DIKW hierarchy

Firstly, thinking a bit about the moral obligation to reason well, I am once again reminded about the strange unwillingness to confront inconvenient implications and the reckless dependency on emotions.

My daughter is testing out various methods for disobedience. When I tell her to put on her shoes, she will sometimes go through a series of objections: "I have to ride the bike first." and more interestingly, "But I am sad."

The reference to her sadness (that conveniently appears when she is facing inconveniences) is what too many people continue to practice in their adult life. When they get advice or are confronted with inconvenient implications of their insights or believes, they sometimes say "Yes, but it is hard." The typical reaction is empathy and I think that people are trained to pathology seek empathy with the convenience of preparing the future excuse of not following through.

What do I reply to my daughter? I say: "Then put on your shoes sadly."

Sadness (or hardness) and taking action is one of the many wrong contradictions that are the fertile soil of self-deception.

Secondly, I need to find time and energy to process some articles on the [DIKW hierarchy[(https://www.researchgate.net/publication/41125158_The_wisdom_hierarchy_Representations_of_the_DIKW_hierarchy). My gut instinct tells me that the introduction of a bit more rigour will bear some fruits.

I face one problem with my morning practice. I am having quite a hard time (pun intended) to shift gears and focus on my tasks in the morning. As typical for me, I feel the strong urge to fixate on whatever I began. My unconsciousness is fixated anyway, and I am capturing ideas constantly every morning I could commit to at least 90 minutes of my morning practice.

Nick · November 13

Would be interesting to not process the document but do all the work to learn/process the material, then create your own version of the documents. Then do a blog post comparing on contrasting your version with the AI version.

Sascha · 8:38AM

@Nick said:
Would be interesting to not process the document but do all the work to learn/process the material, then create your own version of the documents. Then do a blog post comparing on contrasting your version with the AI version.

What would be the benefit or insight?

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[Journal] Knowledge Work - Sascha

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