What are you working on this week? (20200831 to 20200906)

Will

I'm working on processing Environmental and Nature Writing by Sean Prentiss, a class textbook that I finished reading and in the process of creating zettel. I created an idea index and am process 102 notes and highlight into about 30-40 notes. Have 15 mostly done.

I'm reading Humankind by Dutch historian Rutger Bregman. Super good stuff debunking Veneer theory. And I just got an interlibrary loan book titled The Cartoon Guide to Statistics by Larry Gonick, and this one should give the brain a good workout.

Here is a zettel I'm actively working on in relationship to zettelkasting.

GeoEng51

I'm still reading "Lifespan - Why we age and why we don't have to" by Sinclair and Laplante. Also started reading "Hypersanity: thinking beyond thinking" by Neel Burton. That plus trying to grow my ZK - enough to keep me busy.

I realized that The Archive doesn't (seem to) include a spell checker, so I've been viewing all my Zettelkasten files in iA Writer to do that. A baby step forward, but still important.

ctietze

Mostly programming and editing pending blog posts for the site this week. Next week I'm one a week-long vacation and don't want to bring too many chores with me.

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@GeoEng51 You can manually enable spell checking in Edit > Spelling and Grammar. I disabled that during the Beta back in the day and never revisited the setting, sorry!

Nick

I started my "Evolution of a Notes Collection" project. Where I am going to read a set of 10 books. I am going to keep a on going Concept List. Every new meaningful concept I come across I am going to add to the list in green text. When I move onto the next book I take a screenshot, then all the green concepts become black. If I elaborate on a concept in the next book then I'll turn the concept orange. I will take a screen shot and graph view shot of the collection and list after reading each book.

My hope is to be able to demonstrate how a note collection can grow to form a model around a topic.

I also have all my other projects that I'm working on. I tend to bounce around a lot because that is the only way to keep my engagement high. Just have to track them so I will eventually come around to working on them again, as to avoid a giant list of half baked projects.

Will

@Nick said:
I started my "Evolution of a Notes Collection" project. Where I am going to read a set of 10 books. I am going to keep an on going Concept List. Every new meaningful concept I come across I am going to add to the list in green text. When I move onto the next book I take a screenshot, then all the green concepts become black. If I elaborate on a concept in the next book then I'll turn the concept orange. I will take a screenshot and graph view shot of the collection and list after reading each book.

Sounds like an interesting project. Which 10 books are on the list? How did you determine which ones make the cut and which ones to leave on the heap?

... to avoid a giant list of half baked projects.

I find the more I work in my zettelkasten the more interesting projects seem to well up from the ether. I have left a huge trail of 'half-backed projects' in my wake, but oh well. The alternative is not very appealing.

ethomasv

Digitizing my paper slips. Apparently my handwrite is not OCR friendly

GeoEng51

@ethomasv said:
Digitizing my paper slips. Apparently my handwrite is not OCR friendly

This might seem sacrilegious, but I handwrite notes on my iPad in GoodNotes (versus handwriting on paper). If I want to see a text version, Goodnote's tool to convert from handwriting to text is very good. I know you can import scanned, handwritten files into GoodNotes, but I haven't then tried applying the built-in conversion tool to produce text, but it might work. It's not, strictly speaking, OCR; I'm not sure what the technology is based on, but it is very effective.

ethomasv

Yes, I will have to try that - @GeoEng51 thank you for the suggestion! But, I am not expecting much. My m,n,u,h,k look like the same letter also, l and d sometimes, and t,f... What can I say, I can read it, I see no problem!

henrikenggaard

So much interesting stuff you are working on. Great to hear!

The past month has been quite hectic with publishing one paper and then almost immediately turning my attention to another -- and now submitted -- paper. This week, as a needed change, is going to focus on collecting my thoughts and plotting the next steps.

prometheanhindsight

I'm working on finishing up one final paper, and then starting writing my dissertation. Only have three weeks to put it together before I have to turn it.

Sascha

• Finally, the draft for the second edition of the ZKM (German) will be finished this week.
• Working with @Will on the big introduction for this blog.

jeannelking

@prometheanhindsight said:
I'm working on finishing up one final paper, and then starting writing my dissertation. Only have three weeks to put it together before I have to turn it.

Go, @prometheanhindsight!!!!! You can do it!!!!

jeannelking

The fall semester started on Monday, so this week I'm working on getting reacquainted with quantitative methodologies and diving deeper into creativity at work. Lots of reading on that front. Excited to be officially in year two of my PhD journey!

Also working on designing a series of executive leadership virtual offsites (using Zoom and MURAL), so doing deeper dives into matrix management and business planning processes in general.

We're also still building the elf houses for the front yard - roof rafters are going in at this point. Exciting!!!

Nick

@Will I can PM them if you are interested, but essentially 10-15 books I own on the topic of learning from a science and how to perspective. Some of the are generic popular science books and others are textbooks related to learning.

Didn't really have any rhyme or reason besides the book looks interesting or it covers learning from a different area than another book (e.g. Neuroscience of Learning textbook vs. Educational Psychology textbook).

Will

@Nick said:
I started my "Evolution of a Notes Collection" project. Where I am going to read a set of 10 books.

What caught my interest was the title of your project. I thought the books would be related to the "Evolution of a Notes Collection" not a collection of books that evolve a note collection. Maybe I misunderstand, I misunderstood before.

I get it now, you've made a project out of reading 10 books. Interesting goal to set for yourself. I going to keep an eye on your updates as you post more about "Concept List" & graph.

Nick

@Will People often wonder about how to start or create a zettelkasten. So this project is suppose to serve as a demonstration of how you can take a general concept and develop your understanding of it through reading books that come out over a long period of time (say 10 years).

Besides the topic of learning, I also thought about doing the same using a set of books on storytelling, outlined here. The point being to demonstrate how you can integrate information across space and time (different books & different years they are published) using a zettelkasten.