What are you working on this week (2020-12-28 - 2021-01-03)?

jeannelking

It's the last round for 2020!

This week is vacation time for me, as my next semester starts on Monday. So, how am I spending my winter vacation?

• Finishing up zettels from the book I'm currently reading (Edgewalkers, by Judi Neal)
• Revisiting a 2019 paper I wrote on gnostic intermediaries so I may convert some of those insights into zettels as well
• Burning everything I possibly can! Delivery boxes, old illusions and delusions, fire logs, you name it! (I'm a hard-core fire-maker at the end of the year)
• Bringing more order into my spaces before the semester starts and all bets are off again
• Being ready to release 2020 and welcome a better 2021

How about you?

zk_1000

i am reorganising my files and folder for the coming year, installing a different OS and swapping everything on my desk from the right side to the left (this year it was on the right).

GeoEng51

I’ve just moved into a “new to me” house (it’s actually 40 years old) and my wife and I are trying to set everything up in an organized fashion. I spent today on my computer room, which is also a ham radio room, and am half-way through putting together a stand-up computer desk.

Within a day or two, I want to consider some suggestions on the forum recently about ways to organize my Zettelkasten (not that I was ignorant before, but there was good discussion and new material).

Anyway, hopefully by next week I’m back up to speed.

ctietze

• Over the past 10 days or so, I spend time here and there to tweak my Emacs configuration. I spend half of my day in a programming environment, and probably the other half in my notes and tasks and other self-organization files using Emacs, and some quirks got on my nerves. I also discovered the tasteful configuration of NANO Emacs and stole parts of that to please my eyes. chefskiss Can hardly resist hanging around in the editor now.
• The release that also bundles the image preview is coming along very slow, but I'm ironing out kink after kink. Surprisingly, this is closely related to making the auto-save more reliable, so that's good.
• One part of my Emacs configuration produced an overview of untackled tasks in my Inbox. I think I'll take some time soon to clean that neglected part up and throw away stuff for good.

Vinho

A lot of people seem to be tweaking their computer setup at the moment – so am I:

• Rethinking the citation management in my zettelkasten, more specifically trying to decide between using MultiMarkdown and Pandoc Markdown as a markup language and whether to put the full bibliography data on zettels manually (like @ctietze and @Sascha do) or use Pandoc to auto-create bibliographies on my zettels when I need to.
• Rethinking how to name my zettels, so I can easily find certain categories of them.
• Still thinking about the kinds of zettels in my zettelkasten, which is the basis for the article I've announced and started writing.
• Creating a few Keyboard Maestro macros to make my life easier.

Other things I have been or am doing:

• Thinking about what concepts are and when clear definitions make sense (in reply to this discussion with @Sascha.
• Starting to engage with Iain McGilchrist's "The Master and His Emissary"
• Thinking about how to get well-informed about important and controversial things like COVID-19 with a very limited amount of time at my disposal... (Any suggestions welcome!)

Will

Will is taking account of 2020 on this snowy day. We've huddled around to the stove, Mary, Zivon, and me. Jazz is on the radio. Mary is reading, Zivon is sleeping, and I'm talking with you.

Writing is a keystone skill I'm working on. My notes have been an invaluable resource. Social distancing has made spending time writing easier as nobody expects much interaction. It wasn't much different pre-pandemic, so I've not had much adjusting to do.

I'm working on my Zettelkasten Statics Dashboard (see above).
I'm working on integrating a Spaced Repetition Memory System in my life.
I'm trying to keep the snow plowed in the driveway (250 meters long and a 9% grade).
I'm re-evaluating my use of Evernote.

Ideas I'm testing in my notes.
1. YAML header
2. Simpler citations - I don't see myself using them in publishing.
3. inline SRMS prompts
4. incorporating tables
5. Added the prompt, "Why would my future self be interested in this?" to my note template. I try to answer this in a couple of phrases encapsulating the whole note. Most notes have only one idea, so this seems redundant. For some notes, it helps a lot.

ctietze

What's an SRMS @Will?

Will

@ctietze said:
What's an SRMS @Will?

Spaced Repetition Memory Systems. I'm not entirely sure what this practice is called. I'm developing and trying out in my note composition a method of writing prompts for use with ANKI in a personal spaced repetition practice. It is in early development.

Massimo_Curatella

@Will said:

5. Added the prompt, "Why would my future self be interested in this?" to my note template. I try to answer this in a couple of phrases encapsulating the whole note. Most notes have only one idea, so this seems redundant. For some notes, it helps a lot.

This is interesting, in my daily note template I have

" What do you want to accomplish in one year?"

which goes on pair with the previous

"What did you want to accomplish by today, one year ago?"

and after a few hundred times I find it immensely annoying so much so that I write cursing answers.

I think I will change that with something inspired by your prompts, something like

"What do you want to tell to your future self?"

it's less strictly tied to the one-year period and it would be applicable to any time in the future.

I get it's not the same thing but I need to experiment since my original prompt has become really unnerving.

If it works I would move the 1 year prompts to a weekly or monthly review, which would go along with a 5/10 year prompt in a yearly review. I don't know. Something like that.

Thanks, Will for sharing!