Ideas we're grappling with - April 6, 2023

Will

How has your week been? What are your plans for the coming week? Tell us about the state of you zettelkasting journey.

My week has been busy with medical issues that prevented me from making many new notes. I feel good now.
I'm learning more and more about Python programming using OpenAI's ChatGPT and GIT Copilot as my tutors.

I got my first two essays back from the professor in my food writing class, and I feel good about them. I am of a different generation than everyone else in the class, including the instructor. There are a couple of writers in the class that seem to be able to write a first draft of a 'writing prompt exercise' that is far more polished than my 'shitty first drafts'. They are modeling a skill that I aspire to.

While journaling this morning, I found a gem in an entry from one year ago today. It's very meta, and this is all very circular.

Zettelkasting and journaling are like workouts. You have a busy day ahead. Why journal? Journaling is not just another task. At first, you stumble with form. Like when you are a beginner at weight training, you struggle with repeatedly getting to the gym. You think it will help your physical health, but at first, you feel sore, tight, and tired, not at all the pinnacle of health. Eventually, if you stick with it, you might find a coach that helps with form, you might set up your environment so going to the gym feels natural, you might start to feel strength building, and you've started progressing on the climb to physical health.

All these weight training actions can be applied to zettelkasting and journaling. They train your mental health in the same way exercise trains your physical health. It's a slow process at first. You can't see the improvements day to day or even week to week. Improvement only comes with consistency.

I think I'll move this gem from my journal to my ZK. I have a couple of relevant notes on the mental health benefits of journaling.

My seven day zettel production

Sascha

What are thinking tactics and strategies? I ruminate on this idea for a week or more already.

As I am linking to the thread, I think Nassim Taleb is a great example of a thinking strategist.

There seem to be people who "get thinking" and others don't. I personally have both. Sometimes, I really get what is the correct direction of thinking. Other times, I feel stuck in the mud. I mean not that I sometimes get something but sometimes not. But I feel that sometimes I think correct even when I am not successful in reaching a desired level of understanding. Sometimes, I run around like a headless chicken.

When I see how the best chess players comment their play, they often immediately know that their way of thinking is wrong. It is not only that they know when they are wrong, but when being wrong is the logical consequence of their lack of correct elaboration.

ZettelDistraction

Speaking about the Zettelkasten as a communication partner, now I have a three-way conversation between ChatGPT-4, Grammarly, and my Zettelkasten, in which I record interchanges with ChatGPT about technical matters that I want to understand. Neither ChatGPT-3 nor ChatGPT-4 are as concise as Grammarly, which I rely on to simplify the large language model's answers and my own writing. ChatGPT can provide context often missing from vendor documentation. The following screen capture is from my first interaction with ChatGPT-4, which I used to check an explanation offered by ChatGPT-3.

The screenshot also illustrates my ID system. I get that no one is impressed. Instead of the category numbers of Luhmann's Folgezettel, I use keywords. Folgezettel, if they appear--they are optional--are dot-delimited groups of up to four characters each. A zero-separator precedes the timestamp, which is not optional.

Aside from technical documentation, I have mathematics and amateur radio projects I attempt to track in the ZK. For @GeoEng51: "Zero Retries is an independent newsletter about technological innovation in Amateur Radio. Zero Retries promotes Amateur Radio as (literally) a license to experiment with radio technology."

Maybe my computational mathematical experiments will lead somewhere. ChatGPT is less useful for this.

Edmund

@Will said:

How has your week been? What are your plans for the coming week? Tell us about the state of you zettelkasting journey.

My week has been a bit more active. I went for swimming and climbing. For my Zettelkasten I‘ve got an inspiration from @Will. Now I also have a „7 Days List“ in Obsidian and a new tag #type/inspiration. :-)

My 7 Days List

Surprisingly my script counts 1000 notes in my Zettelkasten. And the latest number was just your inspiration. Thank You @Will !

Will

Hi @Edmund,

I don't show my entire "ZK Stats" all the time. But you might be interested in this little snippet.
It helps me keep on top of where the level of my zettelkasting moves. The 10-day and the 100-day workflow give me a trend that I can quickly compare with the "since day zero" to objectively feel my place in the world.

This may sound grand, but from the current ZK Stats, I feel my ZK involvement is low because of class. This has been my experience of the periods where my coursework overwhelms my zettelkasting. Maybe overwhelm is too strong a word. I have created 63 notes tagged ENGL501 in the last 12 weeks. I watch this and expect it to rebound in a few weeks.

• Last year, on this day, I was at 20 notes in 10 days, 204 in 100 days, and 2.12 per day.
• Today I'm at 13 notes in the last ten days, 152 notes in 100 days, and I've dropped to 2.03 per day.
• This all can't be blamed on class pressures. Some of it concerns my growing disinterest in the mechanics of zettelkasting and just doing it.

Edmund

Hi @Will
a great inspiration. Thank You.

And today I’ve found a solution for Obsidian using Data View plugin.

Will

Hi @Edmund,

Yes, your Data View shows you where your current motivation is in relation to its history. I wonder if shortening the list might give a quicker view. I shortened my list so I could quickly visualize my motivation. I used new notes per day, but new notes per week works too. I'd recommend trimming the list because it will be skipped over if it is too busy for the eye. Remove the '1M & 3M & 6M' data points as they are just noise. And I'd emphasize the rate by putting it at the start of the line. I'd leave off the totals as they are irrelevant to the trend.

12 new notes per week - 1W
14.5 new notes per week - 1Y
16.6 new notes per week - All

At a glance, you can see how your production of new notes is slowing. There likely are many reasons. Your notes may be getting richer and more elaborate. The collector's fallacy may have initially captured you and are more discriminating now. You may spend more time per note (more time interacting with ideas). There could be all kinds of reasons, but I think it is good to reflect on them, and this little "Data View" helps me think about my motivation and productivity. I don't use this to beat myself up but more as a way to mentor myself.

Once again, I didn't know what to think until I started writing. I realize I don't see the day-to-day trend or the 100-day trend. I'm now going to revamp this little data view to include a ⬆︎ or ⬇︎ to indicate the tread. My idea for this data view is that it would be quick and unobtrusive but helpful to me.

Will

@Edmund, I've devised a way to include a trend in my data view. Simple and unobtrusive. At a glance, I can see a general picture of the health of my ZK. It is a floating 10-day and 100-day trend—just a little incentive to keep the arrows pointing up more days the having them point down.