Brainstorming: What is the inventory of knowledge work?

Sascha

Dear Zettlers,

I am in the process of restructuring my training regimen to align it with the new role of fitness in my life. (You can have a badly translated version of my last article here)

I am building an inventory of training stimuli for that. I am doing something similar like a factor analysis. For many years, for example, my aerobic endurance (roughly, what you normally associate with endurance if you are not into sports science) training was distributed over many different other training sessions that you'd normally not associate with aerobic endurance. Like that I could skip long sessions of running, biking etc. and use that freed up time and energy for other training while still having a solid aerobic base (for recovery between bouts of intensity and between exercise sessions).

I thought that I'd create something similar for knowledge work. Examples are items like reading physical books, attributes like screen time (to highlight a benefit of physical books over ebooks) or requirements like daily empty time slots (like my dog walks in which I do nothing, but just listen to the sound of the world).

So, what should be considered?

Live long and prosper
Sascha

andang76

mmm. It's hard

I can talk only for my experience, laying some banal thoughts.

In the last year (october 2022) I've discovered, in an ordered walk, markdown, then markdown-based tools for notetaking, then Zettelkasten, then the existence of the whole world of personal knowledge management.
The steps of this journey have improved me to a level that may have changed my life. It's a little weird discover having this change at the age of 47...

Thinking about this short but intense journey, I think that the biggest step I've done is freeing me from the bad habit of collecting.
It was really a freedom.
I've spent years to fill archives of stuff. In the last year I've obtained more knowledge than the previous, processing much less stuff and much less slower but better.
I think that the real impact that Zettelkasten has had for me is forcing to deep think when I apply. It's not the set of obtained notes the value, it's the process I must have doing these that trains me.

In the next week I've processed a second time some of the articles found in this forum (Holistic thinking, backlinking, and few others). I read them the first time many months ago, with much less experience than now, and still close to shallow reading rather than deep thinking.
When I've read now, I've spent whole days in the process of "making notes". The improvement I've noticed is incredible. Now I can say that I've understand them, I can talk with others about their content, I can write about.

Jvet

Hi Sascha, I read your blog post using Apple translator and reading also this post I’m having some trouble understanding what do you mean with an inventory for training and an inventory for Knowledge work.

Do you mean things, habits and activities you are keeping track of with the goal of maintaining that area of your life?

Maybe with further clarification I can provide better insight. English isn’t my native language, so maybe that’s also a reason I couldn’t grasp what you meant.

GeoEng51

@andang76 said:

In the last year (october 2022) I've discovered, in an ordered walk, markdown, then markdown-based tools for notetaking, then Zettelkasten, then the existence of the whole world of personal knowledge management.
The steps of this journey have improved me to a level that may have changed my life. It's a little weird discover having this change at the age of 47...

Haha! I went through the same process at 70, after I'd officially "retired" (although I don't think I'll ever really retire). Anyway, it came as a pleasant surprise to me, as well. I wonder what other unknown goodies are waiting out there for us?

Andy

@Jvet said:

I’m having some trouble understanding what do you mean with an inventory for training and an inventory for Knowledge work.

@Jvet: I suggest you read the comment that Sascha wrote last week, "How much can we push the boundaries of our minds?". I think Sascha is talking about the same idea here: What list (inventory) of specific activities constitute a mind-training regimen for developing expertise in knowledge work that would be analogous to a list of specific activities that constitute a physical-training regimen for developing an athletic quality such as endurance?

@Sascha: Your request reminded me of something I wrote in my comments in the discussion "Learning from Chess about Thinking (What is a good idea?)", which I will copy and paste:

while the most general procedural forms of argumentation are "field-independent" (independent of the subject being discussed), many of the criteria for evaluating discourse are "field-dependent" (related to the subject being discussed). Strategic "moves" in knowledge building could be either field-independent or field-dependent. Knowledge-building skill requires both general and subject-specific training.

It may be helpful to inventory both general/field-independent and subject-specific/field-dependent activities for building expertise in knowledge work. I am not an educator, but there must be very many resources about this in the field of education, because are not the highest levels of education (graduate-level education) about building expertise in knowledge work and doing knowledge work?

Sascha

@andang76 said:
When I've read now, I've spent whole days in the process of "making notes". The improvement I've noticed is incredible.

This is one item: Full Day Note Taking.

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@Jvet

Do you mean things, habits and activities you are keeping track of with the goal of maintaining that area of your life?

I don't have any clue yet.

But to make the comparison:

For physical health, your mitochondrial health is crucial. This leads to the following items:

• Zone 2 Training
• VO2max Training (e.g. 4min intervals with 3min rest period)
• Explosive movements in a slightly metabolically challenged situation (e.g. sprint repeats)

So, it is about tools and then coming up with a collection of must-haves.

Within the above example: You have to have 3-4 bouts per week in which you stimulate mitochondrial biogenesis for health.

@Andy said:
It may be helpful to inventory both general/field-independent and subject-specific/field-dependent activities for building expertise in knowledge work.

This would be later, when the inventory is big enough.