Mindscapes: Thinking Environments in Your Way of Living • Zettelkasten Method

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Mindscapes: Thinking Environments in Your Way of Living • Zettelkasten Method

Habitats of the Mind: Actively shape the thinking environments of your life. Your mind will thank you.

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Loni

To prepare my novels and scenarii, I take my earbuds, some inspiring music and, indeed, I have my better ideas while walking into the woods. Running takes all of my concentration for now, but I feel a lot more clarity into my mind after that.

Did you know the "sens of awe"? The "sens of awe" seems even to help with MDD and inspire positive emotions

Andy

"The Walk as a Thinking Environment" is the first section in this post. Coincidentally, yesterday I discovered the book Philosophers' Walks (Routledge, 2021) by Canadian philosopher Bruce Baugh. Baugh chose a set of philosophers and writers, and he "walked in their footsteps, in cities, fields, and forests, on mountain trails and level plains, in the hope of gaining some insight into the connection between their walking and their thinking. This book is the record of those philosophers' walks and the thoughts they inspired."

Baugh acknowledges other writers on walking in the first chapter: "I've been guided on my way by some outstanding contemporary writers on walking: Rebecca Solnit, Lauren Elkin, Mary Soderstrom, Joseph Amato, David Le Breton, Frédéric Gros, Jean-Louis Hue, Phil Smith, Dan Rubinstein, Robert Macfarlane, Nan Shepherd, Karen Till, Alyson Hallett, Jo Vergunst, Tim Ingold, and Michel de Certeau. Voices from the past—Dorothy Wordsworth, Robert Louis Stevenson, William Hazlitt, Henry David Thoreau, Charles Baudelaire, Walter Benjamin, Guy Debord—kept me company along the way. You will meet them all en route."

This is not a book recommendation, just a chance temporal coincidence.

KillerWhale

I strongly believe context becomes more and more relevant in our current, computerized, increasingly virtual environments, as it sends a clear signal to the brain what we are currently doing. Change wallpapers, lighting, quit irrelevant apps when switching tasks if nothing else. Many fiction writers recommend using different media when creating than from editing or doing business. Neil Gaiman writes longhand and edits on the computer, Dean Wesley Smith uses a separate laptop for the writing, I've had tremendous success using writer's decks (e-ink typewriters such as the Freewrite).

Will

@Andy, I know you qualified your recommendation, but looking at the synopsis, it looks right up my alley. Thank you again. Two contemporary writers not mentioned by Baugh, whom I will whole-heartedly recommend, are Geoff Nicholson, particularly his 2023 book, "Walking On Thin Air: A Life’s Journey in 99 Steps," and "Silence in the Age of Noise" by Erling Kagge.

Emmerix

I like your blog. Thinking deep is important in our world and it makes us "homo sapiens". Unfortunately, we live in a world that is increasingly governed by superficial attention seekers and anti-intellectual persons, but I like to focus on improving our tools for thinking in a differentiated and balanced way. And thinking is a craft as well. In my profession I develop mathematical approaches to solve complex real world problems with conflicting objectives, e.g., how to build a sustainable economy or solve problems in engineering design. I often need to dive into various application domains and need to get a good understanding of them, or develop theoretical results that are part of my publications. The Zettelkasten technique and some of the techniques to stay focused and to enjoy focused thinking described here I also apply and find it interesting to learn more about them.