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What do you think - "Writing as a tool for though is overrated"?

Rethink Writing: Think Visually, Your Brain is Not Linear

Do you use such visuals in your ZK or other system?
Have you ever found yourself in a situation where you can't properly express your idea using text without visuals?
What do you think overall about message in the video?

Comments

  • Do you use such visuals in your ZK or other system?

    Yes, frequently. I treat visualisation as another language or medium that I can use to map an idea.

    Many of my ideas are mapped by complementing text and visuals.

    Have you ever found yourself in a situation where you can't properly express your idea using text without visuals?

    I wouldn't say that I couldn't express an idea, but the visual representation lead to yet another layer of depth of processing. This is a slide for the ZK101 that should be telling a lot:

    What do you think overall about message in the video?

    Too strong stated, I think. However, it might be because he submitted a bit too much to the medium (YouTube) which nudges towards overly strong positions. So, it might be just an issue of presentation.

    However, I wouldn't put one above the other, because each have their benefit for different phases and different materials.

    But I highly agree that the visual approach is underutilised or at least underrepresented.

    I am a Zettler

  • Apologies if this is off topic. Visual understanding is interesting stuff.

    I struggle with math, for example, and my best understanding comes from math as geometry.

    For instance, the algebra to show that (a+b)^2-4ab=(a-b)^2 is easy enough, but it gets falling-off-a-log simple if you draw that as Pythagorean twisted squares.

  • @Sascha
    Are they in your ZK notes as attached images or how do you implement those?

  • They are embedded like his:

    I am a Zettler

  • Just today Paul Graham posted this, somewhat related to the title (and Zettelkasten for that matter).

    Wrties and Write-Nots.

  • edited December 4

    Not for me.

    I think that visual representations are effective in some cases, but less effective in others.
    Sometimes you really benefit following the natural linear flow of text and its explicitness.

    Zsolt (a youtuber that I follow and I appreciate) cites UML diagrams, for example, but I don't feel comfortable creating and reading some of them :-)

    I also think that some of the benefits of visual representations can be obtained using appropriate structures (titles, headings, sections, bullet lists) and distribution of spaces in the text, instead of using huge pages of uniform text.
    Bad written, structured and formatted texts can be hard to read, but we can do much to improve them.
    (I can cite Information Mapping by Horn, even if there is almost nothing available on the internet about it, just the basic principle).

    Needs to be a lot of contextualization and case-by-case analysis, it is not a field of absolute truths. So, it's a good idea think of having both available, rather than necessarily choosing just one.

    Post edited by andang76 on
  • Zsolt (a youtuber that I follow and I appreciate) cites UML diagrams, for example

    These fell out of fashion, too, in the past decades. Their original promises never delivered. So it's not just you :)

    Author at Zettelkasten.de • https://christiantietze.de/

  • edited December 5

    @ctietze said:

    Zsolt (a youtuber that I follow and I appreciate) cites UML diagrams, for example

    These fell out of fashion, too, in the past decades. Their original promises never delivered. So it's not just you :)

    Remember Rational Rose? I don't. :trollface:

    As for writing, I agree with Leslie Lamport: "If you're thinking without writing, you only think you're thinking."

    Post edited by ZettelDistraction on

    GitHub. Erdős #2. Problems worthy of attack / prove their worth by hitting back. -- Piet Hein. Alter ego: Erel Dogg (not the first). CC BY-SA 4.0.

  • edited December 6

    I can cite> @Ydkd said:

    yes.
    I haven't found much stuff online, but the core principle is easy to grasp. It's all in the "before-after" image of your second link.
    Everyone can build their own model inspired by that image, in the end, without a lot of overthinking.
    A couple of issues to manage, anyway, in my opinion. A too strict and complex model of this kind can reduce creative thinking (a very strict structure can set too many limits to our thinking) and it can degrade into a very boring process. So, there's need a personal balance between benefits of structuring and benefits of freedom.

    Post edited by andang76 on
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