Share with us what is happening in your ZK this week. August 29, 2023

Will · August 2023

Swimming with Ideas

Another installment of the What Are You Working On? thread.
Add to this thread by telling us what is happening in and around your ZK journey. Join the community and enlighten us about your knowledge path trajectory. I do this for selfish reasons. It helps me clarify my goals and visualize my thinking. And sometimes, a conversation sparks an idea worth exploring.

Things I'm reading:

Blum, Andrew. The weather machine: a journey inside the forecast. 2019.
Solomon, Sheldon and Greenberg, Jeff and Pyszczynski, Thomas A.. The worm at the core: on the role of death in life. 2015.
Wright, Dale Stuart. Philosophical meditations on Zen Buddhism. 1998.
Donald, Merlin. A mind so rare: the evolution of human consciousness. 2002.
Illich, Ivan. In the vineyard of the text: a commentary to Hugh's Didascalicon. 1993.

Programming work/fun:

I'm refining my Vocabulary Builder, which uses Keyboard Maestro/OpenAI ChatGPT

Things I'm writing about:

I'm writing about the development of the reading brain from an anthropological-neuro-development angle. I am also outlining a historical fictional idea centered on the idea of reading's escape from something only the privileged classes knew about, which occurred in Catholic monasteries in the 1200s. It is hard to grasp that before the 1200s, hardly anybody read, whereas now almost everybody reads.
How to develop the skill of conversationalism.

Music I'm listening to:

Ideas I'm thinking about:

Creating a quick Backlink and Idea Graph demo for the ZK forums. I've been using this for a while. It answers the questions/complaints that The Archive doesn't automatically create backlinks or an idea graph.
The weather.

The "My rolling ten-day zettel production" is produced by a script for attachment to my daily journaling template. I do my journaling in Bear to keep personal journaling separate from my knowledge work.

My rolling ten-day zettel production

dax7 · August 2023

Wow. How are you so productive @Will . If possible can you share your daily routine and habits.

Will · August 2023

@dax7, what journeys have you taken in your zettelkasten in the last few weeks?

I don't feel productive. I just am. I'm retired, living in the country, with no kids. I'm a lifelong learner. Interstitial journaling lead to interstitial zettelkasting. I'm a note-taker.

I thought about detailing my routine, but as soon as I started, I noticed exceptions and exaggerations creep in and kept backtracking. I'm not sure how to measure productivity. I'm unsure if productivity has redeeming qualities or social or moral value. This mental quagmire does not help answer your question.

A couple of things I do that create opportunities for zettelkasting are:

I read at least three books at a time. The next book I'll read will often be discovered in the bibliography of a book I am currently reading.
Journal daily. As part of the journaling practice, review and refactor some notes. This could be random or systematic.
Adopt the persona of a note-taker.
Meditate
Exercise
Eat a healthy diet. Don't smoke. Don't drink.
Avoid mind pollutants like social media.

Where we put our attention is our life.
There is too much "I" in this post. Sorry.

Sascha · August 2023

Things I'm reading:

Fitzpatrick, The Workshop Survival Guide
Hanlon, Primal Branding

Fun

I actually watched an episode of Goblin Slayer. Perhaps, I will find the time to watch an episode every couple of days and process it (according to my approach, Zettelkasten for Fiction). Or if not: It is in my task management. Perhaps, I'll spoil myself when my wife and my daughter will visit friends of her for a couple of days.

Things I'm writing about

Templates and Guidelines for Workshops (improving my approach to coaching and improving my ZK to absorb my debriefings)
An unified theory of human action. (Unifying the dual processing theory, Daniel Kahneman's approach, Wendy Wood's work on habit, some theory on addiction, Jordan Peterson's work on meaning and belief, my adaptation of Kahneman's work, some philosophical stuff like the boundary between mind and body or the difference between consciousness as passive-perceiving and as active-agency etc.) It is 70% ready and I am pretty happy about this idea. Sadly, I don't know when I can finish this idea. But time will come.

Music I'm listening to

Gothic 3 game music
Chillwave

Ideas I'm thinking about

My wife told me that she don't know anybody (both men and women) who went into marriage that diligently and serious. While I take this as a compliment, it adds to the pile of my bewilderedness on why many people don't live life as if this is not a serious gift and responsibility.
How to approach the issue of individualization in knowledge work. People get very sensitive when they hear that it is not the primary issue of finding what feels best to them as they are, but that the task at hand needs them to adapt to it. I don't engage with this issue publicly because I don't have the right approach to it, though I see it as one of the major obstacles people run into. It makes it almost random if people actually develop a system that aids them or one that just gives them a nice feeling while being neutral or even just a distraction to their productivity.

ZettelDistraction · August 2023

@Will said:

Number 7 by itself is the key to enlightenment.

I read at least three books at a time. The next book I'll read will often be discovered in the bibliography of a book I am currently reading.

Journal daily. As part of the journaling practice, review and refactor some notes. This could be random or systematic.

Adopt the persona of a note-taker.

Meditate

Exercise

Eat a healthy diet. Don't smoke. Don't drink.

Avoid mind pollutants like social media.

Now for my subset

I read Mostly.
Journal daily. I frequently forget to take notes with pen and paper. Now I have the pen and paper ready. At least the paper and the notebooks. The pens are in a drawer. I'll get them.
Adopt the persona of a note taker. I keep forgetting to follow Sonke Ahrens's advice to make writing the most important thing in life, even more important than my cats.
Meditate Ruminate.
Exercise Vegetate.
Eat a healthy diet. I try to avoid processed food if I can. Did you know that the hamentashen is a gateway pastry? Don't smoke. Don't drink. That's true: I've never smoked, and have an aversion to alcohol. No narcotics--never used them.
Avoid mind pollutants like social media. Now this is something I aspire to. Occasionally I indulge in Reddit. I've ditched the platform formerly known as Twitter. I tried to warm up to Mastodon in its various federated instances, but I either could not stay interested, or the potentially interesting instance (mathstodon.xyz) depressed me the way that the anatomical, financial, spiritual, philosophical, ontological, epistemological, pharmacological, neurological, intellectual, sociological, phonological, and psychological perfection of Instagram influencers depresses teenagers to the point of suicidal ideation. Add the tedious, effluvial stream of didactic, presumptuously scolding, moralizing posts by the Arbiters of Thought into the mix and color me alienated. Instagram and Facebook bore me. I don't use WhatsApp, Threads, or TikTok. I had have a solitaire addiction.

I'm working on a mathematical programming project that introduces introspection into machine learning.

Will · August 2023

@ZettelDistraction said:

Number 7 by itself is the key to enlightenment.

Clearly, I've been wrong this whole time. I was under the impression that #4 and #6 were the keys to enlightenment. I'll have to reorder my thinking. Thanks for the tip.

I had missed Sonke Ahrens's advice to make writing the most important thing in life. Thanks for the tip.

Two tips in one post! Fantastic.
Looks like I have some work to do.

ctietze · August 2023

Things that are happening

Zettelkasten book manuscript. LaTeX typesetting is, uh, interesting. Taking a lot of time (slow feedback cycles, need to look up a ton of stuff). But also getting more fun as things progress, thankfully.
We're attending a drawing/sketching workshop this weekend. That should help recharge batteries, as it feels like I've not coped well with the relative isolation of the past weeks. (Wife was on various events/trips and I didn't make time to meet with friends.)
Freelance work project is soon wrapping up. Preparing tasks for full-time development on The Archive (which I can't do 'on the side'; also the book manuscript has higher priority than small tasks, so that's why things've been stalling lately (thanks to y'all for your patience!)).

Reading

Daniel Steinberg: "Async Café" (a Swift book)
Lion Feuchtwanger: "Erfolg"

Zettel production

I'm on a roll in recent weeks (months?). Got to check monthly stats next week.

Past 10 Day Production

202308301117 Pass referenced object to method by value in C++23 as explicit self
202308301106 Trait structs via deduced self in C++23
202308301105 § Deducing Self and this in C++23
202308301102 Recursive lambdas in C++23 via auto deducing self
202308301004 Team members who make programming easier
202308300822 Highlight NSMenuItem programmatically with private API
202308290839 Update MacTeX distribution of TeX Live
202308290819 Tasteful LaTeX font selections
202308282201 Launch The Archive with a different folder
202308262214 Result vs exception
202308262151 Error conditions in API design
202308260922 Direction vector
202308260859 Variadic template function in C++
202308260857 Tail-recurse functions at compile time into linear sequences in C++
202308260842 Use RAII to represent the system process of drawing a frame
202308260835 Busy loop
202308252111 Umsatzsteuer-Dauerfristverlängerung
202308251827 Quotes on open mindedness to annoy people
202308241535 Spatial room--house--neighborhood metaphor for symbol lookup
202308241345 Key to programing is to know what not to think about
202308241320 Historisch gewachsen - nicht-Erklärung für schlechten Code
202308241235 Workflow to bulk rename filtered file list in Dired
202308241125 strlcpy null-terminates strings
202308241058 Concept-Free Programming
202308222222 Quadratic Bezier Curves with one control point
202308222214 Linear interpolation algorithm
202308222156 De Casteljau algorithm to interpolate cubic Bezier Curves
202308221601 Rewriting software components requires incremental change
202308221351 DHH moves back to USA to evade homogenous society
202308221334 Fire system designers who look deeply at problems to get things done
202308221111 Examples of black box in system design
202308211334 Personal growth happens in the margins of life
202308210823 Granularity in programming

ZettelDistraction · August 2023

@Will said:

@ZettelDistraction said:

Number 7 by itself is the key to enlightenment.

Clearly, I've been wrong this whole time. I was under the impression that #4 and #6 were the keys to enlightenment. I'll have to reorder my thinking. Thanks for the tip.

They might have been, prior to the Internet. Standards have declined.

I had missed Sonke Ahrens's advice to make writing the most important thing in life. Thanks for the tip.

Here are the direct quotes from (Ahrens 2017).

If writing is the medium of research and studying nothing else than research, then there is no reason not to work as if nothing else counts than writing.

Focusing on writing as if nothing else counts does not necessarily mean you should do everything else less well, but it certainly makes you do everything else differently.

Even if you decide never to write a single line of a manuscript, you will improve your reading, thinking and other intellectual skills just by doing everything as if nothing counts other than writing.

The last quote is the fully unqualified normative commitment to a life in which nothing counts other than writing. Ahrens says you should do "... everything as if nothing counts other than writing." What else is there? Some say the unexamined life is not worth living. Others say the key to happiness is to be interested, and still others suggest finding something bigger than yourself and devoting your life to it. But Ahrens advocates the instrumentalism of the monomaniac writer if we take the assertion at face value and possibly out of context (nuance is a wet blanket on occasions like this).

I'm supposed to add the reference cited, but I'm worn out.

ctietze · August 2023

I'm spoiled by the internet and think of Universal Paperclips when I hear "as if nothing counts other than writing".

Sascha · August 2023

@Will is already living a pretty nootropic live.

Just to add to it: It is very strange to me that few people who like to use their minds don't maintain it from all angles.

Magnus Carlson, one of the three candidates for being the GOAT of chess (Kasparov and Fisher are the others), is famous for his ability to hold his concentration for a long time. All chess players agree that physical fitness is a main pillar for being able to concentrate more than a couple of hours. So, if highly gifted and trained thinkers cannot maintain their focus for more than a couple of hours, how can us normal people expect to accumulate enough deeply concentrated hours to either achieve something or feel satisfied.

Just like a soccer player who smokes before the game:

ZettelDistraction · August 2023

@ctietze said:
I'm spoiled by the internet and think of Universal Paperclips when I hear "as if nothing counts other than writing".

Will · August 2023

@Sascha said:

Ideas I'm thinking about

How to approach the issue of individualization in knowledge work. People get very sensitive when they hear that it is not the primary issue of finding what feels best to them as they are but that the task at hand needs them to adapt to it. I don't engage with this issue publicly because I don't have the right approach to it, though I see it as one of the major obstacles people run into. It makes it almost random if people actually develop a system that aids them or one that just gives them a nice feeling while being neutral or even just a distraction to their productivity.

Agreed, the path we choose for knowledge system development is often random, influenced by many factors within and outside our control.

The most comfortable path isn't always the most effective one. While settling for a practice that makes us feel right and good is tempting, it might not always yield the best results. Instead, the way to success is to adopt practices that present more challenges and are backed by scientific evidence and require a more nuanced understanding. Though it may be more complex, it is often more effective. It's about embracing the friction as part of the learning process and using it to fuel growth and development.

Grasping the distinction between an individualistic mindset and embracing the reality of the task at hand has been a transformative experience. An individualistic approach, often fueled by a sensitive ego, can lead to thinking our desires and preconceptions are best in situations where we should be open to learning from the reality/science of the task at hand. However, when I started focusing more on the reality of the situation, setting my fragile ego's desire for what feels good aside, I found myself adapting and learning more effectively. This shift from an ego-driven, individualistic approach to a more reality-centered one has significantly enhanced my ability to navigate the intricacies of knowledge work.

For me, this project is not done.

prometheanhindsight · August 2023

My primary task over the last week (few months, really) has been working on applications to faculty positions, which start coming due within the next month. I thought that the first one was due tomorrow, but that deadline turned out to be an error so my actual first due date is in two more weeks.

I find these high stress writing moments to be a good test of how well I have been up-keeping my notes system. How much does my ZK aid in writing drafts for a deadline, versus how often am I closing the ZK in favor of going to google or searching my reference manager. It's expected that any draft will require looking up new information, but if the entire process is easier to do without looking at my ZK then I'm probably approaching something wrong in how I'm building my notes.

This process has, indeed, revealed that I think I'm focusing on the wrong things in my notes. However, that may just be job-related growing pains instead of an actual error in my previous notes approach. Writing a proposal for future research requires a different sort of reading focus than does writing a research paper for near-term publication. My notes and current position reflect the latter, but faculty job applications require a lot more of the former.

So, other than just working on the applications, I'm thinking about what I can do differently so that my notes can grow to suit this newer reading focus.

Will · August 2023

Cool, @prometheanhindsight, a new picture and a nice smile!

Thanks for sharing. You point out something I can see in my ZK. When my activities in the world change, the flavor of my notes changes. I'm guilty of a Newness Bias.

Being retired, I don't have the same writing stress you have. I do see how the quality of zettelkasting matters. Comparing time referencing notes vs. time searching Google and referencing Zotero is a good measure of the quality of my past zettelkasting.

I wish you luck finding the right fit for your faculty position search.

dc3 · September 2023

How about:

I'm new here discovered this forum after reading an Amazon review on Ahrens book by googling the concept of "Zettlekasten". Went down the rabbit hole of reading articles on here after the introduction, read @ZettelDistraction 's github on workflow since I use Windows and am an aspiring mathematician, suffered from information overload and paralysis from this whole new and appealing knowledge management system I want to implement, coming out of the other side of it, though trying to imagine how this can work for my math work, read the simple advice of @Sascha from one of the blog entries to "just start", and now I am here..............jumbled paragraph of thoughts and a stream of consciousness.....Hello Folks hope to be more involved soon.

GeoEng51 · September 2023

@dc3 Welcome to the forum, and you hit upon the best piece of advice here. We' ve all gone through the initial process of trying to understand terms and figure out what we want to do. But @Sascha 's advice is spot on - just start, in a simple manner, and then add elements of how you create and link zettels, possibly create structure notes, create tags, etc. Do them one by one, try them out, retain if you like what they do for you, otherwise, discard. Over time, you'll develop a workflow that is tailored to you. But don't be in a rush to get it "perfect", all at once - it takes time and experimentation to figure out what is perfect for you. For example, right up front is the "create zettels" - how long should they be, or alternatively, how "atomic"? You only know what is right for you by trying Experiment with different kinds / lengths of zettels, then post some here and get feedback. The forum members are always willing to give their opinions, in a kindly manner.

ZettelDistraction · September 2023

Here's what materialized in my Zettelkasten this week.

A parable on computational functionalism

A computational functionalist smugly insisted that, like the points and lines of projective geometry, it doesn't matter what mental states are as long as they satisfy specific functional properties.

Did you know that Maxwell's Demon, being chronically underemployed, earns a modest income as The Devil's Advocate?

"What functional properties?" it wondered.

"Good question!" said the Boltzmann Brain, appearing in the vacuum created by the Demon.

The computational functionalist held his breath.

"We observe your intense cerebrations with equanimity," the Brain and the Demon remarked in unison.

At last, the blue-faced computational functionalist raised his superior eyebrows and, with the remaining air in his lungs, gasped,

"THE FUNCTIONAL PROPERTIES ARE THE UNDEFINED TERMS OF COMPUTATIONAL FUNCTIONALISM!"

"It's undefined terms satisfying functional relationships all the way down," sighed the Demon while releasing the airlock.

"We'll never know what it's like to be a state," grumbled the Boltzmann Brain, disintegrating.

ZettelDistraction · September 2023

@dc3 said:
How about:

I'm new here discovered this forum after reading an Amazon review on Ahrens book by googling the concept of "Zettlekasten". Went down the rabbit hole of reading articles on here after the introduction, read @ZettelDistraction 's github on workflow since I use Windows and am an aspiring mathematician...

The GitHub now has two templates, one "simplified" by ChatGPT, and the latest. After resisting YAML for two years, except in the case of reference-section-title:, I'm adding the title: YAML variable, which duplicates the H1 header for software compatibility with Zettlr, Obsidian (which I hardly use) and other editors.

dc3 · September 2023

@ZettelDistraction said:

@dc3 said:
How about:

I'm new here discovered this forum after reading an Amazon review on Ahrens book by googling the concept of "Zettlekasten". Went down the rabbit hole of reading articles on here after the introduction, read @ZettelDistraction 's github on workflow since I use Windows and am an aspiring mathematician...

The GitHub now has two templates, one "simplified" by ChatGPT, and the latest. After resisting YAML for two years, except in the case of reference-section-title:, I'm adding the title: YAML variable, which duplicates the H1 header for software compatibility with Zettlr, Obsidian (which I hardly use) and other editors.

Thanks for adding this. I've started courses again recently at my school and I've been trying to figure out how to implement the method to my math notes. I'm not concerned about the latex part specifically, but I want to ask how do you structure the ideas. As we know with math/stats texts we get presented: Theroem --> Proof --> Examples/Small Commentary. From this framework I can easily visualize making zettels for the theorems. I'd most likely just leave out the proofs from teh zettels. But how to capture the ideas of the theorems and their uses through zettels? I don't want to just copy the textbook and typing out commentary and examples for each zettel doesn't appear to be very conducive....I'm going to search through posts in the forum because I know this is far from a unique problem I'm having.

ZettelDistraction · September 2023

@ZettelDistraction said:
I'm adding the title: YAML variable, which duplicates the H1 header for software compatibility with Zettlr, Obsidian (which I hardly use [now that Zettlr can update links if the filename changes]), and other editors.

I have to add the title: YAML variable to the beginning of the examples in GitHub.
---
title:
reference-section-title:
more-header-includes:
...
---
I've done this in my notes. (With a program that added the title: variable somewhere in the middle, in a few cases, but I blame ChatGPT4 and myself for not checking the code.)

@dc3 said: (apologies for light editing)
I've started courses again recently at my school, and I've been trying to figure out how to implement the method to my math notes. I'm not concerned about the latex part, but I want to ask how you structure the ideas. As we know, with math/stats texts, we get presented: Theorem --> Proof --> Examples/Small Commentary.

I have a few approaches to this. Outlines of more or less settled exposition are apparent. I write down what I need help understanding, what I could work on next, calculations omitted from a proof or an argument, solutions to problems or turning points in solutions to problems and proofs, examples, references I should read, misconceptions, etc. This approach leaves several incomplete branches in the Zettelkasten, some of which I eventually revisit. The rest are left hanging.

My situation is different. My mathematics degree was an exponentially wasting asset whose value plummeted to zero almost immediately upon graduation. I'm not under pressure to absorb someone's syllabus. I'll sleep on problems or let them sit for weeks or months before I return to them.

There is advice by several mathematicians who write that the student needs to advance enough to absorb large amounts of mathematics without having to check every detail. I thought I read this in the second edition of Foundations of Modern Probability by Olav Kallenberg, but I cannot locate it. Then I might have read it in one of J. Peter May's books on topology, but I cannot find that either. The advice disappears from every reference where I vaguely recall reading it. In any case, the Zettelkasten can help you get to that point--if that's what you want.

Some advice I tell myself: watch out for functional fixedness in mathematics.

Zettelkasten Forum

Share with us what is happening in your ZK this week. August 29, 2023

Swimming with Ideas

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