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We Need a Gym for the Mind • Zettelkasten Method

SystemSystem
edited July 7 in Project: Zettelkasten.de
imageWe Need a Gym for the Mind • Zettelkasten Method

Building real knowledge takes a straining effort. Once external pressure disappears we avoid it by instinct. The way out is to condition ourselves to love the strain, and the Zettelkasten Method is built to be that gym for the mind for you.

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Comments

  • wjenkins81wjenkins81

    I understood before that the strain is what develops our mind, but actually loving the strain is not something I've considered.

    When I've been in phases of higher levels of physical training, because of a challenge like a half-marathon or whatever, I also found it hard to love the strain, even though I knew that was where further stamina would come from.

    The next few times I do physical exercise or spaced repetition memory training, I will actively try to enjoy it. Let's see how it goes.

  • AmontilladoAmontillado

    Back in college when I had something to learn that was both beyond my understanding and tedious, I would try to take a third person point of view.

    There I sat with an undisciplined brain more interested in dirt bikes than the subject matter. Instead of putting my emotional focus on the un-fun subject, I would try to watch understanding grow. It worked, at least to some degree.

    The process of learning is fascinating. The particular subject may make my eyes roll up in my head, but watching mental processes beyond conscious control categorize and synthesize is really quite something even if I don't have any interest in the facts I'm presented with.

    If only I had known what a Zettelkasten was back then, remembering Brando more fondly than calculus, I coulda been a contender!

  • SaschaSascha

    @wjenkins81 said:
    I understood before that the strain is what develops our mind, but actually loving the strain is not something I've considered.

    It is a very unlikely thought to have. The "How To" is actually a foundational piece of my life's work. The label for this is "The Will to Pain". You can find a small glimpse into that concept here: https://me-improved.de/der-lebenskompass (Keep in mind that my usage of German is a little bit unconventional, a bit dated and a bit off due to repurposing of some words. But a machine translation is good enough to give you some idea)

    When I've been in phases of higher levels of physical training, because of a challenge like a half-marathon or whatever, I also found it hard to love the strain, even though I knew that was where further stamina would come from.

    The difficulty with this is twofold:

    1. Both a biological and cultural tendency to hedonism. With hedonism, I mean the belief that positive emotions are by themselves valuable. That means: If you don't change anything but increase the level of positive emotions, the change is good. (I can't get too much into the weeds of what "good" means here, because I'd have to write novels in a language that seems to actively resist my thinking)
    2. A too tight association of love and emotions (or feelings?). Because the everyday word for love is quite connected to a positive feeling, the various greek variations for love (e.g. agape, philia, etc) seep into a deeper inquiry of the phenomenon of love because English (German btw. as well) lack here, which, together with the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis could be woven into an interesting, yet pessimistic story.

    To give you an example: I kiss and hug my wife, only correlated with my feelings for her.

    I promised God that I would love my wife until death do us part. Neither the daily routine—which distracts me or makes the butterflies in my stomach a bit sluggish—nor my anger when we've had an argument can separate me from her.

    Faithfulness does not just mean remaining faithful to my wife by excluding intimacy with other women. It also means that, because she is likewise faithful to me, I am her sole source of feeling desired and accepted as a woman. This means I have a duty to give her that feeling. I am not relieved of this duty just because we've had an argument or because the grind of daily life makes me numb.

    That is part of love.

    (Ironically, a LLM translation of German)

    To truly love the strain (I'd rather write pain, but it seems to me that this is too much for too many people), one has to dig deep into one's foundation. I highly recommend to listen to David Goggins work carefully. He is completely misunderstood for just beating yourself up to become hard. His work is way deeper philosophically than he gets credit for.

    I got carried away.

    I am a Zettler

  • MartinMartin

    I like the "gym for the mind" metaphor, because I like Saschas approach to the world and his deep understanding of Zettelkasten work, but coming from botany and ecology, I instinctively reach for a different one.

    A gym optimizes performance through controlled stress, repetition, progressive overload, and measurable improvement. That is a powerful model for developing specific abilities. But it is little bit boring. Ecosystems thrive not because every component is optimized, but because they are diverse, redundant, and full of seemingly inefficient interactions. What looks like waste from an engineering perspective often turns out to be the source of resilience.
    The same may be true for knowledge systems.

    A healthy Zettelkasten is perhaps not only a gym where ideas are trained, but also a garden where ideas are allowed to germinate, compete, cross-pollinate, and sometimes remain dormant for years before suddenly becoming relevant. And that is not because of a lack of training, and consistency, and constant work.

    Efficiency and resilience often exist in tension. Highly optimized systems are fragile because they eliminate redundancy and unexpected pathways. Diverse systems, on the other hand, sacrifice some efficiency in exchange for adaptability and the possibility of serendipitous discoveries.

    When we face increasingly complex and unpredictable problems – as in the world around us, I wonder whether cultivating serendipity, redundancy, and rich networks may be just as important as cultivating discipline and cognitive endurance. Perhaps the Zettelkasten is at its best when it is both: a gym for strengthening the mind and a garden that allows knowledge to evolve organically. You can not garden properly without a strong mind and body. :wink:

  • tomptomp

    @Martin said:
    I like the "gym for the mind" metaphor, because I like Saschas approach to the world and his deep understanding of Zettelkasten work, but coming from botany and ecology, I instinctively reach for a different one.

    A gym optimizes performance through controlled stress, repetition, progressive overload, and measurable improvement. That is a powerful model for developing specific abilities. But it is little bit boring. Ecosystems thrive not because every component is optimized, but because they are diverse, redundant, and full of seemingly inefficient interactions. What looks like waste from an engineering perspective often turns out to be the source of resilience.
    The same may be true for knowledge systems.

    A healthy Zettelkasten is perhaps not only a gym where ideas are trained, but also a garden where ideas are allowed to germinate, compete, cross-pollinate, and sometimes remain dormant for years before suddenly becoming relevant. And that is not because of a lack of training, and consistency, and constant work.

    I think of a Zettelkasten as a cognitive instrument that contains a range of motifs (think short musical scores). Like a musical instrument, it takes practice to develop skill, and practice needs to be ongoing. The motifs can be combined to make different musical performances, and, if the player has developed the ability he can riff off of and combine existing motifs to create something new. Think of jazz musicians taking a well-known standard and creating something that sounds new and fresh.

    With this picture both practice and gardening are important, just as you wrote.

    I wonder whether cultivating serendipity, redundancy, and rich networks may be just as important as cultivating discipline and cognitive endurance.

    Yes, just so.

  • andang76andang76
    edited July 13

    "The Zettelkasten Method is designed to become a gym for your mind. Your Zettelkasten is the place where you can learn to love the strain"

    I completely agree. Both as a Zettelkasten practitioner and as a runner :-)

    As I’ve written in the past, I see a huge risk in the uncontrolled and unmanaged use of AI in knowledge development. It’s like equipping an athlete with a motor: it relieves the strain, but it strips away the benefits of training, giving a false sense of obtained performance.

    However, a reflection that comes naturally to me now regarding the parallel between my two activities (zettelkasten and running) is how to transpose the importance of intensity modulation, recovery, and rest (typical of a well-designed training program, and I'm following something like the 80-20 approach in running) into the world of knowledge.
    I really like the idea of loving the strain, but in running, especially among beginners, there’s a huge misconception that you always have to train at maximum effort, in every run :-)
    I would love to develop this parallel. Interesting insights might emerge

  • andang76andang76
    edited July 13

    @Martin said:
    I like the "gym for the mind" metaphor, because I like Saschas approach to the world and his deep understanding of Zettelkasten work, but coming from botany and ecology, I instinctively reach for a different one.

    A gym optimizes performance through controlled stress, repetition, progressive overload, and measurable improvement. That is a powerful model for developing specific abilities. But it is little bit boring. Ecosystems thrive not because every component is optimized, but because they are diverse, redundant, and full of seemingly inefficient interactions. What looks like waste from an engineering perspective often turns out to be the source of resilience.
    The same may be true for knowledge systems.

    A healthy Zettelkasten is perhaps not only a gym where ideas are trained, but also a garden where ideas are allowed to germinate, compete, cross-pollinate, and sometimes remain dormant for years before suddenly becoming relevant. And that is not because of a lack of training, and consistency, and constant work.

    Efficiency and resilience often exist in tension. Highly optimized systems are fragile because they eliminate redundancy and unexpected pathways. Diverse systems, on the other hand, sacrifice some efficiency in exchange for adaptability and the possibility of serendipitous discoveries.

    When we face increasingly complex and unpredictable problems – as in the world around us, I wonder whether cultivating serendipity, redundancy, and rich networks may be just as important as cultivating discipline and cognitive endurance. Perhaps the Zettelkasten is at its best when it is both: a gym for strengthening the mind and a garden that allows knowledge to evolve organically. You can not garden properly without a strong mind and body. :wink:

    I really love this reading as well, and I find this one very close to me, too.
    At this point, the question I ask myself is: how is it possible to find them both deeply true (gym, or running in my case, and gardening)?
    And yes, the answer is that we probably need different approaches for different moments in our lives.
    Actually, I have always avoided making my Zettelkasten activity always and exclusively productivity-oriented, in particular.

    One thing, however, the two visions share, and perhaps this is a key: they both require patience, consistency, and dedication—in other words, time invested. They are not processes from which you get much if you dedicate little time to them. Perhaps effort can be understood as dedicated time

    Post edited by andang76 on
  • tomptomp

    @andang76 said:
    "The Zettelkasten Method is designed to become a gym for your mind. Your Zettelkasten is the place where you can learn to love the strain"

    I completely agree. Both as a Zettelkasten practitioner and as a runner :-)
    ...
    However, a reflection that comes naturally to me now regarding the parallel between my two activities (zettelkasten and running) is how to transpose the importance of intensity modulation, recovery, and rest...
    I would love to develop this parallel. Interesting insights might emerge

    Remember that cognitive and psychological sciences are useful parallel bodies of information to draw from here.

  • harrharr
    edited July 14

    In the podcast Cal Newport rejects prescience. Ten years earlier he had only noticed that "the present was crazy to me". Back then he had described the present, not predicted the future. It was host Chris Williamson who compared guest Cal Newport to mythological Cassandra in the opening question: "Dude, you must be feeling like Cassandra at the moment, so prescient. (…) Do you feel like you saw the future earlier (…)?"

    Cal doesn't say that you have to "like" or "love" the strain itself. He recommends what I'd call a metacognitive approach. Reframe the discomfort of strain as a signal that you are/were in the intensely concentrated state that defines deep work. Deep work can feel unpleasant, boring or strenuous. But deep work can also reward you with meaning and results.

    In the book Deep Work (2016) Cal defines deep work as:

    Professional activities performed in a state of distraction-free concentration that push your cognitive capabilities to their limit. These efforts create new value, improve your skill, and are hard to replicate.

    The interesting question is what value and skills we are striving for.

    Post edited by harr on
  • ZettelDistractionZettelDistraction

    As for epistemic values and motives, there are the values of knowledge, learning, understanding, and the desire for these. Here is the abstract from

    Leiter, Brian, The Circumstances of Civility (April 6, 2011). CIVILITY AND AMERICAN DEMOCRACY, Washington State University Press, 2011, U of Chicago, Public Law Working Paper No. 351, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=1804544

    Abstract
    This is a revised version of a paper presented at the NEH conference on “Civility and American Democracy” at Washington State University in early March, 2011. The paper tries to identify the circumstances in which civility in discourse is both necessary and obligatory. I assume that, pre-theoretically, everyone can agree that “civility” is paramount for discourse in the classroom setting. Teachers should be civil to students, and students to their teachers. By elucidating why civility seems obligatory in this context, I try to specify the circumstances of civility, which, in brief, obtain when epistemic values and motives dominate in discourse. I then describe a political context, “Dystopia,” in which the circumstances of civility do not obtain, and so civility is not obligatory, but might still be advisable.

    Zettel GitHub. Zettel Wiki Erdős #2. Problems worthy of attack prove their worth by hitting back. -- Piet Hein. PROBLEMS. Grooks, 1966. CC BY-SA 4.0.

  • tomptomp

    @harr said:
    In the book Deep Work (2016) Cal defines deep work as:

    Professional activities performed in a state of distraction-free concentration that push your cognitive capabilities to their limit. These efforts create new value, improve your skill, and are hard to replicate.

    In many areas, the most progress is made when one is pushed beyond one's limits but not too far beyond. I'm convinced that the same is so for cognitive efforts. For example, trying to get a student who is learning about linear geometry to study general relativity will be worse than useless. Getting them to transition to working with plane geometry will probably be productive.

    The interesting question is what value and skills we are striving for.

    I think it's helpful to start out thinking about what kinds of outcomes we want to create, and what kinds of activities we expect to engage in.

  • SaschaSascha

    @Martin said:
    I like the "gym for the mind" metaphor, because I like Saschas approach to the world and his deep understanding of Zettelkasten work, but coming from botany and ecology, I instinctively reach for a different one.

    A gym optimizes performance through controlled stress, repetition, progressive overload, and measurable improvement. That is a powerful model for developing specific abilities. But it is little bit boring. Ecosystems thrive not because every component is optimized, but because they are diverse, redundant, and full of seemingly inefficient interactions. What looks like waste from an engineering perspective often turns out to be the source of resilience.
    The same may be true for knowledge systems.

    A healthy Zettelkasten is perhaps not only a gym where ideas are trained, but also a garden where ideas are allowed to germinate, compete, cross-pollinate, and sometimes remain dormant for years before suddenly becoming relevant. And that is not because of a lack of training, and consistency, and constant work.

    Well, my favorite metaphor is the permaculture garden, a place that sits on right on the edge between nature and culture. (At least, I'd build permaculture like this) :D

    Efficiency and resilience often exist in tension. Highly optimized systems are fragile because they eliminate redundancy and unexpected pathways. Diverse systems, on the other hand, sacrifice some efficiency in exchange for adaptability and the possibility of serendipitous discoveries.

    When we face increasingly complex and unpredictable problems – as in the world around us, I wonder whether cultivating serendipity, redundancy, and rich networks may be just as important as cultivating discipline and cognitive endurance. Perhaps the Zettelkasten is at its best when it is both: a gym for strengthening the mind and a garden that allows knowledge to evolve organically. You can not garden properly without a strong mind and body. :wink:

    As a trainer, I obviously feel immensely and utterly offended by the mischaracterisation of training............ :D

    To honour my fake outrage, let me give you some examples on on the more "messy" parts of training:

    • Open skills are trained by ever-increasing unpredictability. You start with learning the jab and then progress to throwing combinations, getting into controlled sparring and ultimately arrive in fighting with all your weapons.
    • A way of training adaptable pulling strength is to find you a nice branch fork that you can reach from the ground and then do single pull ups while changing you grip after each repetition.

    ==================

    Ultimately, I agree with the core of your comment. A very hard part of the Zettelkasten Method is to work on the general principles and patterns and leave the specific techniques beyond.

    Many parts of my Zettelkasten are pretty messy and don't follow the foundational advice. I regularly find myself in the situation of recommending a certain solution to the problem and then needing to explain why I didn't choose the same solution. In training, the conditions and circumstances are quite obvious. I train multiple times per day, with minimal equipment from home, and with a high volume and comparably high intensity. But for clients the different conditions for that are very obvious (working from home, high work capacity built over decades, specifics of my schedule etc.) Yet, when it comes to knowledge work, the conditions rarely get discussed.

    I am a Zettler

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