Posts tagged “thinking”
How to Turn Note-Writing into Deliberate Mind Training
Andy Matuschak published a note that I never saw seriously quoted and appreciated. This is a grave mistake that I will correct: Note-writing can be a virtuosic skill Most people don’t seem to take note-writing very seriously as a skill. For some, that’s because they see it as a simple utility (e.g. Most people use notes as a bucket for storage or scratch thoughts). For others, their indifference may arise because they notice that Note-writing practices are generally ineffective.
Using GraphViz to Build Complex Models Bottom-Up
Complexity is a difficult beast to deal with. One of the core challenges of complexity is the strange independence between the parts and the whole. You may find yourself in a situation where learning about the parts doesn’t help much with learning about the whole; sometimes, learning about the parts can even become misleading.
Rambling about Sorites
Hi Zettlers, I thought I’d share another example of applying anchored model layering. If you missed the last post, read it first. Otherwise, you won’t understand this short post. Here, two anchors are used: The freedom/unfreedom scale and the consciousness scale. This meta-model is an ongoing effort to create a map that brings together many important concepts from different disciplines.
Anchored Model Layering
The time, energy, and focus required to develop a good idea are often overlooked because “having an idea” is conflated with the euphoric moment of first glimpsing what the idea might be. This eureka moment rarely means that you have the idea. Instead, it means you were given a direction to work in to earn the idea.
Supercharging Long Thinking: What Cal Newport's Notebook Method Leaves Out
Long thinking is a term coined by Giovanni Corazza and picked up by Cal Newport. According to Cal Newport, long thinking is the persistent and intentional application of thought toward a specific issue, problem, or idea with the goal of creating substantial and useful new insights.
Regaining Focus With a Deep Reading Practice
I don’t understand why headlines like The Film Students Who Can No Longer Sit Through Films aren’t inciting moral panics. Our ability to focus is under attack. We are losing our minds.
We Need a Gym for the Mind
I listened to a Podcast episode of Modern Wisdom with Cal Newport. There was an interesting idea of him feeling like Cassandra. He called the problem of the modern knowledge work environment early and, in his book Deep Work, gave a pretty straightforward manual on how to solve it on a personal level. I never read it, but from the summaries it seems that A World Without Email could be seen as a manual on how to solve the issue on a corporate level.
Balance AI With Mind Training
Dear Zettlers, There is immense tension between AI’s advances in capabilities and its negative effects on our minds. In the last newsletter, I called claims that you don’t have to remember anything a scam.
Understand Thinking Notes to Clear Up Your Workflow
Dear Zettlers, This might help you relate McPherson’s book, Effective Note-Taking, to the Zettelkasten Method: The term “note” has multiple meanings that can cause confusion. Engagement notes: Those are notes that you take because they help you to engage with the current input (writing down questions, so you don’t forget to ask them; concept mapping to aid your working memory etc.)
Rewriting Notes Is Thinking Work, Not Maintenance
I wrote a post that outlines rewriting as one element of how the Zettelkasten Method trains your mind. Rewriting is basically an externalisation of wrestling with an idea. u/UnderTheHole asked on Reddit two very good follow-up questions:
The Complete Guide to Atomic Note-Taking
Atomic note-taking is one of the buzzwords surrounding the Zettelkasten Method. In short, it is about putting one idea and one idea only on a note. With this guide, I will take you into the exciting deep waters of both the Zettelkasten and thinking skills. Having read this article, you will both know the theory and the practice, the art and the science of atomic note-taking.
The Scam Called “You Don't Have to Remember Anything”
Dear Zettlers, This scam is decades old now and it is quite surprising that people still fall for it. The search engines, old note-taking apps (you know, those with an elephant icon and the like) and AI have something in common: They claim that the effort of remembering things is outdated like using a candle in the age of electric light.