Illustrated Notes for “Building a Second Brain”
maggieappleton.com
maggieappleton.com
However, by way of contrast to many of the other comments on here, I found this particular explanation quite unhelpful, both in terms of the presentation communicating the idea as well as the parts of the idea that I was able to glean.
It’s probably an individual thing, but I don’t want to combine things into projects, and I certainly Don’t want to go down the route of having a folder structure.
Having recently converted my somewhat-organised notes into a Zettelkasten workflow, I have been amazed by the freeing nature of the medium. The core of my method is simple markdown files that can be easily written without the aid of any software. I have had fun building a significant amount of automation around the notes - building a traversable and plottable graph, implementing backlinking, templating and that sort of thing, but it is purely assistive and not necessary.
Some sibling comments make the point that BASB seems to be more of a complete theory, where as a Zettelkasten is a method alone. Here, I humbly beg to differ. It is the simple and mechanical nature of the Zettelkasten that frees the mind from the burden of too much information.
This is obviously an individual preference, but I think I’ve found the method that suits me.
Everything else is a Python package with a CLI, dockerised for portability, and written entirely by me to support my workflow.
I am absolutely sympathetic to the "I want a tool not a hobby" idea of using prebuilt software, and indeed I have tried many of them (including every one I have seen linked on HN), however I have found that building my own automation has really helped me to think carefully about how I use my Zettelkasten and what it implies for my own thought process.
This reply probably falls into the category of "unhelpfully helpful advice", but that's what has worked for me personally.
I've always struggled with mapping any note organization mapping into strict directory structure with ascii file names being the only meta-data. I'm currently using Trilium Notes which solves most of these by using SQLite instead of filesystem.
Zettel are named as follows: z{%Y%m%d%H%M%S}_{slugified title}.md
Tags are formatted as +{hyphenated tag name}.
Scripts parse all the Zettel, construct a bipartite graph of tags and Zettel, and populate tables in the index with lists of Zettel under each tag, a visualisation of the graph, various other meta statistics etc.
The point (for me) of my Zettelkasten is that through links and tags, the structure of the notes is emergent rather than dictated a priori.
> The software I use is, at its most basic, a text editor. In my case, Sublime text.
> Everything else is a Python package with a CLI, dockerised for portability, and written entirely by me to support my workflow.
> I am absolutely sympathetic to the "I want a tool not a hobby" idea of using prebuilt software, and indeed I have tried many of them (including every one I have seen linked on HN), however I have found that building my own automation has really helped me to think carefully about how I use my Zettelkasten and what it implies for my own thought process.
> This reply probably falls into the category of "unhelpfully helpful advice", but that's what has worked for me personally.
And that, to my mind, is rather the point :-).
I did find it to be a massive distraction after the second or third page however.
There is a time and a place for an artistic touch and in this case, I found it distracting.
I find hand-written text difficult to read past 24pt and when done in gray, even more so.
Ultimately however, I think the greatest disagreement I have comes from the content itself - it reminds me of all the little tactics project managers I've had tried to use. All the 'team building' and 'team lunches' and 'daily stand ups'.
Life is about strategy, the long haul, not tactics. This approach is non-stop tactics and it never pauses to ask why go through all this? What are you trying to accomplish and is lack of organization bordering on OCD really the thing holding you back? Maybe it is, and if so, great.
This obsession with arbitrary processes to me, is simply manager-types trying to justify their existence and slick sales-men, trying to sell yet another 'productivity booster' that has no empirical evidence behind it, just slick advertising, such as these beautiful illustrations.
Life is about both. Strategy and tactics. Words and action. For some people, if they make a bunch of grand strategic plans but don't follow through, then they repeatedly disappoint those around them. They find themselves lonely and stressed as they lose jobs and relationships with people who are sick and tired of them "making excuses".
> is lack of organization bordering on OCD really the thing holding you back? Maybe it is, and if so, great. > arbitrary processes
They look arbitrary to you because the author doesn't explain the "Why" behind her system -- likely because it is very personal.
Well, when something becomes a course, it is no longer about the author, it is about the people the author offers the course to.
I don't want to discourage people from trying new things and developing their own systems, courses, whatever. I do feel the need to point out that we live in an age of immense amounts of information and one needs to be very careful not to engage in information pollution. If there is a system similar to yours, there is no need to create your own that you think is slightly better. We really don't need another flavor of candy, at some point we need less 'stuff' and less people engaging in trying to sell us something, not more.
I think we've been at that point for a few decades.
What is great about the DSL is that once learned you can express a lot of information without disrupting flow. To me that is one of the biggest barriers for taking notes via phone or computer. Once a good note-taking habit is developed it's wonderful to have that reservoir of information and ideas to pull from.
Regarding software, one thing I’ve long wanted and/or dreamed of making is an app that can be pointed at any directory of markdown files and images that would then use some kind of AI to analyze the data, look for patterns, present statistics, automatically tag things, etc. I want to be able to dump things in without much organization, but then to be able to view it in an organized way. One small example is the way that the Bear app finds to-do items in any of the notes and presents them in a separate list. That, but with all kinds of data.
have a been toying around with productizing this.
let me know if you're interested
That said, am I the only one finding it really hard to parse pages of illustrations? It feels like I'm stuck having to analyse every single illustration to figure out what the author is talking about and that a bit of supporting expository text is missing.
But also there's the market to consider. Macs users seem to like to sink their money into nice looking native apps which organize things.
I would add that Steve Jobs' own psychology seemed reduction-biased, for better or worse. His thought process was aimed at achieving impact through early/first principles, but the principles were those of concept, design, sensory experience, or interpersonal dynamics rather than information or engineering.
As a result, we get Think Different, and the first step in Thinking Different is thinking; I would add that due to the reduction it's more like thinking starkly. This is quite different from processing or manipulating, which were and still are very PC concepts, compared to Apple.
Anyway. A guess. And yeah, the unfortunate part of info-illustrations is that pages of them which reward different perceptual ordering/directions in each illustration are just harder to parse.
Honestly, Apple did a great jobs. They did care about their product(well, until recent buggy OS fiasco) and that attract people who value the same thing. Doesn't mean Windows people don't care, of course, but Windows always give the utilitarian vibes, the OS for everyone (especially in the old day)
Is there a book form of BASB, or is it a course only?
https://fortelabs.co/blog/book-deal-for-building-a-second-br...
By taking longer to finish grad school and ending up with mountains of debt.
And this second brain would be lost to the wind as soon as I take up a 9-to-5 Monday-through-Friday tech/STEM job where I have to do mainly what my boss tells me to do.
Go figure.