Think in Analog, Capture in Digital | Hacker News Reader

Think in Analog, Capture in Digital

huwfulcher.com

61 pointsHuwFulcher25 comments

The end boss of writing a lot (imo) has got to be Leonhard Euler[1]. Died in 1783, published over 500 papers, books articles etc in his lifetime across a very broad range of topics in maths and the sciences.

There has been a project[2] to publish the rest of his complete works and it is still not done even though it has been going for over a hundred years and has published more than 80 volumes so far.

There's an incredible quote from his wiki page:

    It has been estimated that Leonard Euler was the author of a quarter of the combined output in mathematics, physics, mechanics, astronomy, and navigation in the 18th century.

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonhard_Euler

2: The Opera Omnia https://bernoulli-euler-gesellschaft.ch/en/opera_omnia

The creator of the Zettelkasten system Niklas Luhmann[1] wrote an impressive amount of papers and books due to his organizational system. I am roughly recalling over 400+ papers and over 60+ books. From my understanding of his system, it allowed him to create 'meta tiers' of his information in a similar but even more advanced way than web hyperlinking. This allowed him to quickly compile related texts and contexts with high efficiency.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niklas_Luhmann

2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zettelkasten

Zettelkasten seems like a good method for regurgitating snippets of things you’ve already written. Euler was creating those things as he went. I’m not convinced Zettelkasten would have been helpful in his use case.

Not sure which timeframe the author is talking about, but i think the paradox of the digital age is that long term preservation (>50 years) is clearly not a given.

I'm thinking about printing my photos in a paper photo books to make sure they'll never disappear in case of an icloud misbehavior.

And handwritten letters between diplomats will probably be there long after google decides to shutdown gmail or go bankrupt.

I agree that static preservation on digital isn't guaranteed over the long term. There needs to be a conscious effort to ensure integrity. You make a good point about photos but was writing more about ideas and notes.

A definite challenge to preservation is navigating the balance between self maintained and trusting it to a company that will disappear one day.

I would still, argue that digital is the better medium for archival as it immediately makes it easier to share and discover.

> after google decides to shutdown gmail

Make it: After google decides that a chatbot can re-generate any old email perfectly well...

Just another reason for one to get into org-mode[1] and org-roam[2].

Combine this with the concept of Zettelkasten[3] and you have a wonderful way to organize and store all your notes and writings, and even a way to know at what point you should move your idea from analog to digital (based on it's maturity, e.g. "evergreen state").

1. https://orgmode.org/ 2. https://www.orgroam.com/ 3. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zettelkasten

I like org-mode but don't find it as good at cross platform as I'd like. I currently use Obsidian across devices which works well but you dont get the efficiency of org. I've tried Zettelkasten a few times and need to get my day more organised to have time and categorise. For now PARA suits my needs.

Emacs org-mode works pretty well on a pinephone.

if you're an iPhone user I made a shortcut to call org-capture and integrate with your regular emacs/org-mode installations: https://blog.samhain.io/posts/org-capture-shortcut/

the caveat is that you need to keep your org folder in iCloud. I have a symlink on my MacBook from ~/org to ~/Library/Mobile Documents/com~apple~CloudDocs ... then I can access my org folder from my iPhone as well.

That's great for some but what about us who aren't in front of a monitor every second of our work career?

Physical notebook and data entry later.

Be warned: Almost every one touting Zettelkasten on the Internet is not doing it the way Niklas Luhmann did, and you won't get the benefits that he got. Doing it his way takes a lot of time and effort, and really is worth it only if you plan to write a lot (essays, books, etc).

I recall one academic who said it took 8 years of aggressive use before he felt it paid off.

Every time you want to add a note, you need to put in the effort to find all existing notes that could be related, ponder how your new note fits in with all of them, and make relevant links to the new note. Every once in a while you need to make explicit index/sequence cards, etc.

It's certainly not a "quick capture and move on" system.

I use org mode and org roam a lot, but simply using org roam and linking doesn't mean you are following zettelkasten.

speaking to the heart of the article:

How? Can anyone share a polished workflow for converting handwritten notes on paper to plain text ascii (by this I mean an open-source OCR pipeline)?

Of course, I can transcribe my handwritten notes manually. But there is friction there that keeps me lugging a laptop when I can, and simply doing without note-taking when a laptop isn't available.

Exactly. I'm one of those who typically hand writes, and then later converts to digital if it's worth keeping. Typing stuff up is a real drag, and I don't think any OCR is even close to being good enough for it.

I often fantasize about finding cheap labor in another country to type it up for me.

This is something I want to explore in other things I write. Being able to transcribe is definitely a big hurdle at the moment.

A half-way approach I've been using for a little while is simply to take pictures of my notebook pages, which are usually work to-do lists and contacts etc, but also sometimes design notes for a program or idea. Some of them I have put on their own canvas pages in Obsidian and overlaid with boxes and arrows and text. This at least accomplishes storage in a common location, and someday when there is an Obsidian handwriting recognition plug-in, I'll be ready to go!

Capturing or thinking in either is an improvement over people trying to keep everything in their heads, something we're are in the USA completely not taught in public schools.

There are various tools I've tried from this classic HN discussion regarding digital tools, from my infatuation over time with fancy pilot g2 pens, to Casio pdas, to palm treos to the HP Compaq TC1000 with Onenote 2003 (pen computer with electronic notebook!) to my ongoing fountain pen habit to my current desire to make the Microsoft courier concept real life by buying an expensive Lenovo Yoga 9i (why are booklet PC form factors so impossible to find!? I would ask), the tool search is a worthy and never ending hobby.

But it was only when I wrote applied the mental process of "capture clarify organize reflect and engage" taught in David Allen's Getting Things Done system did I manage to find what I was looking for: a mental algorithm to respond to all the novel information in my life so it can take its proper place among my existing life landscape.

I was capturing reams of notes in analog or digital but then I never knew what to DO with them, so I just held them just in case I needed them again.

The GTD book is reputed as a personal organization / filing and email advice and that's useful in its own area, but besides the point of the book, which is to equip you to properly assess, digest, and see the landscape of your life.

I really love the mental clarity and confidence that, armed with these great analog fountain pens or great digital capture with Dragon pro 15, the captured notes not only exist, but I know what they are, what they mean to me, what I need to do with them (if any).

I still try out new personal wikis and other new digital (1) and analog tools (steal like an artist book talks about switching between creating in analog and editing in digital as both are more suited those in a general sense), but I now do it knowing that I don't have the nagging desire for 'something more' that I used to expect the tools to unlock, when the tools really function to be force multipliers for how I approach my life's horizons and projects, both old and new, i get to just enjoy the new toy.

(1) I still try to avoid being nerd sniped trying to write my own digital notebook app like Lorien but saving on sqlite with onenote .one file import so I can have Windows and Linux app parity.

I love this insight thanks for sharing. Have you looked at the PARA method? I'm undecided on it yet but I like the mantra that Second Brain emphasis of only capturing what you think you'll need.

I've written my own notes apps... It was one of the things that taught me how much I prefer using imperfect tools that already exists rather than adding extra things to maintain, and motivated my "Decustomizing" project to systematically get rid of any unnecessary original tools and look for off the shelf replacements.

Everyone else seems to have opposite experiences, but I've found that getting rid of custom tools, and getting rid of as much original code and support for unusual configurations in the custom tools I do have, has been amazing, one of my very favorite things I've ever done for myself.

I consider SQLite to be a universal format, considering it is in the public domain, has one of the most heavily tested codebases on the planet, and has support until "at least 2050" in the author's words. For that reason I'm actually very okay with just capturing my notes in Anki, which uses a SQLite database for everything under the hood. Crucially it avoids the pitfall of writing something down in a notebook and then never bothering to open it up again.

I just use a bunch of markdown files. Any proper editor will give you good global search on it, and the specialized one (qownnotes) also some extra features.

Sure, but it doesn't get you to actually look at the markdown files every now and then. Unless you turn on the random note thing in obsidian on startup, I guess.

Although, the "pact with the digital has a price, which is this drastic loss of 'measure.'"[1]

1: https://www.publicbooks.org/changes/

I like the concept of this

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