I've absolutely spent time procrastinating by hunting for the perfect tool, and it took me some time to realize that. But I've also found that a good tool can be a force multiplier that can make a huge difference in productivity and more importantly, the likelihood that I'll stick with something.
I've tried and failed numerous times to succeed with a simple text note. I love the idea of the simplicity. But I could never make it work.
A few years back I learned that I have aphantasia - my mind's eye is blind. When digging into this, I learned that people's ability to visualize is a spectrum, and while I'm on one extreme end of it, there is a huge variance in how people experience the act of thinking. It made me realize why <thing> that worked for <person> never worked for me, and why you'll find so many people evangelizing <specific approach> because it worked for them.
I've learned that tools that help me visualize my thoughts completely change my relationship with them and help unlock deeper thinking. Over time, I've realized that some tools really are "tools for thought". My brain can't do X, but Y tool can, and it becomes part of my extended conscious experience and enables me to do things I couldn't before.
I think the critical factor here is to be honest with yourself about what is or is not actually working for you. Recognize the trap of trying to solve problems with tools that aren't really going to change much. But do use tools that help.
I honestly didn't want the post to center around the organizational bit, it was a late addition, because there's the caveat that it gets interpreted as "this is how you gain productivity". In my specific case it's more about flushing thoughts that otherwise would continue to drift in my mind. This is also why I write. It's calming due to the fact it allows me to lay things to rest.
> I think the critical factor here is to be honest with yourself about what is or is not actually working for you.
Yes, and in order to do so you need to do the occasional introspection and be a mindful of your ways. We all have our quirks and it's also fine to acknowledge this. I still have plenty of "bad habits", many which I have no intention of breaking any time soon.
Currently, I’m pretty all-in on Obsidian. I don’t have a crazy setup with tons of plugins and I’m not building complex data tables or anything like that.
I use:
- Daily journal note to jot down thoughts and what I’m working on or thinking about each day
- Very actively use [[Link Syntax]] in notes to create placeholder connections to unexplored ideas or real connections to existing notes
- I use the Canvas feature to visually arrange things and love that I can embed notes into the canvas or start a local card on the canvas and later convert it to a standalone note
- I occasionally use the note graph view to see how previous journal notes cluster around specific topics. I know some people find this part of Obsidian gimmicky, but for me, it helps me find common threads and identify interrelated ideas
- I focus on creating small notes that I can grok quickly and rely on note-to-note connections to navigate larger topics
I don’t know how much of this workflow is directly applicable to Aphantasia, but the canvas feature in particular is where I feel like I get the most value in terms of visualizing what I otherwise can’t.
I also use tools like Figma/Balsamiq to get product ideas out of my head. It’s crazy how different things can be once they go from an abstract notion of “an interface that does X” to an actual drawing of an interface that does X.
If there was ever a tool like Miro that I could run locally, I’d use it extensively. Just a nice big toolbox of different ways to visualize things.
Does Excalidraw[1] fit the bill?
This makes it really easy to transition between quick wireframes, sequence diagrams, sticky notes, to structured data, tasks with rich cards, statuses, etc. I haven’t found a good direct replacement yet.
I do need to give excalidraw another look because I think there’s a decent Obsidian integration and I could probably approach some of the things I was doing with Miro in a more Obsidian-centric way.
I've witnessed people close to me be highly successful with the "single file" approach that you yourself swear by. My point was that most people probably will have some benefit of choosing some approach, and not try to keep it all in your head.
In fitness this might be more like: you spend all your time jogging in terrible shoes, working "comfortably hard" and pushing through the pain.
Instead you could spend a few hours researching modern training approaches and running techniques and change the entire trajectory of what you could achieve as an athlete. You can change the focus of how you work, reduce wasted or ineffectual energy and put that into dedicated efforts that have maximal payoff.
This debate is as old as work itself though, and I'm probably not changing any minds here.
Maybe - but if so, also balance in being balanced. Sometimes "going hard" is needed to make a deadline. And sometimes when you're burned out, you need to do zero work for awhile.
I think the better advice is something like: "Be present with the actual moment. Listen to the world and then take the right next action thats actually needed.". Sometimes the next action is sharpening the saw. Sometimes its playing with your kids, or taking a nap, or finally chopping that tree. Its impossible to know whats needed without being actually present with whats going on right now.
That was a pretty simple investment, but a total game changer, it saves me gobs of time every month, and was a no-brainer investment.
Granted, not all dev workflows are as annoyingly complex as mine, but nonetheless: you're statement is all-encompassing when in fact it's very context dependent. In my case, your advice was simply not true.
Things like: - run all the functional tests - rebuild a docker image - rebuild the docker image AND run all the tests AND reformat the code ...
It's such a simple idea, but super useful. Think something like this: https://github.com/jamesridgway/devdeck
I haven't made it publically available, as it's SUPER raw/tailored for me.
The more minds and hands there are, the more a repeatable, consistent process is needed.
Tho it is a really fine line to not get hung up on those organizational tasks, yes.
I can't do that with TXT files near as easily.