Comment by DavidPiper | Hacker News Reader

Comment by DavidPiper | Hacker News Reader

I'm in a similar spot to the author. I have a stack of notes curated over years. Got hooked on the whole Second Brain thing. But I think it's time to trash the lot.

I'll probably keep some of the how-tos and syntax reminders for various tools -- looking at you, ffmpeg and defaults -- but most of it, even many of the curated notes from books, is just junk that I carry now carry around, with the added bonus of that little voice saying "hey, you haven't reviewed me in a while, maybe you should because _this time_ there'll be some productivity hack or life-changing insight you'll glean from it".

When I look at the physical hoarding tendencies of some people close to me, it looks scarily similar.

A long time ago someone told me that you should always be wary of the difference between what you know and what you can look up. Trying to merge those things seems to have been a mistake for me.

Intentionally wiping almost all of my obsidian vaults and accidentally wiping my 2TB HDD was the most freeing thing.

I'd amassed so many books and papers and notes and half-finished projects over a frenzied couple of years where the main drivers were stimulant abuse and low self-worth.

It turns out that the excitement of finding some resource that's perfectly fit for your requirements is it's own rare pleasure, and it can be harmful to make them a demand on yourself in their own right, and especially harmful to try and catch'em all

I think I'd decided to grind my way out of my situation and channelled that energy into the most elaborate resource-hoarding and procrastination. I did genuinely learn a lot but very, very inefficiently, and in such a way I was sick of computers and self-motivated learning for a couple years.

Second-brain culture definitely provides an open door to hoarding (and stimulant users). I still like using obsidian but I don't care for the various "methods", I just do what makes sense. It turns out when I enjoy the process of doing/learning things, I remember stuff about them pretty well.

That "little voice" you mention is so real

> I'll probably keep some of the how-tos and syntax reminders for various tools -- looking at you, ffmpeg and defaults

or maybe just ask an LLM for the exact command each time you need it.

> or maybe just ask an LLM for the exact command each time you need it.

And deal with slow response, a copious anount of verbiage, and possibly wrong answers?

I backup my etc folder, my bash history and write small scripts for the snippets to not hunt for answers again.

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