How I Learned to Defrag My Brain
alexhillman.com
alexhillman.com
I used to keep a larger, more generic "spark file" but I found it got to be too big to navigate. So I throw away more ideas now, and only write down ones that have serious merit, placing them in specific files instead of a "kitchen sink" catchall file.
I also have "possible programmers" and "possible designers" files, which I've kept since 2007. These are just lists of great people that I've found over the years, and may wish to hire at some time. I've initiated relationships with some of these people, knowing that one day I might want to bring them in to one of my ventures.
Finally, I have a "rules to live by" file. I've kept this since November 2011, so it is much younger than the rest. So far, it's about 560 succinct adages. I work on it for 30m-1h ever day. I study life and draw conclusions, abstracting the particular instances I experienced into broader maxims.
I review this file before any major decision is made. It's sort of like a file on disk that I can load into my memory; it puts my mind in an optimal state before making a decision. It's like putting everything I've learned into my brain's electro-chemical RAM banks. The quality of personal and business decisions has increased 10000x since starting this particular file.
Would you be interested in putting one of your files online? Or is the information too personal/ valuable to share? Keeping the possible programmers/designers and the spark file secrets I could understand. Sharing the "maxims" file could spawn an interesting website.
One of the maxims my wife and I use for decision-making is to take a step back and consider the big picture... to ask ourselves, "Is this even what we want to do in the first place?" But without having had the experience of almost making a decision that wasn't what we wanted big-picture because of focusing too much on optimizing the details, the maxim wouldn't have the same power.
Nevertheless, you do have a point - how do you create value for people through a maxim that they haven't experienced? I would argue that the credibility of whom the maxim originates from is very important.
For example, The Bible has tremendous credibility and respect from its believers (and many non-believers too); this significant ethos prepares people to be receptive towards the maxim. Or for a modern day example, imagine the difference between a regular joe giving you career advice on his blog (as you wonder, 'who is this guy?', vs. reading maxims from Mark Cuban's blog.
In order to solve this problem of ethos, a site would have to employ reputation or karma for each maxim, with people weighing in on how valuable / truthful each maxim has been through their personal experiences. A maxim written by an anonymous becomes more credible when Mark Cuban, PG, or other famous people publicly vouch for it.
The Bible (and other holy books) often teaches maxims with stories though, which is like indirect experience.
Compare the Reddit post "Today you, tomorrow me", previously on HN here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2003515
Even if everyone I respect publicly vouched for "today you, tomorrow me" as a maxim, I don't think it would have as much impact as reading that story. And the impact of reading that story can't possibly compare to the impact the events had on the person who actually experienced them.
Why do science classes do experiments if not to add experience to facts which are already supported by almost universally recognized authority? Is there anyone on Earth who doubts f=ma? Yet the experience of it makes it more "real" somehow.
I'm not trying to say reading the maxims of others is useless. I tend to read most lists of maxims that come up on HN. But usually if one really becomes meaningful to me it's because it resonates with what I've already experienced. It puts my experiences into words in a memorable way.
You've just inspired a new part of my brain. I need to write-up a new idea for a website.
btw I agree with everything you said. The reason I used the bible as an example is that it is didactic through stories. Not just lists of laws. The website idea I was thinking of would have, for example, PG, Cuban, et al weigh in with their own stories, corroborating or contradicting the 'maxim'.
I agree completely that the proliferation of all the "rules of success" lists on the web proves ineffective in actually making a difference in the readers' lives.
With the exception of the contact list, I've been doing all the same things off and on for a while now.
It started with a generic idea file, simple titles and as much description as is necessary. More recently, I've started something like your "rules to live by" which I think of as "you learn something new every day". Quick adages and rules that I felt were worth noting.
You've inspired me get back in the habit of dedicating at least 30 minutes to my files each day.
Like on Facebook Here: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Maxims/205350249545949
Follow on Twitter here: https://twitter.com/MaximsTheBook
I thought that was a pretty good list to have.
You could also use Devonthink Pro, as described here: http://www.stevenberlinjohnson.com/movabletype/archives/0002... as a placae for all this material, including the "rule to live by" file. DTP might help you find connections between ideas that you didn't realize existed.
EDIT: Mental note: Read article before commenting. You already know about DTP! Sorry.
philosophy.txt
{book/lecture/topic-name}.txt
tweets.txt
happiness.txt
Does anybody remember that website which can automatically notify you on these ideas periodically? I think it was on Show HN the other day? I was hoping to hack my brain in this way.
"I study life and draw conclusions, abstracting the particular instances I experienced into broader maxims."
This is part of one of my maxims. A lot are methods of thinking which I use out-of-the-box to take an idea to the next level. A few are just basic ideas in life and architecture/development/nature which are fundamental building blocks.
So, for those of you wondering how you can even start building a "sparkfile", I'll give you my secret: whenever I'm annoyed with something I'm doing, I'll analyze why I am annoyed, and out of that usually comes an idea. A few months ago, I was annoyed that Hacker News was the first place I learned about password leaks, sometimes weeks before the companies emailed me -- leaving me insecure for quite a while. If only a computer could scan headlines across different tech websites looking for the latest companies to have password leaks, and would email you the second it saw anything.
48 hours later, I built leaknotifier.com to do just that.
For me, I crave simplicity. Whenever something that I think should be simple to do takes much longer than necessary, I start brainstorming how I would simplify it. If I ever feel like I'm on autopilot because I'm doing the same thing over and over, I figure out ways to automate it. If you ever feel frustrated and start to think "if only they just _____", start actually figuring out why they don't just do X, and if there is no good reason, start developing it.
I still need to do a lot of stuff for the app (SSL default, tweaking feeds and parsing), I was more just trying to show how my frustration led to an idea.
In other words, you're curing Schlep Blindness: http://paulgraham.com/schlep.html through greater awareness.
log(){ date >> ~/log/$* ; cat >> ~/log/$* ; }
I try to keep it simple but I keep several files. There is one for general ideas which is called "projects", another one to log new words I've learnt called "voc.en" (English is a second language for me) and so on.
For example:
log projects <enter>
write something cool... <enter> <ctrl+c>
--------------------
cat log/projects
Mo 10. Sep 07:16:02 CEST 2012
write something cool...
Just going from memory, their biggest security-breach PR disasters have been caused more often by sloppy employee security than by outside actors.
I'm going to try this CLI method since it'll be impossible to read old stuff and get distracted while trying to add something.
log() {
echo >> ~/Dropbox/NotationalVelocity/$*.txt ;
date >> ~/Dropbox/NotationalVelocity/$*.txt ;
cat >> ~/Dropbox/NotationalVelocity/$*.txt ;
}
It's full of random ideas like fear inoculation, legoization, animated qr code, and some half completed essay like self quantification, synthetic blood vessel, and why choose prosthesis. I am constantly rewriting them as well as adding ideas and citations. I also reread it everyday.
One thing that differentiates this particular implementation is the consistent (but not constant) review of ideas, as well as the consolidation of ideas that seem to go well together. The creation of "full" ideas vs. "half baked" ideas is a really interesting concept, and I feel that I learned a lot about idea formation, even from just a four minute video.
While ByWord seems great for offline editing (and I'm certainly going to give it a shot), I've had a really great experience using Trello for my "spark file." The separate "cards" that Trello supports allow me to have different categories of ideas that I can then individually consolidate. For example, I currently have cards for:
- Startup (ideas for ventures I'm considering.)
- Posts (blog posts I'd like to write; either expanded versions of HN comments, or stories in and of themselves. This comment will likely go right in there as well!)
- Research (security & appsec research I'd like to conduct, as well as particular technologies I'm interested in. My to-learn queue.)
- Software (non-startup related software I'm building or would like to build.)
In the end, I can't help but agree and evangelize Alex's post -- the human brain can only keep track of so much on its own, but with help and organization, we can be much more productive!
Some have an idea and think "it would be cool if someone did that", others do it.
The problem most doers have when they get a new idea is they are already working on a cool idea.
These new ideas will distract the driven, unless they write them down in a trusted system.
I always wrote ideas down in notebooks, but I don't like paper's distributed, non-indexed characteristics as a persistent storage medium. Also, being in my 20s I like to move to a new city every couple years by plane and staying completely digital makes this lifestyle easy.
I wrote an app called IdeaList to solve this problem for myself, I was almost finished with it and about to ship when a consulting project with an urgent deadline came by that was too good to refuse.
I've been using it myself and its increased my peace of mind considerably to know all my Awesome Ideas are there.
This post reminded me that IdeaList is something worth releasing because its a slick solution to a critical problem.
I'm going to charge a very small amount to keep the service viable, but anyone from hacker news that might be interested gets a free lifetime subscription if they email me today at will@willholloway.net
I like this solution over Evernote because my notes are not trapped in a proprietary solution, but also because you want the simplest UI so that you focus on your thought. There are many great writing apps for your phone, tablet or pc that take all the distractions away for this very reason.
The software presents a reverse chronological list of the files' updated timestamps, has a 'search-or-create' style of file creation, and can have links to one file within another.
At some point I either archive the card out, or I setup a new board/list/card elsewhere to actually pursue the idea.
My initial system is similar to his, but I found transcribing everything into computer better, mainly because of easier searching, and because it made sharing information that applied to multiple projects easier.
My own implementation is a journal, each day in its own plain text file. I track the major milestones in my day and prefix ideas with "Idea: " so that I could easily grep all ideas into one list if needed. (However, I haven't done that yet. I tend to let them sit and incubate rather than act immediately.)
I'm curious about 3 things:
(1) What motivated the start of such behavior for others?
(2) How do you react to your idea log with respect to balancing focus between current projects / work, and speculative projects?
(3) How do others account for visuals such as sketches or interface ideas which are often easier to create with analog tools?
I was letting things slip and forgetting things I needed to remember; so it was more of a "hey, I need to be more organized" kind of thing, but it also came with the benefit of capturing EVERYTHING.
(2) How do you react to your idea log with respect to balancing focus between current projects / work, and speculative projects?
It's sad but true, you can do anything, but not everything. Most of what I capture are todos, maybe the occasional project or "big idea", but two things have forced me to realize I can't do everything. First, I was forgetting things again, because I'd capture them and never see them again (reviewing wouldn't help; there are simply too many to review them all). Second, to fix the first, I added a default deadline of "today" to my capture template. Then once I started going down my todo list, I would reschedule, only to come across some things again and reschedule again. After a while, I finally started forcing myself to either cancel or indefinitely defer things. I have a core set of "must dos", habits, chores and such, plus short term goals, but haven't quite gotten to the long term planning stage yet. For now, it's all logged, version controlled and archived in git, so I never truly "lose" anything, I just give up on doing everything and prioritize.
(3) How do others account for visuals such as sketches or interface ideas which are often easier to create with analog tools?
I'm mostly an auditory/textual person (code monkey by day), so I don't miss that too much. You could do ASCII art, I suppose (http://emacs-fu.blogspot.com/2009/01/drawing-pictures.html ;) Although, I would like to have some nice charts (or at least cumulative stats) for a bigger picture; this is actually yet another project idea of mine, which is very feasible with org-mode: http://orgmode.org/worg/org-contrib/babel/intro.html
I'm trying to take a low-tech approach to my system as opposed to having more tech. It's easier for me to ignore the list of "random things to research someday" when it's on an index card at home than on my laptop and phone everywhere. At the same time, I rarely find myself missing lists like these.
My own sketches tend to pile up physically with the eventual goal of being scanned in and named with the date drawn.
Thanks for sharing.
I've also tried scanning, to the tune of 10s of thousands of scans; then you have to manage the scans, and they aren't indexable by default (unless you have some fancy OCR type software like the Neat). It's one of the reasons I really prefer plain text: perfectly greppable, easy to slice and dice with Perl (or Python, Ruby, R, etc).
More importantly, I didn't have any habit for reviewing them. Hope it helps you like it helped me!
On a slight tangent, I'm looking for something more touch screen appropriate that I can sync with git (must be text based, preferably compatible with org-mode). While I have Emacs, org-mode and git on the current phone with a hardware keyboard, that won't last forever, and I really need something that makes for very quick idea capture on a touchscreen. Bonus points for something that also tracks/logs time, manages todos and calendars (ideally, I suppose it would be org-mode optimized for a touch screen).
EDIT: Yes, I know about MobileOrg (http://orgmode.org/manual/MobileOrg.html) and while it's close (oh, so close), it's not quite close enough (notably, it's lacking logging of time spent on tasks). Although, since it is open source . . .
Edit: one advantage of the paper process over the various software / cloud solutions is that I can still read those ancient notes. Love the cloud for business, but it is tough to beat ink and bound paper for personal records that you want to keep for a long time. An added bonus is that you can occasionally entertain visions of holding a bonfire of your old notes and starting fresh.
Have you heard of this awesome thing called "ASCII"? Org-mode (among others) uses it, but adds structure, shortcuts and refiling, so you get the best of both worlds. Combined with something like Git and SSH, plus your own server (c'mon, VPS are down to what, $6/month these days?), and you've got replicated, versioned, encrypted, non-proprietary, non-lockin, forward (and backwards!) readable notes.
While this is certainly an important habit, I wouldn't call it defragmenting. Sometimes I do refine or rewrite my notes, but occasionally delete them entirely, and sometimes find myself more confused, having tied together too many concepts. One thing I have learned is that my thinking changes so much over time that conveying information, even to myself, is surprisingly difficult.
I don't want to sound like a fanboy, but I do just love org-mode. Of course, I was already using Emacs for development, and org-mode just slips seamlessly right in. Everyone seems to suggest some other service where the data is stored in a proprietary format on someone else's server, but I do very much like keeping control of my own data.
Just the tables feature (http://orgmode.org/manual/Tables.html) alone is worth it, but inline LaTeX comes close. Mixing math in LaTeX with a proper table editor (unlike LaTeX) and being able to export to anything that matters (HTML, PDF and LaTeX) -- bliss!
I picked up org-mode again after trying a few online tools (including Google Docs and Trello), only this time spending an entire day reading the docs and a few blog posts on customisation before putting it into use.
The day ended with a "(add-hook 'after-init-hook '(lambda () (org-agenda-list 1)))" at the end of my .emacs file.
It was totally worth it. I am more organised now and as someone who gets distracted easily and may have a slight case of Adult ADHD, it has had a positive effect in my life. Just add Dropbox to the mix and it becomes all the more awesome. As you said, I love it how it just 'fits' in with Emacs when writing code.
Learning org-mode is not a wasted effort. There is just so many things that you can do with it once you know what you want.
The contents are encrypted through a TrueCrypt virtual volume and the volume is saved into Dropbox.
I've found this to be a great setup - the searchability and keyboard centric navigation of NV provides a friction free environment to quickly record content.