Considering how to have ideas
My need is to self-actualise.
I value learning, connection and growth.
I read, to have new ideas.
I write, to clarify those ideas and learn what I don’t know.
And often (as now) I get stuck on “which tool would be perfect for this”.
I need a system that provides feedback and presents new ideas. Especially if I gaze at my thoughts in a new context.
Roam is where it’s at right now.
It has these features, that I want:
- There is power in the connections between ideas, and that has to become a first-class citizen in the second-brain.
- Enabling serendipity, through linking and showing you what could be connected.
It’s the shiny new tool that is distracting me from doing the reading I want, and the writing I want.
Today, I am letting go of the shiny new toy and going back to the simplest thing that could possibly work: A WikiWord system that -
- Has #hashtags for contexts I want to index on
- Has WikiWord ideas as single files
- Pulled together with a
brain.mdfile
This is an idea from Pragmatic Thinking and Learning that I didn’t quite appreciate until earlier this year.
I’ll grow this brain.md of mine over time. It may want to migrate to Roam someday.
This is what I like about brain.md:
- As with the index cards I carry around, one file being one idea feels good
- It allows for refactoring (moving around) of ideas over time
- Having #tags may give me a little bit of serendipity
- It’s portable, in all the senses of that word
- It’s importable, into shiny-new-toy in the future
Also this: It allows me to get on with it, and read and write more.
PS For the geeks (especially Emacs geeks), you can implement your own WikiWord system in 10 lines.