The Weekly Review: Vol VI Issue 24
Merry Christmas to you! As we get very close to the end of the year (and the decade), I hope you’ve been enjoying a restful time with friends and family.
And while this is a great time to look forward and to plan the year ahead, let us work hard to make sure that planning is peaceful. That the targets we aim for match what we really want for our lives. Let’s include rest, restoration, and recreation in our plans for 2020.
It’s easy to get wrapped up in what other people are doing or planning. The mentality of the hustle is alluring. But we are so much more than what we do. Let’s encourage each other to remember that in the year ahead.
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A system for making the most of what I read
Regular readers will know that I’ve been focused a lot this past year on a couple of ideas. Namely, the Zettelkasten method and the idea of having a digital “second brain”.
Those are names other people have given the concept, but it’s simply about making the most from what we read and the information that comes our way. And these concepts are all about creating a trusted system that is used routinely, all for the express purpose of producing quality output.
I’ve shared most of these items in the past, but here’s recap of the various resources available on this topic.
- the Zettelkasten Method
- Tiago Forte’s Building a Second brain
- Maggie Appleton’s lovely sketch notes of the BaSB course
- How to Take Smart Notes by Sönke Ahrens
- A Knowledge Processing System for Marketers, Creators, and Knowledge Workers
What I’ve been missing
I’ve long had a fascination with how I and others work, the tools we use, and the processes that we put in place to do our work. Reading GTD way back in the early or mid-2000’s was the start. But while the processes I’ve honed since then worked great for focusing my attention and doing work, I would often have the problem of losing track of information.
“Where did I read that great line?” This is the type of question I’d find myself asking every couple of weeks. While I had tools in place for reading, or even taking notes, the usage was not consistent, nor was it all encompassing. I might highlight passages in a paper book, but then forget all about it. I could do the same in Instapaper, which is then added automatically to Day One, but completely forget where I read the specific idea or phrase months down the road.
The last article in the resources above well captures the problem:
The inefficiencies of a system (or lack of a system) don’t become apparent until we need to retrieve the information we’ve previously been exposed to; information we’ve already deemed important.
… and then can’t find the info or recall where you saw it.
This is an issue I very much wanted to solve this year.
Where I am now
After a lot of reading and thinking about this, I now have a far better set up in place. And the best part of it all is that I can make a great improvement in recalling information using the tools I already own and use every day. The less pieces of software I have to learn, the better. And I’m always happiest when I learn to do more with the tools I already have.
Here’s a sketch of how my toolset looks now.
The main items I’m concerned about are:
- Bible Study
- Reading on the Kindle
- Reading paper books
- Reading in Instapaper
- Reading on the web or other iOS apps
When it comes to being consistent with saving information that interests me, collection was a problem. So when I wanted to improve my set up, the focus was on setting up the tools I use and then making my usage regular.
Some of these items are easy, no-brainers. When I’m doing my devotions, I can simply add a note to Ulysses or highlight a passage that resonates with me. When reading a book on my Kindle, I can use the share option when creating a note or highlighting text. But the last three items needed a little more work.
The most important aspects of the system is that everything I want to save comes into my system via the Things inbox and everything is stored in Ulysses (with references pointed to saved items in Pinboard). What helps with this is I only have to look in one place for retrieve items.
To be continued…
This is a longer topic than usual for this newsletter, so I’ve broken it into two parts. The second half will be in your inbox later this week.
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My favourite items of note for 2019
The last two issues of the newsletter for this year involve a lot of looking back. I’ll be sharing some more things I enjoyed in 2019 next issue, but for this one, I wanted to bring up a few of the articles that really stuck with me. There’s a lot of good options to choose from, but I try to pick ones that inspired me to make some kind of change in my life. The kind of articles that I refer back to multiple times.
If you didn’t get a chance to look at these earlier in the year, these are the ones I’d recommend most.
You’re probably using the wrong dictionary
James Somers published this lovely piece way back in 2014, but it came my way five years later (and bless him for including a date!) It’s a beautifully written article that is as enlightening as it is entertaining.
I do not have this first kind of dictionary. In fact I would have never thought to use a dictionary the way McPhee uses his, and the simple reason is that I’ve never had a dictionary worth using that way. If you were to look up the word “intention” in my dictionary here’s all you would see: “a thing intended; an aim or plan.” No, I don’t think I’ll be punching up my prose with that.
Jody Amable published this piece in 2019, and thankfully it also come my way. And for a good portion of the year, all I listened to was the tunes played by the YouTube channel she mentions. What is this thing?
It’s a phenomenon born on YouTube, which is just as popular for music discovery as it is for beauty tutorials or long-winded, semi-sincere apology videos. The two most popular lo-fi streams on YouTube have millions of subscribers, with thousands of people tuning in at any given time, and both have “study” in their titles. Usually paired with some serene, calming visuals, the channels—which broadcast morning, noon, and night, the most prominent tended to by a mysterious DJ who doesn’t grant interviews—the act of studying, concentrating on a task, or otherwise working is now inextricably linked to lo-fi. It’s now so associated with productivity that Spotify’s “Lo-Fi Beats” playlist, which recently surpassed 1 million subscribers, describes itself as “beats to relax and focus.”
I’m glad for this end of year review — I had stopped listening to this for much of the last quarter or so. Now that the Christmas tunes are about to get back on the shelf, this is a great option for background music.
Reading in the Age of Constant Distraction
Yes, I link to this kind of stuff a lot. What can I say? Reading is important to me (and therefore, so too is thinking and writing) and we’re in a war of attention right now.
Mairead Small Staid did an excellent job of researching the subject and describing possible effects.
Writing in 1994, Birkerts worried that distractedness and surficiality would win out. The “duration state” we enter through a turned page would be lost in a world of increasing speed and relentless connectivity, and with it our ability to make meaning out of narratives, both fictional and lived. The diminishment of literature—of sustained reading, of writing as the product of a single focused mind—would diminish the self in turn, rendering us less and less able to grasp both the breadth of our world and the depth of our own consciousness.
In 2019, surficiality seems to have won. I want to buck that trend in my life.
I’ll confess, I did not return to this specific post often over the year. But every time Sam writes, he does so very well. And as a family who had to let our chocolate lab go in late 2017, his words on the topic hit home.
It’s hard to know when to let your dog go. People say you’ll just know, or that they’ll tell you when they’re ready. It wasn’t like that with Bear. All I know is there’s no perfect time, your dog loves you, and we make it all about ourselves. “Will my friends think it was too soon? Will they think it was too late and I was cruel? I’m not ready to let him go anyway.” If you’re going through the same thing right now, all I can say is I understand and don’t be afraid.
I hope Sam writes another post in 2020!
The Glorious, Almost-Disconnected Boredom of My Walk in Japan
I’d be remiss not to mention Craig Mod once again before the year is out. I joined his Ridgeline newsletter last year, already a big fan of his less regular Roden newsletter. This one was all about walking, not a topic I’d paid much attention to previously.
But his preparation and sharing of the big walk he took in 2019 hooked me and I’ve really enjoyed the weekly newsletter dedicated to just this. Whether you like walking yourself, this Wired article hits on enough different things that you should get some enjoyment from it.
I was on an epic walk, 620 miles alone across Japan, over six weeks. I set out on this walk not knowing what I was getting into. I didn't know that I’d meet this guy or see his amazing toilet. But I did and, because I’m human, I wanted to share that serendipity. Look! A man who is almost 70 and has run a cafe almost every day since 1984 has built a toilet for the simple purpose of bedazzling his customers! But sharing today means using social platforms like Instagram or Twitter or Facebook. And once you open those apps and stare into the maw of an algorithmically curated timeline, you are pulled far, far away from the music and the toilet or wherever it is you may be at that moment.
Craig’s a good writer, and like most good writers, he can catch your interest even when the topic does not.
One last one, another from James Somers. It’s also older — published in 2012.
Just outside our three-man tent I had heard the signatures of ursine curiosity: heavy footsteps, panting, and every so often a terrible silence in which the two of us, the thing and I, would freeze, and tighten, and turn the dials way up on all our senses and wonder what sort of mind was likewise poised on the other side of the thin fabric. I had no useful equipment inside the tent and no plan and so I simply sat there and feared, and between the fearing hoped, this hope consisting in the image of dawn breaking, and the other guys waking up, and a swift hike through berry thickets back to our minivan, 5.2 miles away, where I’d find my way to the nearest town and get me some ostentatious comfort, something like a massage and an episode of Cheers. No, I thought, camping is not manful adventure, it’s misery—and the only tolerable risk of a bear attack is exactly zero.
The article is less about hair-raising bear encounters and more about how far most of us live from truly wild experiences.
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Currently
Still enjoying the slower days between Christmas and New Years, ingesting a lot of chocolates and various types of beers, and spending time out in the snow.
That’s the second last issue of this newsletter for the 2019. Again, from our family here in Northern Canada, may you have a wonderful time of rest for the remainder of the year and a wonderful 2020!