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Finalize Sept. dispatch

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content/journal/dispatch-7-september-2023/index.md
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---
title: "Dispatch #7 (September 2023)"
date: 2023-09-04T22:38:04-04:00
date: 2023-09-08T00:00:00-04:00
draft: false
tags:
- dispatch
@@ -17,6 +17,22 @@ references:
url: https://twonerds.net/blog/radda-in-chianti-to-siena
date: 2023-09-08T20:11:47Z
file: twonerds-net-pv4a04.txt
- title: "On Tools and the Aesthetics of Work - Cal Newport"
url: https://calnewport.com/on-tools-and-the-aesthetics-of-work/
date: 2023-09-09T02:14:13Z
file: calnewport-com-jtszvi.txt
- title: "Exit, Voice, Loyalty, Neglect: Why People Leave, Stay, or Try to Burn It All Down | The Art of Manliness"
url: https://www.artofmanliness.com/character/behavior/exit-voice-loyalty-neglect-why-people-leave-stay-or-try-to-burn-it-all-down/
date: 2023-09-09T02:15:27Z
file: www-artofmanliness-com-rx8ary.txt
- title: "Digital Notetaking Stack - Notes from your friend Chris"
url: https://chrisnotes.io/digital-notetaking-stack
date: 2023-09-09T02:17:52Z
file: chrisnotes-io-ijc95x.txt
- title: "Why note-taking apps don’t make us smarter - The Verge"
url: https://www.theverge.com/2023/8/25/23845590/note-taking-apps-ai-chat-distractions-notion-roam-mem-obsidian
date: 2023-09-09T02:26:18Z
file: www-theverge-com-mjsr9z.txt
---
We were down at Lake Norman for the long weekend, and as I was pulling up the kayaks this morning, I couldn't help but feel like I was also sort of putting away the summer -- what a summer though. The last few weeks of August were pretty wall-to-wall. I went up to the Eastern Shore in Virginia to spend a long weekend with some old friends. Our rental was right on an inlet off the Chesapeake, and they had a stand-up paddleboard I was able to take out.
@@ -91,7 +107,7 @@ This month:
* Adventure: Italy! Claire and I [did a bike tour through Tuscany][15] in 2017 that was supposed to end at Elba Island, though for various reasons, it did not. Claire has continued to follow the resort on social media, and we decided earlier this summer to finally check it out, Nev in tow. We've been so busy that it's just now coming into focus, but we are getting excited -- [just look at this place][16].
* Project: hanging out with my buddy Ken (pictured up top), who records music as [Carillon][17], is always inspiring. I'd like to get a basic audio recording station set up in my basement and start playing with some acoustic and digital instruments. I'll probably repurpose the door I removed as part of the [closet project][18].
* Skill:
* Skill: just get my non-fiction reading habit back -- the stack to my left here is growing.
[15]: https://twonerds.net/blog/radda-in-chianti-to-siena
[16]: https://www.rosselbalepalme.it/en/glamping-lodge.php
@@ -109,10 +125,27 @@ Reading:
Links:
* [Title][22]
* [Title][23]
* [Title][24]
* [On Tools and the Aesthetics of Work][22]
[22]: https://example.com/
[23]: https://example.com/
[24]: https://example.com/
> But the Mythic is a useful reminder that the rhythms of our professional lives are not pre-ordained. We craft the world in which we work, even if we don’t realize it.
* [Exit, Voice, Loyalty, Neglect: Why People Leave, Stay, or Try to Burn It All Down][23]
> Hirschman observed that people who find themselves in diminishing, less-than-ideal circumstances have three options: 1) leave the declining group, company, or relationship (exit), 2) express discontent to improve the situation (voice), or 3) stay in the organization and passively hope things get better (loyalty).
>
> Since the initial publication of Exit, Voice, Loyalty in 1970, other social scientists have added a fourth option to Hirschman’s framework: neglect.
* [Digital Notetaking Stack][24]
> So, I’ve developed a system that works for taking paper notes. It’s custom tailored to my goals and how my brain works. And as a cherry on top, I picked a notebook binder and pen that I really enjoy touching and looking at, which makes the whole system just that much better.
>
> Similarly, I use a set of different apps for different purposes when I’m taking notes in my digital world.
* [Why note-taking apps don’t make us smarter][25]
> Today let’s step outside the news cycle and turn our attention toward a topic I’m deeply invested in but only rarely write about: productivity platforms. For decades now, software tools have promised to make working life easier. But on one critical dimension — their ability to improve our thinking — they don’t seem to be making much progress at all.
[22]: https://calnewport.com/on-tools-and-the-aesthetics-of-work/
[23]: https://www.artofmanliness.com/character/behavior/exit-voice-loyalty-neglect-why-people-leave-stay-or-try-to-burn-it-all-down/
[24]: https://chrisnotes.io/digital-notetaking-stack
[25]: https://www.theverge.com/2023/8/25/23845590/note-taking-apps-ai-chat-distractions-notion-roam-mem-obsidian

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content/notes/first-it-must-work/index.md
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@@ -39,6 +39,10 @@ references:
url: https://changelog.com/posts/still-no-silver-bullet
date: 2023-07-04T16:04:24Z
file: changelog-com-kqx1ni.txt
- title: "No one actually wants simplicity - lukeplant.me.uk"
url: https://lukeplant.me.uk/blog/posts/no-one-actually-wants-simplicity/
date: 2023-09-09T02:23:06Z
file: lukeplant-me-uk-ms1b6l.txt
---
### Thoughts on priorities in software development
@@ -61,6 +65,7 @@ references:
* [We are wasting up to 20% of our time on computer problems, says study][7]
* [Choose Boring Technology][8]
* [There's still no silver bullet][9]
* [No one actually wants simplicity][10]
[3]: https://grugbrain.dev/
[4]: https://world.hey.com/dhh/even-amazon-can-t-make-sense-of-serverless-or-microservices-59625580
@@ -68,4 +73,5 @@ references:
[6]: https://taylor.town/millennium-sewer
[7]: https://techxplore.com/news/2023-06-problems.html
[8]: https://mcfunley.com/choose-boring-technology
[9]: https://changelog.com/posts/still-no-silver-bullet
[9]: https://changelog.com/posts/still-no-silver-bullet
[10]: https://lukeplant.me.uk/blog/posts/no-one-actually-wants-simplicity/

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[17]Home » [18]Blog » On Tools and the Aesthetics of Work
On Tools and the Aesthetics of Work
September 4, 2023
In the summer of 2022, an engineer named Keegan McNamara, who was at
the time working for a fundraising technology startup, found his way to
the [19]Arms and Armor exhibit at the Met. He was struck by the
unapologetic mixture of extreme beauty and focused function captured in
the antique firearms on display. As reported in [20]a recent profile of
McNamara published in The Verge, this encounter with the past sparked a
realization about the present:
“That combination of craftsmanship and utility, objects that are
both thoroughly practical and needlessly outrageously beautiful,
doesn’t really exist anymore. ‘And it especially doesn’t exist for
computers.'”
Aesthetically, contemporary digitals devices have become industrial and
impersonal: grey and black rectangles carved into generically-modern
clean lines . Functionally, they offer the hapless user a cluttered
explosion of potential activity, windows piling on top of windows,
command bars thick with applications. Standing in the Arms and Armor
exhibit McNamara began to wonder if there was a way to rethink the PC;
to save it from a predictable maximalism.
The result was [21]The Mythic I, a custom computer that McNamara
handcrafted over the year or so that followed that momentous afternoon
at the Met. The machine is housed in a swooping hardwood frame carved
using manual tools. An eight-inch screen is mounted above a 1980’s
IBM-style keyboard with big clacking keys that McNamara carefully
lubricated to achieve exactly the right sound on each strike: “if you
have dry rubbing of plastic, it doesn’t sound thock-y. It just sounds
cheap.” Below the keyboard is an Italian leather hand rest. To turn it
on you insert and turn a key and then flip a toggle switch.
Equally notable is what happens once the machine is activated. McNamara
designed the Mythic for three specific purposes: writing a novel,
writing occasional computer code, and writing his daily journal.
Accordingly, it runs a highly-modular version of Linux called NixOS
that he’s customized to only offer emacs, a text-based editor popular
among hacker types, that’s launched from a basic green command line.
You can’t go online, or create a PowerPoint presentation, or edit a
video. It’s a writing a machine, and like the antique arms that
inspired it, the Mythic implements this functionality with a focused,
beautiful utilitarianism.
In his critical classic, [22]Amusing Ourselves to Death, Neil Postman
argued that the form taken by the technologies we use impacts the
fundamental nature of our cognition. When we switched media consumption
from long newspaper articles to television soundbites, for example, our
understanding of news lost its heft and became more superficial and
emotionally-charged.
When pondering Keegan McNamara and the Mythic, I can’t help but apply
Postman’s framework to the machines that organize our professional
activities. The modern computer, with its generic styling and
overloaded activity, creates a cognitive environment defined by urgent,
bland, Sisyphean widget cranking — work as endless Slack and email and
Zoom and “jumping on” calls, in which there is always too much to do,
but no real sense of much of importance actually being accomplished.
In Keegan’s construction we find an alternative understanding of work,
built now on beauty, craftsmanship, and focus. Replacing everyone’s
MacBook with custom-carved hardwood, of course, is not enough on its
own to transform how we think about out jobs, [23]as these issues have
deeper roots. But the Mythic is a useful reminder that the rhythms of
our professional lives are not pre-ordained. We craft the world in
which we work, even if we don’t realize it.
#####
In other news: My longtime friend Brad Stulberg has a great new book
out this week. It’s called, [24]Master of Change: How to Excel When
Everything is Changing — Including You. In my cover blurb, I noted that
this “immensely wise and timely book provides a roadmap for a
tumultuous world.” I really mean it! The idea of preparing yourself to
thrive, and not crumble, when faced with inevitable change is
self-evidently important, and Brad does a great job of delivering the
goods on this timely theme.
Pro-tip: if you do buy the book this week, [25]go to Brad’s website to
claim a bunch of cool pre-order bonuses that he’s offering through the
first full week of publication.
[26]We Don’t Need a New Twitter
7 thoughts on “On Tools and the Aesthetics of Work”
1.
Galia
[27]September 4, 2023 at 9:27 am
Too much information when few things matter: that reminds me of the
book Essentialism. Acting like those everyday stimuli don’t exist
is the first recipe for success.
[28]Reply
2.
Alexander Lewis
[29]September 4, 2023 at 11:57 am
I love the idea here. People still use old typewriters as art
pieces and coffee table decor in their homes. It’s hard to imagine
something similar occuring with modern computers. Laptops are used
until they’re dead, and then they’re recycled or thrown into the
junk drawer.
I think this craftsman/engineer might be onto something.
[30]Reply
3.
Rafa Font
[31]September 4, 2023 at 3:22 pm
They have become Swiss knives, tools for all. Especially mobile
phones, they’re maps, navigators, radio, compass, torch, voice
recorder, word processor… all in one.
I gave my kids a voice recorder the other day. So that they can
have a one-action device to play with and understand what it is, on
its own.
[32]Reply
4.
Alex Francisco
[33]September 4, 2023 at 8:04 pm
What a find!
My copies of ‘Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man’ –
McLuhan,
the Medium is the Massage are always in my mind.
A good summary is that one line by Culkin in an article about
McLuhan:
“We become what we behold. We shape our tools, and thereafter our
tools shape us.”
Timeless, humbling AND empowering at once.
[34]Reply
5.
rb
[35]September 4, 2023 at 9:47 pm
WordStar was more fun than WordPerfect, which was quite a bit more
fun than Microsoft Word. There has not been a professional writing
application since WordStar and its pale descendants including
EMACS. Everybody writes – there is opportunity here.
[36]Reply
6.
Garrett
[37]September 6, 2023 at 1:46 pm
In my opinion, another huge value of this is that it has a distinct
physical location. There’s a lot of power (at least for me) in
having a physical place to do things. When I’m in my woodshop for
instance, I am not engaging with distractions. I’m there to create
things and I’m limited (or, empowered) by the tools around me.
[38]Reply
7.
Judy
[39]September 6, 2023 at 6:23 pm
As someone who formerly worked in IT but transitioned to become a
classical fine art painter, I love the concept of objects that are
both utilitarian and beautiful. Many craftspeople of the past took
great pride in creating all manner of objects that were more than
simply useful, as Keegan McNamara discovered. Owners of these
well-crafted objects also loved them for their beauty. Beauty is
important in life.
[40]Reply
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#[1]Notes from your friend Chris
[2]Notes from your friend Chris
[3]Home [4]Archives [5]Search [6]Feed
Digital Notetaking Stack
So I use a paper notebook. To be more specific, I use a notebook binder
with three separate notebooks in it. Each notebook serves a specific
purpose. The first one is for tasks and to-dos. The second one is just
a scratch pad for absolutely anything under the sun: drawings,
thoughts, somebody’s phone number, anything. The last one is a very
regimented journal where I reflect on personal experiences.
Sure, I could just use a single notebook for all of these purposes.
Hell, I could use a stack of printer paper for all these purposes; but
it would be clunky, it would be difficult, and I wouldn’t really want
to use it because it wouldn’t be very satisfying.
So, I’ve developed a system that works for taking paper notes. It’s
custom tailored to my goals and how my brain works. And as a cherry on
top, I picked a notebook binder and pen that I really enjoy touching
and looking at, which makes the whole system just that much better.
Similarly, I use a set of different apps for different purposes when
I’m taking notes in my digital world.
Yes, I could probably stick to just using the default notes app on my
phone, but it would be clunky, there would be friction, it would not
adapt to the way my brain works, and I would end up using it less. Plus
it isn’t really that satisfying to look at… but that’s just my opinion.
So instead, after nearly a decade of trial and error, I’ve developed a
system and way of working with my notes in my digital world that brings
me immense satisfaction and works well with the way my brain works and
the way my lifestyle is currently set up.
DISCLAIMERS:
* This is not me trying to convince you to use the apps that I use.
This is what works for me, and is very tailored to my brain and
life. I’m not here to tell you what to use. But if hearing about my
setup gives you ideas, that’s great!
* This is something I will continue to change and improve. It’s been
a long evolution to land on this setup. Trial and error was
involved, and will continue to be. I think there’s an ebb and flow
to changing your setup. If you do it too often, you lose
productivity. If you don’t do it enough, your setup may stagnate
and fail to match your lifestyle.
* This is a values-based notetaking setup. I believe in owning my own
data, having an easily exportable format (markdown), and using
tools that are extensible & hackable. For someone who doesn’t share
these values, this may seem overbuilt or convoluted or not native
enough or something.
* This is not written for the PKM enthusiast community. It’s a basic,
balanced setup using tools that are widely known. If you’re a
longtime Personal Knowledge Management guru, there won’t be
anything new for you here. This is written for the layman who is
dissatisfied with their current setup and looking for inspiration.
Anyway, if digital notetaking is something that never really clicked
for you, or if you currently have a workflow that you’re not pleased
with, this might be a blog article for you. Let me know on [7]Mastodon!
Overview
i. Intake / Short-term notes
ii. Long-term notes
iii. Shared / Published notes
iv. Collaborative notes
v. Closing thoughts
Intake / Short-term notes
One of the most important parts of my setup is my intake app. I hope
you’ve never had to experience this feeling:
Your friend names a cool restaurant or book for you to look up
later. You hastily pull up your notes app to write it down. But
wait. Where should you make the note? Does restaurant fall under
your travel folder? Or your food folder? What should you title it?
Do you need to make a new folder? While you’re fiddling with your
app your friend has already started talking about that other boba
place you should explore. Should that go in a whole other note? Oh
god.
I feel like a lot of people give up after going through this a couple
times and their notes app just ends up being a hodge-podge of
unorganized, random shit that they dread looking back at later.
This is exactly why I use an intake app, and my app of choice for this
incredibly important role is, of course, Drafts.
[8]✨Drafts✨
Drafts is made for this exact purpose. By default, it opens to a blank
new note. Whatever you type as the first line is considered the title.
And it has this insane concept called Actions that lets you quickly
process your notes by moving them elsewhere through deep interactions
with your other existing apps.
Let’s look at some pictures:
[723b4f53-202a-41b6-981c-d1e2710d6e47.png]
[896a49c3-ec20-4dff-89ac-33f9cf1e6120.png]
[78912a4e-95cc-463f-af64-5e55f4ddb395.png]
In the leftmost image, you can see where I keep Drafts. Front and
center, only app in my bottom drawer.
Middle image, you have the first thing you see when the app opens: a
blank note to write that restaurant / song / boba place.
Rightmost image, you have the actions pane.
The actions in this pane are customized to my workflow. You are able to
configure multiple pages, but I’m content with just one for now.
Drafting a text to your mom? Send it as a text message after you’ve
perfected it. Shopping list? Export straight into wherever you keep
that (for me it’s Things). Deep thought that’s perhaps a little too
deep? File it away in Day One where it will never see the light of day.
Basic tagging, shortcuts integration, and an archive folder really tie
everything together. Process a ton of drafts at once by selecting them
in the app and then doing a batch operation.
Drafts comes with a pretty comprehensive set of actions right out of
the box, but the true power here comes from tapping into the [9]Drafts
Directory: a massive repository of actions sourced from the Drafts
community (as well as many written by the creator).
Every app you could imagine is in this directory.
And the best part: if your app isn’t in there you can write your own
action!
Drafts could honestly take up a whole series of blog posts so I’ll stop
there for now. I haven’t even scratched the surface of what it can do,
but you really don’t need to dive very deep to reap the benefits.
Let’s table Drafts for now. It’ll come up later with how it pipes into
my other systems.
Long-term notes
So you may have picked up on the fact that notes don’t stay in Drafts
long. They either get exported or archived.
Not every note is worthy of a permanent place in your note-taking
kingdom. Embracing this concept was a huge step in cleaning up my
digital world and starting to build a meaningful notes database for my
life.
As I continued to acclimate to digital notes, I noticed that certain
note categories began to make themselves known.
[11b85744-48ac-4c2d-a817-6e813929b837.png]
The middle 3 folders are the important ones to note here.
Core
My core folder is where deeply personal stuff goes. Longterm goals,
journal entries, guiding principles and personal mantras. I wouldn’t
expect you to understand mine, but I’d encourage anyone to explore this
category of notes for themselves.
The notes in this folder don’t change much. But I recently started
recording a daily voice note diary of my day that I then transcribe and
summarize with AI.
I also do yearly, quarterly, monthly, and weekly planning sessions, and
the artifacts from these sessions often end up in here.
Projects
Projects is my favorite folder in my long-term notes.
For me, this is a place for all kinds of things. Packing lists +
itineraries + other details for an upcoming trip, startup ideas,
potential blog posts, plans and details for my numerous hobbies.
Notes in here often originate in Drafts and get quickly exported to my
projects folder via Drafts actions.
Projects are usually temporary, and get moved to my archive folder when
they’re completed (or when I get bored and move onto the next hobby).
Reference
This is for lists and information that I will want to keep as
reference. Quotes, wishlists, movie bucket list, books to read, etc.
I used to maintain a personal wiki of information on different topics.
Zettelkasten-esque, my knowledge wiki is currently in need of cleanup
and will likely be featured in its own blog post if I continue to work
on it.
Other folders
Archive is self-explanatory. Old notes go in here.
Templates is for fill-in-the-blank templates for notes that I take
often. Like those yearly/quarterly/etc check-ins and certain types of
projects. There’s an Obsidian plugin that has some functionality to
take advantage of these, but right now I just duplicate and move
markdown files manually as-needed. Nothing fancy.
__________________________________________________________________
I find this setup to be just enough. My main folders allow plenty of
flexibility within them for me to develop all kinds of systems to match
how my brain works.
Apps and stuff
Yes, yes, we’ll talk about the app I use, but that’s much less
important than the underlying foundation.
My long-term note-taking system is really just two things:
* A collection of markdown files
* A syncing service that circulates these files between my devices
If you commit to using the first, you can choose whatever you want for
the second and migrate between syncing providers at-will with minimal
headache. I’m not going to say much more on that, since others have
covered it very well ([10]File over App from one of the people
responsible for Obsidian).
And as long as you have these two, you can access all of your notes on
all of your devices with whatever Markdown tools you’d like. Ultimate
freedom, extensibility, and hackability.
That said, I use Obsidian.
[11]✨Obsidian✨
My go-to sync tool was Dropbox for a long time, but after committing
fully to Obsidian as my default app across Mac / iPad / iPhone I’ve
switched over to Obsidian Sync for the E2E encryption, longer note
history, and seamless integration with Obsidian.
It basically works like Dropbox used to before the weird Apple OS
integration stuff. Obsidian Sync downloads all the files onto your
device, so you still can access them with any markdown editor that has
access to the filesystem.
Drafts can export to my longterm notes via both the OS filesystem and
Obsidian app urls. Same for Shortcuts, which I’ll get to later.
Obsidian also plays nicely with iCloud, and supports Dropbox / Google
Drive / S3 through its community plugins. I have it connected to my
Dropbox for publishing / sharing notes, which I’ll get into in a bit.
My main reasons for using Obsidian are:
* It has command palette
* It has quick open
* It’s hackable & has community plugins
Honestly, the specific app here doesn’t really matter as much as the
underlying system. I could switch to using Ulysses or 1Writer or Byword
or nvAlt or something else entirely if I wanted.
I will say, like Drafts, Obsidian is a product of thoughtful design.
You don’t need to dive to deep to reap the benefits. But if you want to
be a power user, there’s a LOT it can do. For me, the important thing
is that I can open files and do stuff with them easily, and I can hack
it to accommodate to pretty much any use case my weird brain comes up
with.
Obsidian really knocks it out of the park for me, so I use it almost
exclusively right now (for long-term notes).
Published / shared notes
I’m not going to shit on Notion in this post (not much, at least), but
one thing I really missed from migrating from it was the
ease-of-sharing.
I would put together an itinerary, packing list, cost breakdown, and
car-pooling plan for group camping trips in minutes, hit the share
button, and fire it off to my group chat of friends with no hiccups.
I had been craving that functionality in my new note-taking system, so
I built it. Kind of.
Before we get to that, let’s talk about my workflow for posting blog
articles.
Publishing blog posts
Remember how I said I use Dropbox still for sharing / publishing?
I do that with help from a service called Blot.
[12]✨Blot✨
Blot turns a folder in your Dropbox account into a fully functioning
blog.
Their website explains it all, but basically to publish this article I
literally just dropped it into a folder in my Dropbox, which I can do
without leaving Obsidian.
I wouldn’t say this is anything groundbreaking, but I find it immensely
satisfying.
Sharing notes
Okay, back to Notion-esque sharing.
Let’s say I put together a travel itinerary for a camping trip in my
Projects folder. It has a list of everyone attending, cost breakdown,
directions, packing list, and pictures of the campsite to drum up hype.
It’s all ready to go, but I need to share it out to my friends.
Enter Blot. Same service, different folder. This time, instead of
having Blot publish to chrisnotes.io, I have a separate domain I use
only for this purpose. I move the note to the shared folder and shoot
my friends the link.
The end. No fuss, no need for them to have an account, it’s just
published to a non-indexed domain that I use as an external
file/note-share.
”But it’s not collaborative!” Yeah, and it’s not meant to be.
Collaborative notes
Okay, so once in a blue moon I have a valid reason to collaborate on a
note with someone. It’s incredibly rare, and usually a very niche
use-case.
If it’s like a Resume or something, I use Google Drive, because the
output artifact is a document.
If it’s for brainstorming or something, Figma.
If it’s project tracking, Notion.
These aren’t really notes anymore. This is a one-off collaboration with
a specific outcome in mind, so it doesn’t really fall into the purview
of this post.
To be honest, I don’t think my personal notes database is something
that would ever require collaboration. My notes are deeply personal,
and I like it that way. I can publish if I need to, and there are
plenty of collaborative tools that work for other tasks. But I have yet
to need real-time collaboration on my actual notes.
My gripe with Notion
Okay fine, quick note on Notion. While it’s a powerful tool that sparks
creativity in a very attractive interface, it goes against my core
values. You don’t own your data, it’s on their servers the entire time.
Offline mode barely works. Exporting is a mess because while they
present themselves as Markdown-esque, their stuff is so custom it’s a
mess to port to other apps.
You get punished as soon as you try to leave.
Best of luck to anyone entangled in that system. It took some work to
get my notes out of Notion, and I will not be going back.
Closing thoughts
You made it to the end!
Personally, after having tried a lot of tools with varying levels of
depth and complexity, I find this setup very balanced.
It does just enough. I haven’t gone too deep into any of the tools.
It’s still portable. I could still switch stuff around with very little
overhead if I wanted to.
Being candid, my sync system is the one thing I am considering
changing. I don’t like that Obsidian Sync has no way to run headless,
and has no API access for other apps to tap into. If I wanted to change
editor, I’d need to switch back to Dropbox. It wouldn’t take much to
make the switch: maybe 5 minutes to update the config across all my
devices.
But that’s the only thing I’m really not happy with right now. I find
this system pretty seamless to work with. It has structure and
organization, without being so confined that it limits creativity.
Bonus goodies
If you made it this far, you’re either really into notetaking systems
or you’re friends with me. Either way, you might get a kick out of some
of the cool functionality that comes from a system like this.
Custom share sheet actions
Any time I’m browsing the web and come across something I want to buy
later, I can instantly append it to my Wishlist note using a share
sheet action that uses Obsidian’s deep-linking.
I could easily replicate this functionality using the OS filesystem in
shortcuts.
Or, if I was using Dropbox, I could do it with Dropbox’s shortcut
integrations.
I have a similar shortcut action for prepending selected text to my
Quotes note.
If I wanted, I could have an automation that downloads the current
weather and top news stories to a daily note for me to review when I
start my morning.
With a little scripting, you can really bend any of these tools / files
to do whatever you want because of the format.
Anyway, thanks so much for reading this far. I hope you got something
from it. And if you have any input, please let me know. I’m not going
to pretend I’m any kind of guru, and I love learning new things. If you
have suggestions or ideas or feedback, please send them my way on
[13]Mastodon!
__________________________________________________________________
Date
September 4, 2023
References
1. https://chrisnotes.io/feed.rss
2. file:///
3. file:///
4. file:///archives
5. file:///search
6. file:///feed.rss
7. https://mastodon.social/@chrisnotes
8. https://getdrafts.com/
9. https://directory.getdrafts.com/
10. https://stephanango.com/file-over-app
11. http://obsidian.md/
12. https://blot.im/
13. https://mastodon.social/@chrisnotes

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* Site
+ [1]Home
+ [2]About me
* Blog
+ [3]Posts
+ [4]Categories
* Post
+ [5]Comments
+ [6]Related
No one actually wants simplicity
by [7]Luke Plant
Posted in:
* [8]Rants
* [9]Software development
* [10]Web development
— August 22, 2023 18:49
The reason that modern web development is [11]swamped with complexity
is that no one really wants things to be simple. We just think we do,
while our choices prove otherwise.
A lot of developers want simplicity in the same way that a lot of
clients claim they want a fast website. You respond “OK, so we can
remove some of these 17 Javascript trackers and other bloat that’s
making your website horribly slow?” – no, apparently those are all
critical business functionality.
In other words, they prioritise everything over speed. And then they
wonder why using their website is like rowing a boat through a lake of
molasses on a cold day using nothing but a small plastic spoon.
The same is often true of complexity. The real test is the question
“what are you willing to sacrifice to achieve simplicity?” If the
answer is “nothing”, then you don’t actually love simplicity at all,
it’s your lowest priority.
When I say “sacrifice”, I don’t mean that choosing simplicity will mean
you are worse off overall – simplicity brings massive benefits. But it
does mean that there will be some things that tempt you to believe you
are missing out.
For every developer, it might be something different. For one, the
tedium of having to spend half an hour a month ensuring that two
different things are kept in sync easily justifies the adoption of a
bulky framework that solves that particular problem. For another, the
ability to control how a checkbox animates when you check it is of
course a valid reason to add another 50 packages and 3 layers of
frameworks to their product. For another, adding an abstraction with
thousands of lines of codes, dozens of classes and page after page of
documentation in order to avoid manually writing a [12]tiny factory
function for a test is a great trade-off.
Of course we all claim to hate complexity, but it’s actually just
complexity added by other people that we hate — our own bugbears are
always exempted, and for things we understand we quickly become unable
to even see there is a potential problem for other people. Certainly
there are frameworks and dependencies that justify their existence and
adoption, but working out which ones they are is hard.
I think a good test of whether you truly love simplicity is whether you
are able to remove things you have added, especially code you’ve
written, even when it is still providing value, because you realise it
is not providing enough value.
Another test is what you are tempted to do when a problem arises with
some of the complexity you’ve added. Is your first instinct to add even
more stuff to fix it, or is it to remove and live with the loss?
The only path I can see through all this is to cultivate an almost
obsessive suspicion of [13]FOMO. I think that’s probably key to
learning to [14]say no.
Links
* [15]Discussion of this post on Lobsters
You may also like: [16]§
* [17]Test smarter, not harder
* [18]Announcement: Django Views - The Right Way
* [19]Wedding hacks - seating planner using simulated annealing
* [20]Wedding hacks - John Lewis gift list hyperlink
* [21]A prayer to the programming gods
* [22]Why learning Haskell/Python makes you a worse programmer
* [23]A Django website that took (a lot) more than 20 minutes.
Comments [24]§
Comments should load when you scroll to here...
Copyright Luke Plant
Built using [25]Nikola
Powered by [26]DigitalOcean
References
1. file:///var/folders/
2. file:///var/folders/personal/
3. file:///var/folders/q9/
4. file:///var/folders/q9/categories/
5. file:///var/folders/q9/qlz2w5251kzdfgn0np7z2s4c0000gn/T/L26554-9864TMP.html#comments
6. file:///var/folders/q9/qlz2w5251kzdfgn0np7z2s4c0000gn/T/L26554-9864TMP.html#related
7. https://lukeplant.me.uk/
8. file:///var/folders/q9/categories/rants/
9. file:///var/folders/q9/categories/software-development/
10. file:///var/folders/q9/categories/web-development/
11. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BtJAsvJOlhM
12. file:///var/folders/q9/qlz2w5251kzdfgn0np7z2s4c0000gn/test-factory-functions-in-django/
13. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fear_of_missing_out
14. https://grugbrain.dev/#grug-on-saying-no
15. https://lobste.rs/s/ao2x0v/no_one_actually_wants_simplicity
16. file:///var/folders/q9/qlz2w5251kzdfgn0np7z2s4c0000gn/T/L26554-9864TMP.html#related
17. file:///var/folders/q9/qlz2w5251kzdfgn0np7z2s4c0000gn/test-smarter-not-harder/
18. file:///var/folders/q9/qlz2w5251kzdfgn0np7z2s4c0000gn/announcement-django-views-the-right-way/
19. file:///var/folders/q9/qlz2w5251kzdfgn0np7z2s4c0000gn/wedding-hacks---seating-planner-using-simulated-annealing/
20. file:///var/folders/q9/qlz2w5251kzdfgn0np7z2s4c0000gn/wedding-hacks---john-lewis-gift-list-hyperlink/
21. file:///var/folders/q9/qlz2w5251kzdfgn0np7z2s4c0000gn/a-prayer-to-the-programming-gods/
22. file:///var/folders/q9/qlz2w5251kzdfgn0np7z2s4c0000gn/why-learning-haskell-python-makes-you-a-worse-programmer/
23. file:///var/folders/q9/qlz2w5251kzdfgn0np7z2s4c0000gn/a-django-website-that-took-a-lot-more-than-20-minutes/
24. file:///var/folders/q9/qlz2w5251kzdfgn0np7z2s4c0000gn/T/L26554-9864TMP.html#comments
25. https://getnikola.com/
26. https://m.do.co/c/cef485980f20

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[42]My Go-To Sunglasses for Summer
[43]How to Pick the Perfect Men’s Wedding Ring
[44]Your No-Nonsense Guide to Choosing the Right Beard Style
[45]How to Grow a Beard: The One and True Guide
[46]Beard Oil FAQs: Answering All Your Pressing Beardly Questions
[47]Beard Grooming 101: The Lowdown on Products and Routine
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[60]Podcast #920: Is Cannabis a Safe Drug?
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[62]What’s the Deal With Electrolytes, Anyway?
[63]Melatonin: Everything You Need to Know
[64]The Insanely Difficult Standards of History’s Hardest P.E. Program
[65]Which Fitness Program Is Right for You?
[66]A Review of the MovNat Workshop
[67]Strengthen Your Tribe: A Report on the Atomic Athlete Vanguard
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[76]How and Why to Hold a Weekly Marriage Meeting
[77]Sunday Firesides: We Shouldn’t (and Should) Be Friends With Our
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[78]What to Do When Your Kid Lies to You
[79]You Don’t Have to Be Your Dad: How to Become Your Family’s
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[80]Podcast #810: How to Turn a Boy Into a Man
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[82]The Challenge of Social Discoordination
[83]Sunday Firesides: The Maturing Mirror of Marriage
[84]Is the 7-Year-Itch Real?
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[98]How to Jump Start a Car – The Complete Guide
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in: [106]Behavior, [107]Character
Brett & Kate McKay • September 5, 2023
Exit, Voice, Loyalty, Neglect: Why People Leave, Stay, or Try to Burn It All
Down
When someone is dissatisfied with a product, group, or relationship,
how do they remedy that dissatisfaction?
A German economist and political scientist, Albert Hirschman, laid out
a theory of how people respond to dissatisfaction in his influential
treatise [108]Exit, Voice, Loyalty: Responses to Decline in Firms,
Organizations, and States.
Hirschman observed that people who find themselves in diminishing,
less-than-ideal circumstances have three options: 1) leave the
declining group, company, or relationship (exit), 2) express discontent
to improve the situation (voice), or 3) stay in the organization and
passively hope things get better (loyalty).
Since the initial publication of Exit, Voice, Loyalty in 1970, other
social scientists have added a fourth option to Hirschman’s framework:
neglect.
Which option a person exercises will depend on many factors, and the
path they choose can help reverse, stem, or exacerbate a group’s
deterioration.
The exit, voice, loyalty, neglect (EVLN) framework will help you
understand why people stay in or leave a relationship (including
friendships), why people stay in or leave a job, why people stay in or
leave a church, and many more of life’s interpersonal and institutional
dynamics.
Let’s unpack it.
Exit, Voice, Loyalty, Neglect
I read Hirschman’s book a few months ago and went on a deep dive into
related research that’s been done since it was published. The EVLN
framework has become a fundamental mental model in my brain. It’s a
decidedly simple paradigm and is something people already intuitively
know, but once you see it spelled out explicitly, you start to see it
everywhere.
Exit
The exit option is exercised when an individual is dissatisfied with
something and decides to quit it altogether.
You use the exit option all the time as a consumer. If you’re
dissatisfied with shaving cream brand A, you stop using it and start
using shaving cream brand B.
You can also use the exit option when dissatisfied with a job,
relationship, or group.
Not happy with your job? You can quit it.
Not happy with your relationship? You can break up.
Not happy with the state of your congregation? You can stop going to
that church and start going to another.
What’s interesting about the exit option is that it often accelerates
decline in groups. According to Hirschman, the people most sensitive to
a decrease in quality are typically those with the most resources,
skills, and talents that could be used to effectuate improvement. The
people who are the least sensitive to quality usually have fewer
resources, skills, and talents. When the people who have resources
leave, it results in a “brain drain.” With fewer well-resourced
members, the quality of the group further declines; it thus has even
more trouble attracting new members (especially well-resourced ones);
as a result, even more people leave. Things go from bad to worse, and
the group or organization enters a death spiral that can be difficult
or impossible to recover from.
To illustrate this phenomenon, Hirschman uses the example of parents
pulling their kids out of public schools and putting them into private
schools. According to Hirschman, affluent parents are much more
sensitive to education quality than less affluent parents. It’s not
that less affluent parents don’t care about their children’s education;
they just don’t have the luxury of being hyper-sensitive to deficits in
quality. Because they know that private school isn’t an option for
them, they don’t spend as much time wondering if the grass is greener
at another school as affluent parents do.
Because school is a matter of optionality for wealthy parents, they
notice perceived flaws in their children’s education more acutely. If
these parents become dissatisfied with the education being offered in a
public school, they’ll switch their child over to a private school.
When these affluent families leave a public school, they take their
resources, and their possibly greater propensity to push for
improvement, with them. As a result, the struggles of the public school
deepen.
Voice
Sometimes people find themselves in a situation where they’re
dissatisfied with a group or relationship, but they don’t want to leave
it. They still see good in it. It’s still working for them on some
level, or they see potential for how it could work if things were done
differently. They may feel they can do more good being an agent on the
inside than being a critic on the outside.
In these cases, people may decide to stay around and exercise the voice
option — complaining, offering feedback, and agitating for change to
improve things.
An unhappy employee can talk to his boss about changing the company’s
culture.
An unhappy husband can tell his wife about his concerns for the
relationship, or together they can talk to a therapist.
An unhappy customer can contact customer support to raise concerns and
seek redress.
Unhappy parents can talk to their child’s teacher about an issue with
their kid or join the PTA to advocate for broader changes.
Loyalty
While Hirschman clearly defined exit and voice, he was ambiguous about
loyalty. It’s one of the biggest criticisms he received for his work.
Many social scientists since Hirschman have described loyalty as a
“passively positive” response in the face of dissatisfaction. Instead
of taking action (exit or voice), the loyal customer, employee, spouse,
or church member will stay aboard and not raise a stink, hoping things
will get better on their own if they wait long enough.
Take an employee dissatisfied with his job. Maybe he’s decided he can’t
quit, and perhaps he’s also decided that voicing his concerns to his
boss will only increase the animosity between them. So he chooses to
stay with the company, thinking, “Well, maybe things will improve.
Maybe we’ll get a new supervisor. Maybe I’ll get moved to a new
division. I’ll just keep working and wait and see.”
Neglect
Social scientist [109]Carly Rusbult added a fourth option to
Hirschman’s exit/voice/loyalty options for dealing with
dissatisfaction: neglect.
Neglect is similar to loyalty in that the dissatisfied person decides
to stay on board with the declining job, relationship, or group, but
instead of thinking things might improve if they’re patient, the person
who adopts the neglect option has decided things won’t get better and
chooses to take a “negative passive” approach to the situation by
putting in less effort or not taking action to prevent the relationship
or group from further falling apart.
Rather than helping an ineffectual organization continue to limp feebly
along, this individual stays but withdraws their support, with the idea
that by letting the group collapse, its leadership will finally be
forced to take action to change and improve it. The neglect approach
is: “I’m not going to actively put out fires. I’m just going to let
this thing burn to the ground so we can start fresh.”
Consider the overworked church member in a struggling congregation.
He’s juggling multiple roles and dealing with a cadre of difficult
people. Leaving isn’t an option because his wife grew up in that church
and would never consider it. He knows raising his concerns to
leadership would be ineffective because he tried that in the past. So
exit and voice are off the table.
He also doesn’t think things will get better if he sticks around and
just keeps plugging away. Goodbye loyalty.
Hello, neglect.
This burned-out church member may start doing the bare minimum in his
responsibilities, if that. He’ll say no to requests for his time,
money, and talent. If he sees an issue or problem, he won’t do anything
to correct it. He thinks that those who remain loyal are only
perpetuating a state of dysfunction. By withholding his help, he hopes
to push the congregation to a critical level of failure, which will
require the leadership to fix the underlying issues.
Predictors of Response to Dissatisfaction
So, in the face of dissatisfaction, people can respond with exit,
voice, loyalty, or neglect.
A person in declining circumstances conducts an explicit or implicit
cost/benefit analysis in figuring out which path to take.
In [110]Predicting Exit, Voice, Loyalty, and Neglect, researchers
Michael Withey and William Cooper fleshed out the factors that go into
this analysis when people consider how to respond to dissatisfaction:
Cost of the Action
Exit, voice, loyalty, and neglect all come with costs, both direct and
indirect.
Exiting a job can result in the loss of income and health benefits;
divorcing a spouse can result in emotional and financial distress;
leaving a church can result in spiritual and social isolation.
Raising your voice at work could create rancor with your boss; speaking
up in a marriage could create resentment with your spouse.
Whether you’re exiting or using your voice, there can also be a loss in
the thing humans hold most dear: status. In leaving or dissenting, you
risk jeopardizing your identity.
Staying loyal to a relationship or organization comes with costs, too.
If you keep your job in a toxic office, you’ll have to continue to
weather the stress and debasement that comes with going to work each
day. Same thing with staying in a struggling, conflict-ridden marriage
or church.
If you decide to be neglectful in your job, it could result in
discipline or blocked opportunities. Neglect in a marriage will only
lead to increased resentment and tension.
The exit option tends to have the most dramatic consequences, and is
thus much more reluctantly exercised and typically used as a last
resort.
But there’s no option in the EVLN framework that doesn’t carry
downsides; each has its own pros and cons, and part of how people weigh
their choices comes down to which path they think has more of the
former and less of the latter.
Efficacy of the Response
In deciding between exit, voice, loyalty, and neglect, people will also
consider which response will be the most effective at resolving their
dissatisfaction.
A big factor in whether someone thinks a particular response will be
effective is whether they believe there’s hope for improvement. If
someone has this hope, they’re more likely to choose voice or loyalty;
if they don’t, they’re more likely to choose exit or neglect. If an
unhappy employee thinks things would be a lot better at work if their
supervisor moved on, and there’s a rumor they’ll soon be replaced, the
employee is more likely to stick around. If a church member thinks
their concerns will be listened to and addressed, they’re more likely
to stay and raise their voice; if they think their concerns will be
dismissed, they’re more likely to leave.
A significant element in whether someone has hope for a better future
is their prior satisfaction with the group or relationship. If
someone’s marriage is struggling now, but was great for the first
decade, they’re more apt to keep working on it and believe there’s a
chance of returning to those happier times. If someone’s marriage was
rocky from the start, they’re more likely to choose divorce.
Internal vs. External Locus of Control
If an individual has an internal locus of control, they’re more likely
to choose a response that’s proactive. That is, if they believe they
have control over their actions and outcomes, they’re more likely to
use voice or exit.
Someone who has an external locus of control — a belief that their life
is controlled by external circumstances — is more likely to passively
endure a bad situation (loyalty or neglect).
Attractiveness of Alternatives
If someone feels like there are better options outside their current
job/relationship/church, they’re more likely to leave.
If someone’s in a job they dislike and has been fielding hiring
interest from another employer, they’re more likely to quit.
If, on the other hand, someone feels they won’t be able to do much
better in an alternate situation, they’re more likely to exercise the
options of voice, loyalty, and neglect.
An individual who’s sixty and in a so-so marriage may not feel bullish
about their prospects of finding another partner and decide they’d
rather be with someone, anyone, than alone.
Commitment
The decision to go, stay, or otherwise is also rooted in one’s inner
values.
Someone in an unhappy marriage who’s deeply committed to the sanctity
of the marriage vow is more likely to choose therapy over divorce.
Someone who is disturbed by recent trends in their church but deeply
believes in the tenets of their faith is more likely to stay than
exit.
Someone who prizes loyalty will stay longer in a job they dislike than
someone who doesn’t.
Will Someone Choose Exit, Voice, Loyalty, or Neglect?
In a series of studies, Withey and Cooper used the above factors to
create a rubric that helps predict which response a dissatisfied
employee will use. It likely carries over to people dissatisfied with
other situations as well:
Exit More Likely When:
* costs of exit are low
* costs of voice are high
* prior satisfaction is low
* belief in improvement is low
* commitment is low
* attractive alternatives are available
* individual has an internal locus of control
Voice More Likely When:
* costs of exit are high
* costs of voice are low
* prior satisfaction is high
* belief in improvement is high
* commitment is high
* attractive alternatives are not available
* individual has an internal locus of control
Loyalty More Likely When:
* costs of exit are high
* costs of voice are high
* prior satisfaction is high
* belief in the likelihood of improvement is high
* commitment is high
* attractive alternatives are not available
* individual has an external locus of control
Neglect More Likely When:
* costs of exit are high
* costs of voice are high
* prior satisfaction is low
* belief in the likelihood of improvement is low
* commitment is low
* attractive alternatives are not available
* individual has an external locus of control
Something that Withey and Cooper didn’t explore, but Hirschman did, is
the phenomenon of people who exercise the option of exit and voice.
Hirschman argued that you see people use both exit and voice in
situations where even if they leave a group due to dissatisfaction,
they’re still affected by the group’s actions.
You see this phenomenon with people who become disaffected with a
church or religion. They may leave a faith, but they still have friends
and family members who belong to it. Because the disaffected individual
still interacts with these people, whose faith informs these
interactions, the disaffected person is still impacted by the faith,
even if they no longer practice it. At the same time, an individual who
leaves a religion may feel that the religion damaged them somehow, and,
though they have removed themselves from its direct influence, they
don’t want to see other people get hurt in the same way.
Consequently, people who leave a religion sometimes become its most
vocal critics.
Conclusion
As I mentioned at the start, once I learned about the exit, voice,
loyalty, and neglect paradigm, I started to see it everywhere. If
you’re a business owner, it can help explain why customers react to a
dissatisfying experience the way they do. If you’re in a bad
relationship, it can help you think about what action you want to take.
If you’re a leader in a church, it can help you figure out why some
people leave your congregation while others stick around.
It can also help you understand why struggling groups often continue to
struggle: If a group loses enough good people, it’s apt to enter a
death spiral.
As you go about dealing with people in all kinds of situations, the
ELVN framework is one mental model you’ll want to keep in your back
pocket.
Related Posts
* [111]Manvotional: The Right Kind of People
* [112]How to Develop a Manly Voice [VIDEO]
* [113]Podcast #506: How to Improve Your Speaking Voice
* [114]Develop a Strong He-Man Voice by Using the Voice Nature Gave
You
* [115]Sunday Firesides: You Are Not Responsible for Other People's
Feelings
* [116]Sunday Firesides: Why Bad Things Happen to Good People
(According to a Stoic)
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168. https://www.artofmanliness.com/health-fitness/program-review/the-insanely-difficult-standards-of-historys-hardest-p-e-program/
169. https://www.artofmanliness.com/health-fitness/program-review/fitness-program-right/
170. https://www.artofmanliness.com/health-fitness/program-review/a-review-of-the-movnat-workshop/
171. https://www.artofmanliness.com/health-fitness/program-review/atomic-athlete-vanguard/
172. https://www.artofmanliness.com/people/family/riddles-for-kids/
173. https://www.artofmanliness.com/people/family/podcast-sibling-ambivalent/
174. https://www.artofmanliness.com/people/family/how-to-develop-gratitude-in-your-kids/
175. https://www.artofmanliness.com/people/family/how-and-why-to-hold-a-weekly-marriage-meeting/
176. https://www.artofmanliness.com/people/fatherhood/sunday-firesides-we-shouldnt-and-should-be-friends-with-our-kids/
177. https://www.artofmanliness.com/people/fatherhood/what-to-do-when-your-kid-lies-to-you/
178. https://www.artofmanliness.com/people/fatherhood/you-dont-have-to-be-your-dad-how-to-become-your-familys-transitional-character/
179. https://www.artofmanliness.com/people/fatherhood/how-to-turn-a-boy-into-a-man/
180. https://www.artofmanliness.com/people/relationships/podcast-920-advice-on-making-love-last-from-a-divorce-lawyer/
181. https://www.artofmanliness.com/people/relationships/the-challenge-of-social-discoordination/
182. https://www.artofmanliness.com/people/relationships/sunday-firesides-the-maturing-mirror-of-marriage/
183. https://www.artofmanliness.com/people/relationships/is-the-7-year-itch-real/
184. https://www.artofmanliness.com/people/social-skills/podcast-915-finally-learn-to-say-no/
185. https://www.artofmanliness.com/people/social-skills/sunday-firesides-enough-about-me/
186. https://www.artofmanliness.com/people/social-skills/authority-is-more-important-than-social-skills-in-being-influential/
187. https://www.artofmanliness.com/people/social-skills/2-hour-cocktail-party/
188. https://www.artofmanliness.com/skills/how-to/how-to-smoke-a-cigar/
189. https://www.artofmanliness.com/skills/how-to/my-new-favorite-knot-the-alpine-butterfly-knot/
190. https://www.artofmanliness.com/skills/how-to/how-to-take-out-a-sentry/
191. https://www.artofmanliness.com/skills/how-to/how-shuffle-a-deck-of-cards-an-illustrated-guide/
192. https://www.artofmanliness.com/skills/manly-know-how/how-to-make-a-bed-using-hospital-corners/
193. https://www.artofmanliness.com/skills/manly-know-how/how-to-jump-start-a-car-the-complete-guide/
194. https://www.artofmanliness.com/skills/manly-know-how/how-to-catch-a-souvenir-baseball/
195. https://www.artofmanliness.com/skills/manly-know-how/how-to-gird-up-your-loins-an-illustrated-guide/
196. https://www.artofmanliness.com/skills/outdoor-survival/how-to-dig-a-cathole/
197. https://www.artofmanliness.com/skills/outdoor-survival/how-to-survive-inside-a-plummeting-elevator/
198. https://www.artofmanliness.com/skills/outdoor-survival/how-to-remove-a-leech/
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Why note-taking apps don’t make us smarter
Why note-taking apps don’t make us smarter
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They’re designed for storage, not sparking insights. Can AI change that?
By [12]Casey Newton, a contributing editor who has been writing about
tech for over 10 years. He founded Platformer, a newsletter about Big
Tech and democracy.
Aug 25, 2023, 2:30 PM UTC| (BUTTON) Comments
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Screenshots of the note-taking app Obsidian.
Screenshots of the note-taking app Obsidian. Image: Obsidian
This is Platformer, a newsletter on the intersection of Silicon Valley
and democracy from Casey Newton and Zoë Schiffer. [13]Sign up here.
__________________________________________________________________
Today let’s step outside the news cycle and turn our attention toward a
topic I’m deeply invested in but only rarely write about: productivity
platforms. For decades now, software tools have promised to make
working life easier. But on one critical dimension — their ability to
improve our thinking — they don’t seem to be making much progress at
all.
Meanwhile, the arrival of generative artificial intelligence could make
the tools we use more powerful than ever — or they could turn out to be
just another mirage.
To understand where things went wrong, I want to focus on the humble
note-taking app: the place where, for so many of us, thinking begins.
I.
Earlier this week I read a story about farmers. “America’s Farmers Are
Bogged Down by Data,” read the headline on [14]Belle Lin’s story in the
Wall Street Journal. I thought to myself: You and me both, farmer! And
I read the piece.
Over the past decade, farmers have been offered all manner of software
tools to analyze and manage their crops. In general, though, the more
software that farmers use, the more they find themselves overwhelmed by
data that the tools collect. “We’re collecting so much data that you’re
almost paralyzed with having to analyze it all,” one farmer told the
Journal.
As a journalist, I’ve never collected as much data as I do now. The
collapse of Twitter has me browsing four or five text-based social
feeds a day, scanning for news and thoughtful conversation. The growing
popularity of arXiv and pre-prints in general has left me with a stack
of research that I will never get through. Book galleys pile up in my
house.
A screenshot of the app Notion. A screenshot of the app Notion.
A screenshot of the app Notion. A screenshot of the app Notion.
A screenshot of the app Notion. Image: Notion
Meanwhile, all day long I browse the web. Stories that might belong in
Platformer get saved into a database in the productivity platform
Notion. Every link that has ever been in this newsletter is stored
there, in many cases with the full article text.
Collectively, this material offers me an abundance of riches — far more
to work with than any beat reporter had such easy access to even 15
years ago.
And yet most days I find myself with the same problem as the farmer: I
have so much information at hand that I feel paralyzed.
II.
One solution to this data paralysis is to take notes. As a journalist,
of course, I have always taken notes. A few years ago, I thought we had
seen some true breakthroughs in note-taking, and increasingly put my
faith in those tools not just to capture my writing but to improve the
quality of my thinking.
The breakthrough tool was [15]Roam Research. In 2021, I wrote here
about [16]my first year using the subscription-based software, which
had two key insights into knowledge work. One was to make professional
note-taking feel more like journaling. It turns out that a fresh note
created each day, labeled with a date, is a good canvas for collecting
transient thoughts, which can serve as a springboard into deeper
thinking.
The second is known to note-taking nerds as “[17]bidirectional
linking.” Standard links, like the ones you find on the web, go in only
one direction — from one page to another. In a note-taking app,
bidirectional links join two pages together. This effectively lets you
add backlinks to any concept — a company that’s important to you, say,
or a concept that’s on your mind — and then let you browse everything
you’ve collected related to that concept at your leisure.
A graphic from Roam illustrating bidirectional linking. A graphic from
Roam illustrating bidirectional linking.
A graphic from Roam illustrating bidirectional linking. A graphic from
Roam illustrating bidirectional linking.
A graphic from Roam illustrating bidirectional linking. Image: Roam
On one level, that’s not so different from adding tags to notes. But
tags are more about search. Bidirectional links, which some apps show
you on pages that include snippets of all the other notes that contain
the same link, are more about browsing and rediscovery.
Initially, I threw myself into this kind of associative note-taking. I
gathered links around concepts I wanted to explore (“the internet
enables information to travel too quickly,” for example, or social
networks and polarization). When I had an interesting conversation with
a person, I would add notes to a personal page I had created for them.
A few times a week, I would revisit those notes.
I waited for the insights to come.
And waited. And waited.
Note-taking apps are up against a much stronger foe
My gusto for concept-based, link-heavy note-taking diminished. Roam’s
development slowed to a crawl, and I spent a season with the
lightweight, mostly free alternative known as [18]Obsidian. Obsidian’s
brutalist design wore on me, though, and eventually I decamped for the
more polished user interface of [19]Mem. (These apps all enable the
exporting of your notes in Markdown, making switching relatively
painless.)
I continue to journal most days, and occasionally find myself working
to refine one concept or another among those notes.
But the original promise of Roam — that it would improve my thinking by
helping me to build a knowledge base and discover new ideas — fizzled
completely.
III.
One interpretation of these events is that the software failed: that
journaling and souped-up links simply don’t have the power some of us
once hoped they did.
Another view, though, is that they are up against a much stronger foe —
the infinite daily distractions of the internet.
Note-taking, after all, does not take place in a vacuum. It takes place
on your computer, next to email, and Slack, and Discord, and iMessage,
and the text-based social network of your choosing. In the era of
alt-tabbing between these and other apps, our ability to build
knowledge and draw connections is permanently challenged by what might
be our ultimately futile efforts to multitask.
Ezra Klein wrote beautifully about this situation this week [20]in the
New York Times:
Gloria Mark, a professor of information science at the University of
California, Irvine, and the author of “[21]Attention Span,” started
researching the way people used computers in 2004. The average time
people spent on a single screen was 2.5 minutes. “I was astounded,”
she told me. “That was so much worse than I’d thought it would be.”
But that was just the beginning. By 2012, Mark and her colleagues
found the average time on a single task was 75 seconds. Now it’s
down to about 47.
This is an acid bath for human cognition. Multitasking is mostly a
myth. We can focus on one thing at a time. “It’s like we have an
internal whiteboard in our minds,” Mark said. “If I’m working on one
task, I have all the info I need on that mental whiteboard. Then I
switch to email. I have to mentally erase that whiteboard and write
all the information I need to do email. And just like on a real
whiteboard, there can be a residue in our minds. We may still be
thinking of something from three tasks ago.”
My first thought upon reading this was that it seems rare for me to
spend even 47 seconds looking at one screen on my computer without at
least glancing at another. (I bought a 38-inch widescreen monitor for
the express purpose of being able to glance at many windows
simultaneously. At the time I understood this as a tool for enhancing
my productivity.)
My second thought is that if you want to take good notes, you have to
first extract your mind from the acid bath.
IV.
Klein’s piece starts from the observation that productivity growth is
now about half of what it was in the 1950s and ‘60s. The internet’s
arrival briefly speeded it up, he writes, but the more we stared at our
screens the slower our productivity improved. He worries that AI will
have a similar effect on the economy — promising to make us more
productive, while simultaneously inventing so many new distractions and
entertainments that they overwhelm and paralyze us.
The piece stuck with me, because there is one specific way I am
counting on AI to make me more productive. It goes back to that
database of links I’ve been building in Notion, and the insights I was
hoping to get out of Roam.
Saving an article in Mem. Saving an article in Mem.
Saving an article in Mem. Saving an article in Mem.
Saving an article in Mem. Image: Mem
Earlier this year, like many productivity tools, Notion added a handful
of AI features. I use two of them in my links database. One extracts
the names of any companies mentioned in an article, creating a kind of
automatic tagging system. The other provides a two- or three-sentence
summary of the article I’m saving.
Neither of these, in practice, is particularly useful. Tags might
theoretically be useful for revisiting old material, but databases are
not designed to be browsed. And while we publish summaries of news
articles in each edition of Platformer, we wouldn’t use AI-written
summaries: among other reasons, they often miss important details and
context.
At the same time, the database contains nearly three years of links to
every subject I cover here, along with the complete text of thousands
of articles. It is here, and not in a note-taking app, that knowledge
of my beat has been accreting over the past few years. If only I could
access that knowledge in some way that went beyond my memory.
It’s here that AI should be able to help. Within some reasonable period
of time, I expect that I will be able to talk to my Notion database as
if it’s ChatGPT. If I could, I imagine I would talk to it all the time.
Much of journalism simply involves remembering relevant events from the
past. An AI-powered link database has a perfect memory; all it’s
missing is a usable chat interface. If it had one, it might be a
perfect research assistant.
Today’s chatbots can’t do any of this to a reporter’s standard
I imagine using it to generate little briefing documents to help me
when I return to a subject after some time away. Catch me up on
Canada’s fight with Meta over news, I might say. Make me a timeline of
events at Twitter since Elon Musk bought it. Show me coverage of
deepfakes over the past three months.
Today’s chatbots can’t do any of this to a reporter’s standard. The
training data often stops in 2021, for one thing. The bots continue to
make stuff up, and struggle to cite their sources.
But if I could chat in natural language with a massive archive, built
from hand-picked trustworthy sources? That seems powerful to me, at
least in the abstract.
Of course, the output from this kind of AI tool has to be trustworthy.
A significant problem with using AI tools to summarize things is that
you can’t trust the summary unless you read all the relevant documents
yourself — defeating the point of asking for a summary in the first
place.
Still, if you are the sort of productivity-tool optimist who will try
any to-do list or calendar app on the off chance it makes you even a
little happier at work, it seems to me that a database you can talk to
might be the next-generation note-taking tool we have been waiting for.
V.
I’ve learned something else about note-taking apps, though, since my
mania for them began in 2020.
In short: it is probably a mistake, in the end, to ask software to
improve our thinking. Even if you can rescue your attention from the
acid bath of the internet; even if you can gather the most interesting
data and observations into the app of your choosing; even if you
revisit that data from time to time — this will not be enough. It might
not even be worth trying.
I’ll admit to having forgotten those questions over the past couple
years
The reason, sadly, is that thinking takes place in your brain. And
thinking is an active pursuit — one that often happens when you are
spending long stretches of time staring into space, then writing a bit,
and then staring into space a bit more. It’s here here that the
connections are made and the insights are formed. And it is a process
that stubbornly resists automation.
Which is not to say that software can’t help. Andy Matuschak, a
researcher whose [22]spectacular website offers a feast of thinking
about notes and note-taking, observes [23]that note-taking apps
emphasize displaying and manipulating notes, but never making sense
between them. Before I totally resign myself to the idea that a
note-taking app can’t solve my problems, I will admit that on some
fundamental level no one has really tried.
“The goal is not to take notes — the goal is to think effectively,”
[24]Matuschak writes. “Better questions are ‘what practices can help me
reliably develop insights over time?’ [and] ‘how can I shepherd my
attention effectively?’”
I’ll admit to having forgotten those questions over the past couple
years as I kept filling up documents with transient strings of text
inside expensive software. And I accept that to be a better thinker,
I’ll have to devote more time and attention to wrestling with what I
find.
If there’s a friendly AI to help me do that, though, I’ll be first in
line to try it.
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