## Resources ## Notes/Brainstorming ### ✨ In My Life **Reflecting on my PKM journey** Honestly I'm surprised that I managed to get to a point where **I'm restarting my vault** - Starting up a digital garden - [[Restart my Obsidian Vault]] ### **🔗** Links to Thinks #### Is summarizing with AI worth it? - [[How to Summarize Books Using ChatGPT 7 Experiments in AI Distillation]] During my phase of learning AI and seeing its potential from an idealistic perspective, it's nice to see some practical examples of it not living up to what I had imagined. In this article, Tiago tries to use ChatGPT to make a book summary for a book he read years ago, even feeding it his own highlights and giving it overly specific prompts, just to realize that doing himself is not only more effective but efficient. > I conclude that reading books is still worthwhile, even in an age of Artificial Intelligence. Besides the personal enrichment from the experience of reading, there are key details, subtle distinctions, and gestalts of meaning that come from reading and notetaking that can’t (yet) be reproduced by even the latest language models Considering the fact that these large language models are trained off of data from the internet, all nuance and outliers from extensive research papers have been drowned out by whatever writings and ideas are most common like the average blog post. And so, it's ever more important to have our own unique collection of notes full of personality and creativity. Taking notes won't be replaced, but will be even more sacred and valuable. #### Philosophical, introspective writing Part of my sudden inspiration to get back into introspective content has been thanks to Lawrence Yeo's email series on [philosophical writing](https://examinedwriter.com/). He has a similar style of Tim Urban's Wait But Why, taking complex life questions and conversationally breaking them down using silly analogies and diagrams. I really like how he encourages philosophical writing to be purely for yourself - you aren't writing to consciously solve the problems of others, you're just using it as a more structured journal to help yourself understand the world. Each piece that answers a certain question is another part of your overarching perspective of the world. But if we were to write for the sake of others, we need to remember to… **Use less quotes as people want to hear your unique perspective** Using quotes is a form of impostor syndrome - we are unsure of our own ideas so we try to validate it by crediting someone else People can easily search up what different important figures said about certain topics, and there's nothing novel to these ideas being brought up. What matters is being able to vividly describe your own understanding of it. Why would you turn to someone for an encyclopedia of quotes? **Reframe ideas in a way that feels fresh** In an age of ChatGPT-driven content, being creative has never been more important. Much like how you create your own niche through the intersection of your interests, we need to connect things in unique ways (hmm, sound similar to a certain note taking principle I follow…) This can be done by thinking of the overarching implications of ideas, like how our [fear of death is because of the constraints it gives us](https://moretothat.com/what-makes-death-bad/). Create your own train of thought and personal revelations take over your writing, overcoming cliches to best illustrate your thought process. - Have been really enjoying [[Lawrence Yeo - The examined writer]] - Deep intrinsic importance for writing - Writing philosophically for yourself - [[Use less quotes - people want to hear your unique perspective]] - [[Reframe ideas in a way that feels fresh]] ### **🚀** Actionable Tingz - [[Prompt Engineering]] - LYT conference - [[Notes should only focus on one idea]] - [[Think in ideas, not documents]] - [[Note-making]], really enjoyed his live sensemaking session - Cleaning my email - Moving everything to readwise reader - Forward from my email since I'm too lazy to do it myself - email makes it feel to urgent, but I want to have these newsletters as an optional place for learning - Imo it's the highest value content feed I have so far since it's one I curate, and it's important it stays that way - i need to do a dopamine detox - plan is to reclaim my attention so i can stay more productive - only 1.5 hour of gaming max - move entertainment to alt channel - scrolling shortform has been becoming a habit of mine - been YEARS since I did it before - uninstalling tiktok, instagram - adding limits to youtube in general as well - 20 minute limit - changing my algorithm - have recently been watching everything on my main account since it has youtube premium and my old player app no longer works - used to have separate accounts but now everything is in one - i should use this to my advantage and put all gamin and entertainment content in my second channel - force myself to do other activities - doomscroll my readwise reader feed instead LMAO - updating my content diet - feeds and books mostly - already been watching less youtube as i feel like it's very generic now, just changed up with different stories - going to spend more time writing and processing my mountain of input notes ### **🤔** Food For Thought ### 😤 My Ramblings ## Publishing Copy Welcome to another edition of _Weekly Wondering_, a sacred time where I share the resonating links, reflections and learnings from my past week to influence your next one ;) This newsletter is my version of learning and thinking in public, giving me time to expand on ideas that may turn into more refined content in the future. ### **✨** In My Life **I'm restarting my second brain!?!? 🤯** ### **🔗** Links to Thinks #### Is summarizing with AI worth it? During my phase of learning AI and seeing its potential from an idealistic perspective, it's nice to see some practical examples of it not living up to what I had imagined. In this article, Tiago tries to use ChatGPT to make a book summary for a book he read years ago, even feeding it his own highlights and giving it overly specific prompts, just to realize that doing himself is not only more effective but efficient. > I conclude that reading books is still worthwhile, even in an age of Artificial Intelligence. Besides the personal enrichment from the experience of reading, there are key details, subtle distinctions, and gestalts of meaning that come from reading and notetaking that can’t (yet) be reproduced by even the latest language models Considering the fact that these large language models are trained off of data from the internet, all nuance and outliers from extensive research papers have been drowned out by whatever writings and ideas are most common like the average blog post. And so, it's ever more important to have our own unique collection of notes full of personality and creativity. Taking notes won't be replaced, but will be even more sacred and valuable. #### Philosophical, introspective writing Part of my sudden inspiration to get back into introspective content has been thanks to Lawrence Yeo's email series on [philosophical writing](https://examinedwriter.com/). He has a similar style of Tim Urban's Wait But Why, taking complex life questions and conversationally breaking them down using silly analogies and diagrams. I really like how he encourages philosophical writing to be purely for yourself - you aren't writing to consciously solve the problems of others, you're just using it as a more structured journal to help yourself understand the world. Each piece that answers a certain question is another part of your overarching perspective of the world. But if we were to write for the sake of others, we need to remember to… **Use less quotes as people want to hear your unique perspective** Using quotes is a form of impostor syndrome - we are unsure of our own ideas so we try to validate it by crediting someone else People can easily search up what different important figures said about certain topics, and there's nothing novel to these ideas being brought up. What matters is being able to vividly describe your own understanding of it. Why would you turn to someone for an encyclopedia of quotes? **Reframe ideas in a way that feels fresh** In an age of ChatGPT-driven content, being creative has never been more important. Much like how you create your own niche through the intersection of your interests, we need to connect things in unique ways (hmm, sound similar to a certain note taking principle I follow…) This can be done by thinking of the overarching implications of ideas, like how our [fear of death is because of the constraints it gives us](https://moretothat.com/what-makes-death-bad/). Create your own train of thought and personal revelations take over your writing, overcoming cliches to best illustrate your thought process. ### **🚀** Actionable Tingz #### **LYT Conference** Experiences like these reignite my passion and obsession with personal knowledge management and productivity. Out of the conference, there were two that really woke me up to reflecting upon my current PKM practices. First was Nick Milo's [notemaking session](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=twxlov8TCe8). **What is notemaking?** - Sensemaking is the natural way we understand the world, while notemaking is deliberately doing so during sessions or carved out times. - Instead of letting others think of "why" for us, think of it ourselves - Use "because" to prompt ourselves to think more critically - If we only continue highlighting, our own sparks will fade. Instead, we should capture those magical moments and start fleshing them out if we have the time to. Notes serve the purpose of capturing a snapshot of our thinking, and if we wait until the end of the day to recall these revelations, who knows how much we'll actually be able to articulate. - Structure should be earned - do not quickly go about making structures, do it after you take notes Some prompts while notemaking include (add because after each prompt): - It's a part of - It's different to - It's similar to - That reminds me - That's interesting - It's important - It's good - It's bad I highly recommend checking out the video and partaking in the sensemaking sessions :) If you're interested, this is what I came up with using the prompts: Kintsugi - Important since it can relate to the idea of antifragile, how things benefit from chaos - Reminds me of just writing in general or anything content-related, in a sense when you add that gold patch it becomes something new and unique - It's good because you are retaining the previous history AI - AI is interesting since we can offload dull and repetitive tasks - Different to critical thinking since the AI will think about what is average - It's important because it will only heighten the importance of good thinkers that can think outside the box and the norm - It's bad because people might turn to these as truth and will neglect their own critical thinking - Similar to asking people for advice and for herd mentality as we follow the norm Anyways, the second presentation I found insightful was Bianca's on [Why Linked Knowledge Doesn't Work](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1bDMLUcMO18&ab_channel=LinkingYourThinking) Some insights included: **What should a note contain?** - Instead of saying that notes should only contain one thing, notes should only focus on one idea - It's okay if there are other ideas in it as other or else it might be too restricting and you wont be able to support the idea - Treat it like a photo, you know what is the focus and what isn't - Other ideas are present but tuned down - Them being washed out only makes the focus more emphasized **Write in ideas, not documents** - When writing in documents (ex. literature notes with lots of ideas in the same note), it's hard to free it from the existing structure and retrieve it. - Even idea notes can turn into documents if they become too big #### **Doing a dopamine detox** My attention span has been deteriorating to the point where I start doomscrolling and procrastinating to chase dopamine under the disguise of "catching up on my no-life productivity grind" days 😭 As I'm writing this, there's a heartfelt relationship apology happening with a guy bawling his eyes out in front of me, why did I think it was a good idea to write on the train again (this is also a perfect example of the attention span I mentioned above) And so, after indulging in this for way too long, it's time to incorporate some good old self-help advice from James Clear on habit formation B) The main habits I want to break are: - Doomscrolling shortform content on Instagram and Tiktok - Consistently choosing entertainment content over educational content And so, I'm going to make my ideal habits more appealing, and my bad habits less so. **Doomscrolling** 1. Make it invisible - I installed both apps, no longer making it a default option when wanting to be stimulated on my phone 2. Make it unattractive - Usually I am turned off by wasting my time because of all the things I have to do, but I've been neglecting my deliberate goal setting and don't have much clarity in my vision 😅 3. Make it difficult - If I really need to use it, I'll be able to open it up on my desktop (I don't have a history of doing so for leisure so I'll be fine hehe) 4. Make it not satisfying - This one is a bit harder because of the personalized nature of algorithms, I'm hoping the other 3 will be enough **Consistently choosing entertainment over educational content** I've recently 1. Make it invisible - I have recently been watching everything on my main account since it has YouTube premium and my old player app no longer works - Instead, I'm going to continue separating my algorithms across channels so one is more on learning and the other is more on entertianment and gaming so I don't get distracted 1. Make it unattractive - I think just a constant reminder to correct our bias for immediate gratification is enough to keep me on track - it would take away time for more fulfilling leisure or content consumption so it's just not the best decision to make - Instead, I'll make readwise reader my default option, as I want to focus more on improving my attention span again 1. Make it difficult - Having to make the conscious decision to switch to a new account is enough friction for me to not do it mindlessly 1. Make it not satisfying - Since I don't have YouTube premium on my other account, I'll have to watch ads which I absolutely despite 😭 So yeah, I'm going to follow through on this plan and give an update for next week :) ### **🤔** Food For Thought **My reflections after 2 years of PKM** I'm too lazy to organize this brain dump - I have not been the best at practicing what I preach - I've been lazy with my zettelkasten as I focus on productivity over the joy of learning and writing - Lately I've been feeling directionless, and since I haven't consistently been giving myself the time at the end of the day or throughout the week to wind down and reflect, it's been hard for me to have a solid foundation - So my plan is to learn in public, which is why I'm setting up my vault - I just want to solve my problems, and share my experiences so other people can learn - I never thought I would have gotten an audience for something I was still learning for myself - I kind of documented by entire learning process from start to the never ending finish, and it's something I want to continue doing as I get back into content creation - I am still learning things about obsidian, but now I want to branch into new ventures like my personal life and answering my own questions - It's just hard for me to get back into the groove as my first videos were purely intrinsic, but now with my products and need for financial stability it's a constant struggle - I think my mind has been brought back to a more personal and introspective content style thanks to people like Paul Millerd and Lawrence Yeo - It's refreshing to know that people who are so authentic and sincere are discovered and spread through word of mouth rather than algorithms - Should probably start using polls, set the options to things I want to do so it's a healthy mix of what I want and my audience wants - I was reading through my friend Aidan Helfant's digital garden and saw his competitor analysis for Nicole - One of his critiques was how she doesn't have much of a personality for her channel, which can make her fragile if she decides to switch niches - When I compare his channel with Nicole's or my own (which I'd argue has been more commodified in comparison to my previous videos), there is a clear contrast in personality between the channels, but it seems like those who focus on optimization come out on top - Okay those were reflections on YouTube not PKM bruh - I think my biggest problem has been notemaking vs notetaking - As mentioned prior, I have a stupidly large backlog of content to process, from books to articles to videos - I need to [[Think in ideas, not documents]] so I can compound my learning and not re-highlight the same generic stuff 24/7 - I'll take a more active approach to content consumption where I have my notes near me as well, so I end up seeing whether I already cover what I'm about to highlight, or if I can actually use it to build off of what is already existing - The biggest use I found was my daily and periodic reviews - Just having such clear intentions paired with deep work made me unstoppable towards reaching my goals and working towards. better self, but lately I've been neglecting it and it's been showing in how I spend my day to day - It just feels so weird to go with the flow and to not have some overarching vision, as it allows for lots of distractions to occupy my mind which in turn make it harder to focus - I tend to not revisit my notes - which I'm sure the principles of LYT will help me solve - To be fair, I've been focusing more on Obsidian systems than I have been too much on the mindset - By holding myself accountable and making my journey public, I'm excited for where it can take me :) ### My Tools for Learning and Growth I write and collect my newsletter content all inside Obsidian, my favorite note-taking and productivity app. Want to aggregate the valuable gems from your week like this, or need a place to store your ideas and highlights? Set up your own [second brain](https://johnmavrick.gumroad.com/l/obsidian-starter-vault). Are you a student wanting to take better notes in school? Check out [Obsidian University](https://shop.johnmavrick.com/obsidian-university). If you want the most densely packed and actionable book summaries, try out Shortform for free [here](https://www.shortform.com/). If you want to make reading and highlighting easier, check out [Readwise](https://readwise.io/i/john5833) (affiliate link) and sign up for their Reader app!