Mastodawn

Grace PKM Dec 22, 2023

@nicole I use it like a Pensieve (if you'll forgive *that* reference) - My ADHD brain keeps working overtime, and among other things, it grows my fictional world and the stories it contains even when I'm consciously doing other things. It was so overwhelming that I realised I'd need to deliberately forget it all and then quit writing... or go mad. Writing makes up for more than 50% of my identity, so the prospect was heartbreaking. Then I discovered Obsidian, and I didn't have to quit.

@gracefrench Love the reference and got it immediately! ;) I feel with what you say about writing being such a core part of your identity. I feel the same way.

@nicole Peace of mind is central to my motivation. If it clears up my mind, that‘s great.

That *does* make me more productive, but even then, good productivity makes peace of mind when I actually want to be productive.

Any other mindset I feel only fuels a toxic kind of FOMO (that gets written so much about to not fall down that trap) which isn‘t actually good for you.

@nicole one of the best premises that have come out of the PKM writing space for me is "you don‘t have to do everything right this instance. Record and let the system remember - you‘ll come back to this when it matters to you".

Being able to stretch thinking across time when you actually have great thoughts on the matter is powerful. Even against a deadline, a night‘s sleep does a lot.

@spinningthoughts Yeah, it didn't take me long to realise that it was stressing me out unduly to feel like I had to process everything I read. Now I just let the unprocessed stuff pile up, because I know they'll still be there if/when I do want to go back to them. And if I never do... well, that's okay too.

@nicole I have this whole vague spin about "Relevants" and "Obliviates". The later are the kind of material you need to have off your mind either way, but probably will not come back to.

How to avoid overloading an archiving system with the noise from Obliviates I don‘t have a concrete theory on *yet*, but I feel like with the increased capabilities of databases in Tools for Thought, discrimination between the two‘s getting easier all the time.

@nicole Yup, that‘s my system too! Better to have it *somewhere* than *nowhere*. I have great faifth in the ability of coming personal search and database tools to dig these things up when they matter.

@spinningthoughts @nicole

Tim Dec 25, 2023

... fully illustrated by David Allen's sub title "The Art of Stress-Free Productivity." to that classic book "GTD"

@spinningthoughts I hear this. It's a huge load off my mind to get things down on my notes - I feel mentally free from the burden of remembering. Just the act of writing something down makes me feel like I've done something about it.

Anant Shrivastava aka anantshri Dec 22, 2023

@nicole people are hell bent in rat race productivity and the measure of productivity becomes what gets published. a lot of times pkm itself is the outcome. the urge to show to the world is not there. the urge to note down is there.

@anant All true, and still a trap I fall into sometimes, too.

Gilbert Sanchez

Dec 22, 2023

@nicole Like a few of the other folks, my ADHD things hard to keep track of. You add "attentional residue" to the mix and that's how I would start to burnout. By having a place to put my ideas down and share them I was able to worry less about what I was forgetting and more to the task at hand.