Grace PKM
Sevoris@gracefrench maybe try drawing a map of known knowns and known unknowns. Basically a mindmap. Any tool of choice with a canvas can work for that. Use keywords and short sentence descriptions. Work out what you definitely know about, and what you know you don‘t know things about. Orient new insights against such a map.
@spinningthoughts I like this, but taking the time to do that could be equally as distracting as diving into Google. I can see myself drawing mind-maps for hours when I should be drafting.
Maybe making a list somewhere to work into a map later?
Maybe making a list somewhere to work into a map later?
@gracefrench you could work any such mindmap *technically* as an indented list. It gives you sharp limitations on criss-cross linking but certainly works to start.
@gracefrench the vaguest observation from the periphery of my own reflections - research topics that attract common interessts can probably be assigned to one of ten major areas. Those areas may not have a distinct single keyword but will have pretty defined boundaries once you listen for them.
Then you can gather thoughts for those areas and inspect for repeating signals.
@spinningthoughts *blink*
Could you explain this to me like I'm ten years old? XD
Could you explain this to me like I'm ten years old? XD
@gracefrench So research topics that pop up for me would be things like
"How to design tools for thoughts so they are fast to use and help take off mental load" or "the logistics between possible economic centers of future interplanetary spaceflight" or "speculative evolution on an exoplanet and the scientific expedition that might research it". They‘re kinda specific topics that blend together a variety of areas, but there‘s a pretty defined reason *why* I care and for what I learn.
@gracefrench so often I can punt a curiosity into one of those "big" buckets, and that actually reduces the noise per bucket a lot. I don‘t actually pay attention to too many things once I‘ve applied that first filter. And that helps a lot with keeping an overview of what I am learning and what I want to learn next.
@spinningthoughts ah, gotcha, gotcha. So instead of adding a vague "Christianity in Scotland" topic, I'd put "The timeline and pattern of how Christendom spread into Scotland, and how that probably sucked."
@gracefrench if that‘s a major topic for you, with that specificity, yup! There‘s often a bit of tunnel vision to a topic that really interests us, and you can exploit that for categorization.
@spinningthoughts one of many related to my mega-project. Lots of theology, folklore, history and myth to cover as well. I feel like I have to know the rules/stories before I can break them.
@gracefrench In that case… my *personal* gut feeling is to add a bit more specificity to the bucket, like "how religion spread into scotland with what power structures and backing interests and what that allowed people to do", but that‘s just my feeling.
Mind, you can also (carefully) put buckets into archive mode. You should only do this if you won‘t touch them. And if you find more than ten - try and merge two buckets.
I think what I'll do is: make a master list of topics on paper as I'm drafting on the PC to stay focused on story development, and make tally marks if the topic repeats.
Once I've hit a stopping point where I need to know more about the topic, add the topic to the PKM, then as that grows, follow your advice and refine my list into "buckets", as you say.
This keeps me focused on the work over the research, and avoids muddying my PKM.
Nicole van der Hoeven@gracefrench I try to separate researching writing from generative writing. I do the research/sense-making type of writing more regularly. Then during generative writing, I'm not worrying about adding to my vault. Usually (ideally) I would do another round of reincorporating stuff from what I've written back into my vault again afterwards, too.
@nicole As far as I know, you write non-fiction, right? (lol, write?)
As a fiction writer, generative writing ought to be my priority.
@gracefrench Yes, mostly nonfiction these days. But I actually started out writing fiction... I would like to get back into it at some point.
@nicole I'd love to see that 🤩