My life organization/productivity system for 2023 consists of 6 tools:

- Daily logbook and journal
- Notion
- Things
- Notecards
- Google Calendar
- Apple Reminders

I’m keeping this as simple as I possibly can. I don’t want to spend any time optimizing my productivity system in 2023. Instead, I want to spend that time actually doing work that needs to get done (imagine that).

## **Daily logbook and journal**

My daily logbook and journal is just that…a daily logbook. I was inspired by [Austin Kleon](https://austinkleon.com/2010/01/31/logbook/) for this idea.

On one side, I’ll do a [time blocked calendar](https://medium.com/rohdesign/the-daily-plan-bar-357972361096). Next to that will be the day’s tasks and reminders and what time I woke up that day, what I read, how long I ran, and what workout I did. Below that will be empty space to doodle or jot down fleeting thoughts and ideas I have during the day that I want to think about later.

Having empty space to write down thoughts is important because often, when I’m reading a book, I’ll come across a neat idea or story related to something else. Instead of saving that in the moment and ruining the flow of reading, I can jot down the idea and page number and return to it later. If I don’t come back to it, it probably wasn’t that great of an idea. I also do this with posting quotes on Twitter and Instagram. Again, instead of interrupting my reading flow, I can just jot down the page number with a ***“”*** symbol and post the picture later.

<SideNote title={On that note…} content={I’m looking for an easy way to organize all my book and article screenshots that I post. Any ideas? Let me know here. I’d like to take a picture of a book on my phone or a screenshot of an article on either of my computers and automatically send it to a special folder so I can re-post them later. In the meantime, when I do my weekly review and clear out my desktop and downloads folder, I manually copy them into a folder.} /> 

## **Notion**

Notion–the King of notes and organizational products–will do just that: manage my notes and help organize my life. I was tempted to organize Notion using the convenient [PARA method](https://fortelabs.com/blog/para/), but I eventually decided against it.

My reasoning: I don’t feel like I have enough resources, projects, or tasks for different areas of my life right now and adding the PARA system just added more complexity than it solved, so it wasn’t worth it.

Instead, I have a few databases that manage my blog CMS, YouTube, blog, and newsletter ideas, and then a database to hold all other notes. That’s sort of a “catch-all” for notes that wouldn’t otherwise belong in either of the databases I have. For example, if I take a one-off course in the early days of book publishing, I would just put that note in my Notes and Docs database.

I could see this becoming too cluttered, but I think that’s okay. The nature of these notes is for accessing them when I need them and not for discoverability or interconnectedness. So if I know I took notes on something, I know it will be in that database somewhere. Things like operating manuals for home appliances, notes about working out and eating right, and a note for brainstorming what 2023 will look like are all currently in that database. When in doubt, I place a note here. I like that cushion.

If a topic or something starts to overtake that database, I can create a new one for those notes. I like that flexibility.

Notion is also integrated with Readwise, which helps me process all my highlights from articles, papers, and e-books, which leads to…

## **Notecards**

Notecards: the atomic building blocks of my creative process for 2023. Continuing in my desire to stay analog with as many things as I could, I decided to go all in on using notecards for at least the first quarter of 2023. I learned this system from [Ryan Holiday](https://ryanholiday.net/the-notecard-system-the-key-for-remembering-organizing-and-using-everything-you-read/), who learned it from Robert Greene, who probably learned it from someone else. My friend [Billy Oppenheimer](https://twitter.com/bpoppenheimer), who is Ryan Holiday’s research assistant, [wrote a great article on how he uses the notecard system](https://billyoppenheimer.com/notecard-system/) if you want to learn the intricacies of it.

As a quick overview, here’s what it looks like for me:

**For articles and online PDFs**

1. Highlights get added to Notion from Readwise
2. Highlights get processed. Anything that I want to keep gets transferred to a notecard with the title and author of the source on the back (this will help me find it again later).
3. Write a title for the card and put it on the front of the stack.
4. Repeat

**For books**

The process is similar, but instead of going from Readwise to Notion, my book notes go from annotations and marginalia in the book to Notion. Because [I publish my book notes online](https://www.dltn.io/notes), I want to save everything digitally. The ideas that stand out the most get added to notecards with a reference to the book.

During my weekly review, I’ll lay out the new cards, flip through my old ones and see if they connect somehow. This is a hard process for me because I’m a linear thinker and like to have strict categories. I’m trying to be less rigid here, though. It’s okay if the card doesn’t connect with others or if I don’t see themes identifying themselves right away. I’m playing the long game with these. Collect, collect, collect.

Fanning through a few hundred notecards isn’t the fastest way to retrieve something you found. Still, it’s the best way to continuously revisit what you already wrote and had forgotten, which is the essence of a good note-taking system.

<SideNote title={Aside} content={I’m beginning to think all good note-taking systems **need** to be hard, and they need to be manual. If you outsource all of your thinking to the latest and greatest AI bots or apps with automatic backlinking and tags, who is really doing the thinking and creating?} /> 

## **Miscellaneous**

The rest of the stack is minimal. I’ll use Google Calendar for appointments, Things for tasks (not to be confused with [Thing](https://addamsfamily.fandom.com/wiki/Thing)), and Apple reminders for on the go reminders. Apple reminders get imported into Things which allow me to do a lot with them. I often have ideas when I’m driving and since I have CarPlay, I can just tap the Siri button and say, “Remind me tonight about how all planets’ moons are named after the planet’s gods counterpart.”

Out of context that looks like mumbo jumbo, but I know exactly what it’s referring to. When I see that in Things at the end of the day or the next morning, I can add a notecard with that idea.

I use Things minimally as well. I dump tasks in there and use it as a guide for the weekly and daily tasks I need to complete during my logbook. I rarely use the Projects or Areas feature because, again, my life isn’t that complicated right now. I do have a few projects in there now though. One is a project called “To Revisit” which are movies or tv shows I want to watch and another project is called “Things to get done over break,” which is a list of tasks I want to complete during the Christmas break (not going well so far since both my wife and I have been sick for a week).

I have another project called “My Site” which is a list of things I want to fix, add, or remove from my blog. I built it last year and am always finding cool things on other people’s sites that I want to add. Instead of getting distracted (read: optimizing the system) and doing it right away, I dump everything in that project so I know I won’t forget it.

**BS Hour**

One new thing I’m going to try scheduling into my week is a couple “BS Hours.” I’m not sure where I read this from (though I remember it being recently), but they said they schedule BS hours in their week to do the boring administration stuff that comes with being an adult. I’m notorious for neglecting these things, and it hurts (both mentally and financially).

I have a small box in my office that collects BS Hour work. I put things like mail I need to read or bills I need to pay in there. If I have another task I need to do, like get new windshield wipers or run to the dump, I write that down on a sticky note and place it in the bin. When BS Hour comes, I grab the bin and fan through the papers to see what I can tackle.

**Make boring work fun**

Something [Khe Hy](https://twitter.com/khemaridh) talks about is making boring work exciting. When he is working on menial tasks, he [likes to play his favorite music and drink his favorite cocktail](https://twitter.com/jspector/status/1607884208642592768?s=20&t=V8c28815Ll2Td_ZzdOaHCQ). It usually happens on Thursday and Friday afternoons because it’s hard for him to get deep work done during those hours.

A write-up of the various tools I’m using to stay focused and work on things that matter this year.

My Analog and Digital Productivity System for 2023

User [TurnTrout](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/2GxhAyn9aHqukap2S/looking-back-on-my-alignment-phd) posted their reflection on attaining a PhD in the *LessWrong* community recently. I've been debating going back to school for a Masters and PhD but can't determine the fundamental benefits other than a structured learning environment, peer group, and a bit of a social flex. I don't think those are the right reasons to go back to school, but maybe they are?

The post was brilliant and well-written. [I implore you to read the whole thing](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/2GxhAyn9aHqukap2S/looking-back-on-my-alignment-phd). The most concrete advice was towards the end, where they outlined habits they had wished to practice more regularly. I thought the habits were practical even outside of academia and, if practiced more regularly by more people, would make for better conversations.

### Distinguish between observation and inference

TurnTrout says:

> When people speak to you, mark their arguments as _observations_ or as _inferences_. Keep the types _separate_. I've gained _so much_ from this simple practice.

I like the idea here, but I'd change "inference" to "opinion."

This echoes something I tweeted about last week about the importance of Twitter and other "thinking out loud" tools being seen as a laboratory for testing conjectures and not a battleground for opinions. When an influential person tweets, inevitably they don't account for all of the nuance. It's impossible to do so with 280 characters.  Also inevitably, everyone starts attacking the user for not mentioning their specific, niche life story that this tweet wouldn't apply to. It's annoying.

It would do well for people online to differentiate between an observation made about the world and an inference into how that world actually works.

This would be good for dinner conversations with family, especially those with opposing political views. I ask risky questions to people with protected opinions all the time because I want to understand what they think and how they see the world. I love running thought experiments. With the topic of abortion being front and center now, instead of arguing over whether the government should be involved or this view vs. that view, I'll pitch a thought experiment outlining a situation and then request we go through the experiment as if abortion were legal and if abortion weren't legal.  What's the right thing to do? How would someone be feeling in that situation?

The benefit of this is that it allows you to run through some fringe scenario that would probably never happen. Since the problem is exaggerated, the solutions are exaggerated. Often, it illuminates one path as better than another because of how it plays out in the exaggerated situation.

To get to that point, though, one must be comfortable entertaining observations and questions. The group must understand that these scenarios aren't opinions, they're just questions to be explored. If we want to progress intellectually with hot-button issues, we must be able to set aside opinions and explore observations and questions. The first step to doing so is being able to differentiate the two in the first place.

### Be concrete

TurnTrout says:

> -   If a friend comes to me for advice and says "I'm terrible at dating, I just feel so shy!", I _could_ say "You're really fun to be around, you're probably just in your head too much", and then _they_ could say "Agh, maybe, but it's just so frustrating." Wouldn't that just be such a useful conversation for them? That'll _definitely_ solve their awkwardness!
    -   Alternatively, if I _ask for an example_, we can both analyze an event which _actually happened_. Perhaps they say, "I met a girl named Alice at the party, but I somehow ran out of things to say, and it got quiet, and we found excuses to part ways." Then I can help my friend introspect and figure out why they didn't have anything to say, which _is in fact a question with a real answer_.

Vague scenarios and questions help no one. I see/hear this a lot when someone is uncomfortable asking for advice on the specific scenario they're dealing with. So instead, they ask a vague question that doesn't make complete sense. This isn't helpful–for either the advice-giver or the advice-asker.

The more you can think through a scenario that *actually happened*, the better your thought processes and learning patterns will be from those situations.

Be concrete.


1. Determine between observation and opinion. 2. Be concrete.

2 Habits for a Better Intellectual Life

The following passage comes from *What Do You Care What Other People Think?* by Richard Feynman. It's a collection of stories from his life and curious adventures.

> We had the *Encyclopedia Britannica* at home. When I was a small boy he used to sit me on his lap and read to me from the *Britannica.* We would be reading, say, about dinosaurs. It would be talking about the *Tyrannosaurus Rex*, and it would say something like, "This dinosaur is twenty-five feet high and its head is six feet across."
> 
> My father would stop reading and say, "Now, let's see what that meant. That would mean that if he stood in our front yard, he would be tall enough to put his head through our window up here" (We were on the second floor.) "But his head would be too wide to fit into the window." Everything he read to me he would translate as best he could into some reality.
> 
> I learned from my father to translate: everything I read to try and figure out what it really means, what it's really saying.

The most important step to learning is to understand what it truly means. Make learning a reality! If you're reading about the scientific revolution, make a timeline with all the dates of discoveries or lives of influential scientists to see which lives overlapped. You could even try mapping where each discovery took place. Any tangible action that makes learning abstract concepts into something tangible will bode better for your knowledge (and subsequently everyone else!)

The following passage comes from *What Do You Care What Other People Think?* by Richard Feynman. It's a collection of stories from his life and curious adventures.

Make learning a reality

From [Joel Chan](https://oasislab.pubpub.org/user/joel-chan), this process for synthesizing notes is the best I've seen. It's a bit academic in nature, but with a careful read can be easily understood and you could have a new process for note-taking. I know I do.

### The process goes like this

1. Begin with a set of question notes and papers
	- Every paper or source is read with these questions in mind.
2. Create observation notes
	- Observation notes have the potential to inform one or more questions that you started with.
	- Each observation note is grounded in at least one quote or context from a source and then directly linked to a question note.
3. Develop synthesis
	- What does the literature have to say about the questions of interest?
	2. Synthesis notes also get explicitly linked to relevant question note.
4. Compose and combine synthesis notes and questions of interest into arguments and theories. 
	- If done well, this process will reveal even more questions. That's okay. Go back to the question phase.

### Example images
![Screen Shot 2022-04-19 at 8.00.34 PM](//images.ctfassets.net/nk2hkdvz2uym/2nV6nLutnSSWXP96mdir7M/cd971a904ffe8df6ea464e5953468815/Screen_Shot_2022-04-19_at_8.00.34_PM.png)

![Screen Shot 2022-04-19 at 8.00.53 PM](//images.ctfassets.net/nk2hkdvz2uym/5QAMRJ9q04QPwe2eBbRyYK/11ee69b4e4ee736d3b169f8e2c447c0f/Screen_Shot_2022-04-19_at_8.00.53_PM.png)

I reccomend you read the entire article. [Do so here](https://oasislab.pubpub.org/pub/54t0y9mk/release/3).

The best system I've read for synthesizing knowledge

For a few years now, I've been a voracious reader. I love understanding how we got to where we are today and how that might forecast where we're going in the future. I kept getting frustrated that I was reading things, but couldn't remember what I read nor make connections to historical events. It took a lot of hypothesizing, experimenting, and tweaking my system, but this is what I've found works best:

<SideNote title='This is it' content="Some content here please work" />

## [1. The Blank Sheet Method](https://fs.blog/reading/)

Whenever you start a new book, podcast, article, etc., grab a blank piece of paper and write the title at the top. In one color, write down everything you know or you think you know about the topic before consuming the content. It's okay if that's nothing.

Then, write down anything you learn while consuming the content in a different color. Things that surprised you, things that made you go, "Huh, that's surprising."

When you're done, write a two-sentence summary of the content on the page and file it with the rest of your sheets. If you want, you can add tags to the top right and file it under a certain category.

## 2. Have a place to throw things and throw everything there.

For me, this is my Obsidian Daily Notes page. I have a 'Scratchpad' template that I write down any thought that I have, article I want to read, quote I heard, or task I want to get done. Then I add relevant tags to discover them later.

I also use Siri all the time when driving. If I'm listening to a podcast or audio book and they say something I want to come back to, I'll say, "Hey Siri, remind me about this idea at 23:45 in Indie Hackers Podcast." Things3, my task app, integrates with iPhone reminders and they show up in my inbox, so then I sort those out into each area.

If you want something easier, you can use the native reminders app as a widget on your phone to quickly add things. You can also email yourself links and ideas you see on your phone, want to revisit while at your desk. Mem, a note taking app, is integrated with Twilio and lets you text a number and those notes go to your Mem Inbox. It's a neat idea, but Mem is still in Beta and a bit buggy.

The key here is to create something with the least amount of friction as possible. For example in online marketing, the more times a user has to click to checkout or look at your product, the more customers you'll lose. Similarly, the more times you have to click to capture and idea, the more ideas you'll lose. This idea comes from _Atomic Habits_in that when you're trying to build a new habit, make it frictionless. If you're trying to break a bad habit, create as much friction as possible.

To Recap
Those may or may not work for you. But whatever you choose, remember, it's going to take work! I make a lot of note taking videos on YouTube and a lot of people ask for a better system and honestly, their system is just fine. It just takes time to go through your notes each week and re-discover what you wrote. But that's how you get genuine insights. I've found most people want their tool to rediscover the insights and notes for them. While that's ideal (and some apps do a good job of this), the best ideas will come through doing the work of sorting through your notes and thinking critically about what you wrote.

Every Saturday morning, I go through my Obsidian and see what I wrote about. Making relevant tags that I see necessary, reviewing book notes, and so on.

Each [note taking system](https://fortelabs.co/blog/how-to-take-smart-notes/) has to...
- Capture
- Organize
- Distill
- Create

Figure out the best way to do these for you and you'll be set!

Two simple strategies to help you remember what you read an actually learn.

2 Strategies To Help You Remember What You Read

Note taking is the best form of studying I've ever come across. It forces you to [think critically about the ideas](https://twitter.com/mollyfmielke/status/1496212938788642824?s=20&t=Ta8qrVFPaf9aa2nRVDBnXg) you're consuming and what's going on in the world. Most of the time, [we don't give ourselves enough slack](https://fs.blog/slack/) in life to sit with our thoughts. But note taking forces you to do that.

I've tried about every note taking app on the market by now and none of them are everything I want them to be. Notion is great and is what I would recommend to someone looking to take more notes and get organized in life. I've tried Roam, mem.io, Evernote, and many, many more. But the constant switching of systems defeats the main purposes of note taking, rediscovering ideas you wrote about before. If you start from scratch every six months, you won't have many insights to rediscover.

Our of all the apps I've tried, Obsidian is the one I like the most. The customization is nice and the ability to publish via Obsidian Publish is what drew me to it.

## Working with the garage door up

The biggest inspiration for me to publish my notes is from Andy Matuschak. He has his notes public and a lot of people know "Andy's Notes." I was exploring them one day and was awe-struck by the ideas he was writing about. Andy writes about this concept called ["Working with the garage door up"](https://notes.andymatuschak.org/Work_with_the_garage_door_up) and is one of the reasons he publishes his notes.

When I was younger, every weekend I'd do projects in the garage with my dad. Since we kept the garage door open, we never knew who was going to walk by. Sometimes, it was the Soto's. Next door neighbor's of ours who always supported my school fundraisers.

Other times it was friends asking if I could come out to play. On rare occasions, it was someone who could help us with the project we're working on! This is what happens when you work with the garage door up. You run into people and make connections you wouldn't have otherwise.

## Increasing online serendipity

[David Perell](https://perell.com/), a writer and creator of [Write of Passage](https://writeofpassage.school/), encourages his students to [maximize their serendipity by writing online](https://perell.com/essay/serendipity/). He writes:

> Maintain a [website](http://perell.com/join) so people can find your bio, share your work, and describe you in a favorable light. Once your website is live, publish content to encourage people to visit your website, advertise your skills and hype you up.

But creating polished content on a regular basis is difficult, especially if you're balancing a job, a family, and other hobbies. So, a great way to increase serendipitous interactions is to publish things that are not polished.

Andy, in his note about [working with the garage door up](https://notes.andymatuschak.org/Work_with_the_garage_door_up), writes this:

> This is the opposite of the Twitter account which mostly posts announcements of finished work: it's [Screenshot Saturday](https://twitter.com/hashtag/screenshotsaturday?lang=en); it's giving a lecture about the problems you're pondering in the shower; it's thinking out loud about the ways in which your project doesn't work at all. It's so much of Twitch. I want to see the process. I want to see you trim the artichoke. I want to see you choose the color palette.

Taking notes encourages you to think about how you're trimming the artichoke. Publishing those notes shows others how you're thinking about trimming the artichoke. Someone who also thinks a lot about trimming artichoke's can now connect with you to refine their own process. It's a win-win!

## Why I went with Obsidian

There are no right ways to publish your notes online. You could write things in a Google Doc and share that in your Twitter bio if you want to. That's he best way to capture notes though, which is why I chose Obsidian.

The process of taking new notes is the most important thing to focus on. I had to make sure I enjoyed the process of taking notes in whatever system I used. I like how Obsidian is a desktop app and not online. This for ease of use and not a privacy thing. I found if I was using a Chrome tab, it would get closed out or I'd lose it.

I also like the free flowing structure of Obsidian and how anything can go anywhere, though I do see how this could be confusing and disorganized. If you want more structure, [Tiago Forte's PARA](https://fortelabs.co/blog/para/) method is recommend, or you can use the [Map of Content](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7GqQKCT0PZ4) idea.

What sealed the deal for me was the [Obsidian Publish](https://obsidian.md/publish) feature. With only a few clicks, I could make my notes public at a custom domain and allow users to search and interact with my notes in similar functionality to how Andy's Notes work. If there are pages I don't want to publish, I can add some YAML to the top of the page which tells Obsidian, "Hey, don't make this public. K, thanks!"

I'm happy with how my notes are coming along both online and offline. I also enjoy how I can share links with people online to ideas I'm thinking about, but haven't thought about it enough to write a full essay. You can check out [my public notes here](https://notes.daltonmabery.com/About+these+notes).

An explanation of why I work with the garage door up and why I chose to use Obsidian as my note-taking app of choice.

knowledge-mangagement