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I wouldn't consider this to be a productivity tool in the usual sense (i.e., like Todoist or GTD). Instead, it's about facilitating deeper thought and making ne

I wouldn't consider this to be a productivity tool in the usual sense (i.e., like Todoist or GTD). Instead, it's about facilitating deeper thought and making new connections between ideas. For a professional content creator, which includes most academics like Luhmann, the entirety of your career is your collection of notes. You can store them on paper, in the computer, in your head, or however you want, but those pieces of knowledge are all you have. Dismissing these tools as merely an arbitrary reorganization of a static collection of documents is like dismissing Javascript because we have html. Good luck creating Google Docs with only html.

sidpatil 6y ago
Andy Matuschak makes a similar point. If I understand correctly, his perspective is that the notetaking is the work. https://notes.andymatuschak.org/z6cFzJWgj9vZpnrQsjrZ8yCNREzCTgyFeVZTb?stackedNotes=z7kEFe6NfUSgtaDuUjST1oczKKzQQeQWk4Dbc&stackedNotes=zUMFE66dxeweppDvgbNAb5hukXzXQu8ErVNv https://notes.andymatuschak.org/z6cFzJWgj9vZpnrQsjrZ8yCNREzC...
koheripbal 6y ago
Folks conflate TODO lists with a personal "library" because the first note they usually create is a TODO list, and then a set of sub-TODO-lists per project. Often, what we spend time on most, are the things we need to get done, and our true reference "library" is just Google. I would argue that a pure personal "library" is actually just the archive of past projects. In that context, searchability is more important that good organizing. I have that sort of hybrid approach. My "main" doc is a TODO Journal where I list my todos for that day (often copied from the prior day). The journal maintains a record of what I've done every day since I started two years ago - each new day is set at the top of the doc. Many of the line items are themselves links to other documents (all in markdown), which are themselves a mix of project notes and TODO lists. I use Typora to edit, and WinSCP to encrypt on a remote drive that's backed up each night.

sidpatil 6y ago

Andy Matuschak makes a similar point. If I understand correctly, his perspective is that the notetaking is the work. https://notes.andymatuschak.org/z6cFzJWgj9vZpnrQsjrZ8yCNREzCTgyFeVZTb?stackedNotes=z7kEFe6NfUSgtaDuUjST1oczKKzQQeQWk4Dbc&stackedNotes=zUMFE66dxeweppDvgbNAb5hukXzXQu8ErVNv https://notes.andymatuschak.org/z6cFzJWgj9vZpnrQsjrZ8yCNREzC...

koheripbal 6y ago

Folks conflate TODO lists with a personal "library" because the first note they usually create is a TODO list, and then a set of sub-TODO-lists per project. Often, what we spend time on most, are the things we need to get done, and our true reference "library" is just Google. I would argue that a pure personal "library" is actually just the archive of past projects. In that context, searchability is more important that good organizing. I have that sort of hybrid approach. My "main" doc is a TODO Journal where I list my todos for that day (often copied from the prior day). The journal maintains a record of what I've done every day since I started two years ago - each new day is set at the top of the doc. Many of the line items are themselves links to other documents (all in markdown), which are themselves a mix of project notes and TODO lists. I use Typora to edit, and WinSCP to encrypt on a remote drive that's backed up each night.