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> I’m tired of this. I think we overvalue thinking and undervalue taking action on that thinking. It’s easy to discuss ideas, which is one reason I think I’ve d
by bsnnkv 3y ago
> I’m tired of this. I think we overvalue thinking and undervalue taking action on that thinking. It’s easy to discuss ideas, which is one reason I think I’ve done so much of it and used to find it appealing.
> Lately, though, simply reading or thinking about ideas feels inadequate, even a waste of time. It feels wrong to me, because it goes against some of the things I value deep down–things which don’t have a specific word for them (that I’m aware of, with my non-native knowledge of English).
> It’s the value that seeks to do things, see the results of doing those things. Ideas made tangible.
This resonated with me a lot.
I've written before about how I ditched over-the-top all-in-one bookmarking, highlighting, annotating and read-it-later platforms for a single fuzzily-searchable database of highlights I take from anywhere (comments, articles, books, blogs etc.) and how much this has improved my life flow in general.
I don't think it's a coincidence that since that mindset shift, I've gone on to create a modest-but-profitable SaaS, a category-defining piece of open source software with a vibrant and active community, and that after a lifetime of watching from the sidelines, I have finally learned to dance to the level that I'm regularly referred to as a "good dancer" (still working on being able to accept this compliment, though)
- goddessoflists 3y agoThis! I used to spend ages on organising notes and documents because I believed that would help me work better. I recently gave that up and now focus only on taking action, and I've gotten a lot more work done as a result. Connecting meticulous organisation and having a "second brain" to productivity, I realised not long ago, has made us all focus on the wrong things. I understand that for some people, having things organized actually helps them function better but I wasn't one of them. I only thought I needed to be super-organized but I'm a perfectionist--what I needed was to just do things.
- jackthetab 3y ago> I've written before about how I... Got a link for that? I'm trying to do something similar and I'm still doing far too much "bookmarking, highlighting, annotating and read-it-later"-ing
- lazyasciiart 3y agoSounds like http://Readwise.io http://Readwise.io
- bsnnkv 3y agoI won't be at a computer for a while to dig up all the links; but check out both my comment and post history on HN; the short version is that I ditched Readwise, Instapaper, Pinboard & co, and my entire histories there, and wrote something from scratch tailored to my own needs which is now also publicly available at https://notado.app https://notado.app I generally encourage people to write software that is tailored to their own needs in this area rather than trying to contort themselves to fit into the bookmarking model, which I personally consider to be broken for highlights (I've shared a blog on this topic on HN too). If anyone were to ask me for advice after describing the sort of fatigue that you have described with the popular systems and services in this product area, I'd encourage them to ditch the "read it later" mentality and try adopting a "read it now or read it never" (RINORIN) approach, and to stop annotating their highlights (because these fall out of sync with our thinking incredibly quickly).