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What tools/methods have you found that help with aphantasia?

haswell 3y ago
For awhile, I was using Miro. The infinite canvas made it possible to start arranging information visually and made it easier to load things back into memory when I’d come back to a project later. I still love it, but prefer something local and less proprietary. Currently, I’m pretty all-in on Obsidian. I don’t have a crazy setup with tons of plugins and I’m not building complex data tables or anything like that. I use: - Daily journal note to jot down thoughts and what I’m working on or thinking about each day - Very actively use [[Link Syntax]] in notes to create placeholder connections to unexplored ideas or real connections to existing notes - I use the Canvas feature to visually arrange things and love that I can embed notes into the canvas or start a local card on the canvas and later convert it to a standalone note - I occasionally use the note graph view to see how previous journal notes cluster around specific topics. I know some people find this part of Obsidian gimmicky, but for me, it helps me find common threads and identify interrelated ideas - I focus on creating small notes that I can grok quickly and rely on note-to-note connections to navigate larger topics I don’t know how much of this workflow is directly applicable to Aphantasia, but the canvas feature in particular is where I feel like I get the most value in terms of visualizing what I otherwise can’t. I also use tools like Figma/Balsamiq to get product ideas out of my head. It’s crazy how different things can be once they go from an abstract notion of “an interface that does X” to an actual drawing of an interface that does X. If there was ever a tool like Miro that I could run locally, I’d use it extensively. Just a nice big toolbox of different ways to visualize things.
- sea-gold 3y ago
  > If there was ever a tool like Miro that I could run locally, I’d use it extensively. Does Excalidraw[1] fit the bill? [1] https://github.com/excalidraw/excalidraw https://github.com/excalidraw/excalidraw
  - haswell 3y ago
    It gets me partway there. The thing that I really liked about Miro is that is has tools ranging from kanban boards to data tables to icon libraries and is sort of a jack of all trades sort of tool that goes beyond just drawing and adds structure to some of the elements you can put on the canvas. This makes it really easy to transition between quick wireframes, sequence diagrams, sticky notes, to structured data, tasks with rich cards, statuses, etc. I haven’t found a good direct replacement yet. I do need to give excalidraw another look because I think there’s a decent Obsidian integration and I could probably approach some of the things I was doing with Miro in a more Obsidian-centric way.
  - pricci 3y ago
    There is an Obsidian integration also

For awhile, I was using Miro. The infinite canvas made it possible to start arranging information visually and made it easier to load things back into memory when I’d come back to a project later. I still love it, but prefer something local and less proprietary. Currently, I’m pretty all-in on Obsidian. I don’t have a crazy setup with tons of plugins and I’m not building complex data tables or anything like that. I use: - Daily journal note to jot down thoughts and what I’m working on or thinking about each day - Very actively use [[Link Syntax]] in notes to create placeholder connections to unexplored ideas or real connections to existing notes - I use the Canvas feature to visually arrange things and love that I can embed notes into the canvas or start a local card on the canvas and later convert it to a standalone note - I occasionally use the note graph view to see how previous journal notes cluster around specific topics. I know some people find this part of Obsidian gimmicky, but for me, it helps me find common threads and identify interrelated ideas - I focus on creating small notes that I can grok quickly and rely on note-to-note connections to navigate larger topics I don’t know how much of this workflow is directly applicable to Aphantasia, but the canvas feature in particular is where I feel like I get the most value in terms of visualizing what I otherwise can’t. I also use tools like Figma/Balsamiq to get product ideas out of my head. It’s crazy how different things can be once they go from an abstract notion of “an interface that does X” to an actual drawing of an interface that does X. If there was ever a tool like Miro that I could run locally, I’d use it extensively. Just a nice big toolbox of different ways to visualize things.

sea-gold 3y ago
> If there was ever a tool like Miro that I could run locally, I’d use it extensively. Does Excalidraw[1] fit the bill? [1] https://github.com/excalidraw/excalidraw https://github.com/excalidraw/excalidraw
- haswell 3y ago
  It gets me partway there. The thing that I really liked about Miro is that is has tools ranging from kanban boards to data tables to icon libraries and is sort of a jack of all trades sort of tool that goes beyond just drawing and adds structure to some of the elements you can put on the canvas. This makes it really easy to transition between quick wireframes, sequence diagrams, sticky notes, to structured data, tasks with rich cards, statuses, etc. I haven’t found a good direct replacement yet. I do need to give excalidraw another look because I think there’s a decent Obsidian integration and I could probably approach some of the things I was doing with Miro in a more Obsidian-centric way.
- pricci 3y ago
  There is an Obsidian integration also