Been a couple of days since I updated the blog, but this challenge has been more slow going – I haven’t had anything really big happening.
I ended up buying the book Building a 2nd Brain by Tiago Forte and I’ve started listening to it. There hasn’t been anything earth shattering, but it does confirm my initial suspicion that the process is about committing all the junk you’re carrying around in your head to an external storage system.
The big thing today is that I sat down and went through all of the open browser tabs in my personal computer and on my work computer and I started cataloging the links by subject matter into Joplin.
It feels good having a browser window open with only two tabs going right now. The second tab in this case is another section of my blog that I’ll update after I finish writing this.
There is something that’s relaxed in my brain knowing that all of those addresses are saved somewhere else.
I also had an epiphany about playing video games – I’m playing GTA III right now and I’ve been keeping a simple text file with what I’ve gotten done (trying for 100% completion). I had tabs with maps open and such. I cataloged those as well I transferred my notes about what I’ve already done into Joplin too. This type of thing will help for any of the games I play in the future – I can move on if I want to and still have accessible notes about where I want to go back to.
Pretty freaggin awesome.
I’ve also been taking notes on YouTube videos I’ve been watching on Martial Arts and Strength Training. I’ve got Joplin on my phone, so my notes will be available right when I want them.
The basic idea is to reduce your cognitive load by curating information that’s helpful to YOU and putting it in a centralized place so you can come back to it.
Again, there’s nothing life altering here – yet. But I’m already feeling my stress levels come down from information overload. I’m engaging with the information more than I was previously AND I’m documenting it for future engagement.
I think the more advanced idea is simply focus, digest, and document what you find most useful so you don’t end up with a shitload of noise – i.e. creating a massive list of bookmarks that mean nothing. Which is going to be the next step, but I really needed to clean this stuff out so I have a workspace to focus from.
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