[HN Gopher] How to make a complete map of every thought you thin...
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How to make a complete map of every thought you think (2003)
Author : Tomte
Score : 67 points
Date : 2022-06-24 19:48 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (users.speakeasy.net)
(TXT) w3m dump (users.speakeasy.net)
| jl6 wrote:
| It's been nearly 20 years. I'd love to read a followup. Was it
| all worth it?
| jeffrallen wrote:
| I didn't read the article, I'm just here to point out how weird
| and wonderful it is that it's 2022 and I'm looking at a URL with
| a tilde in it, like my first URL ever had.
| ffhhj wrote:
| Oh, the old Internet. He even tells people to call him:
|
| > 206.440.0247 <- YES, you can CALL! Just say "I read your
| notebooks book."
|
| > Call at whatever crazy hour. Let me know.
| Tomte wrote:
| Open it and you'll probably find a layout like you had back
| then.
| kloch wrote:
| Truly retro. Only thing it's missing is setting the
| background to match Mosaic/Netscape gray.
| Li7h wrote:
| I am very intrigued by this system which smacks of Getting Things
| Done (he even mentions how to integrate it) but its so
| disorganized and all over the place it seems a bit schizophrenic.
| 3-cheese-sundae wrote:
| Interesting. But how does the author expect anyone to implement a
| grand scheme of organizing their thoughts when they can't even be
| bothered to organize the implementation guide, by their own
| admission?
| oifjsidjf wrote:
| I would not be suprised if this approach backfired to a certain
| degree as it would just increase the amount of thoughts, thus
| distractions.
|
| Most philosophers just end up with even more questions than they
| started with and end up dying miserable and frustrated.
|
| This is a stark contrast to, for example, Krishnamurti's teaching
| which could be summed up as "observe your thoughts without trying
| to analyze them, just sit still and observe them, and notice that
| each time you try to analyze the thoughts it's the thoughts
| trying to analyze thoughts, so you will just spin in circles: so
| just observe, and something magical will happen.", which
| eventually leads to some kind of an eureka moment in the mind
| which magicaly resolves this issue and this thought doesn't
| appear again.
|
| So now this is really not a thought anymore but a instinctive
| understanding. Eg first you had to thought and concentrate when
| you walk, but now you never think about walking, it's
| instinctive.
|
| The more you focus on walking down the stairs the more likely it
| is that you will trip.
|
| The author's mistake, from eg Krishnamurti's perspective, is that
| he belives that thoughts are good: but the best understandings
| that you have, the things that you do best, you don't actually
| think about at all. So this more eastern style "no mind"
| philosophy tries to move one away from these schizophrenic
| thoughts that constantly invade one's mind and towards
| "understanding" (cessation of intrusive thoughts by understaing
| what causes a thought to intrude the "stream of consiousness" and
| disturb the human).
| throw10920 wrote:
| > I would not be suprised if this approach backfired to a
| certain degree as it would just increase the amount of
| thoughts, thus distractions.
|
| I've been developing a system similar to this for the better
| part of a decade now, and my experience has been that while I
| have significantly more ideas, they're _less_ distracting
| precisely _because_ I 'm writing them down.
|
| Like David Allen says in _Getting Things Done_ , your brain
| will bother you with things it thinks are important until you
| "resolve" them somehow. If you develop a sufficiently robust
| logging/todo system such that you can convince your brain that
| you _won 't_ forget it if you put it in the system, then it'll
| let go of it after. (and, conversely, if your brain believes
| that the system isn't reliable, it'll keep bothering you with
| the ideas and todos that you put in there anyway)
| Cupertino95014 wrote:
| puika wrote:
| aantix wrote:
| Do you remember the Microsoft Research project, MyLifeBits?
|
| The guy wore a camera with a recorder (SenseCam). It would record
| his entire day, his interactions with people, etc.
|
| https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/project/mylifebits/
|
| https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/project/sensecam/
| darkotic wrote:
| I read the Introduction and would love to try a compromise. I'd
| start writing things down more and revising them for clarity. I
| wouldn't go all-in.
| john_minsk wrote:
| Wise! Thanks for posting this.
| k0k0r0 wrote:
| For the brave among you, I actually can recommend reading some
| parts of it. His main ideas are quite interesting. I wasn't
| really able to follow, but nevertheless I was able to get
| something out of it. I find the idea and subject interesting, and
| I would really love to learn more about his expieriences, but
| it's very difficult to read because of all of his temperament.
|
| I stopped reading when I noticed I started missing the actual
| descriptive information of his attempt to capture all of his
| thoughts. It is buried in a whole lot of strong opinions about
| details like what paper to use. At some point somewhere at the
| beginning he says he'll just spit the text out since it is better
| if he serves any readers with this than providing nothing. And
| actually that he spits this text out is kind of a perfect summary
| of how I feel when reading.
|
| I wish he had been slighly more relaxed when writing this text.
| But I guess he practised his approach to get a complete map of
| his thoughts in a equally unrelaxed manner. In his defense, he
| says somewhere he is 25 (at the time of writing) and that is
| probably were some part of his energy comes from. I am not much
| older and multiple times while reading I asked myself whether -
| or to what extend - his text is a look in a mirror. And promised
| myself to take care to be less convinced of my own conclusions.
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