Finding Your Bicycle for Your Mind

I have had a love-hate relationship with tools -- specifically "productivity" and even more specifically "journaling, writing, note taking, and the related."

Part of me wishes that I could "just do it" and be effective with whatever tools -- electronic or physical -- I have on hand and just make do. Like McGyver.

For example, I have long struggled with something as basic as writing in a paper journal.

I did not develop a loving, beautiful and consistent habit where I evolved with different papers and high-quality pens.

Instead, I wrestled with writing in different janky journals. I was inconsistent, in part, because of this friction. Or so I thought.

Then out of frustration wrote in Google Docs -- easier to type and search, yes, but....something still felt off (but I couldn't name it at the time).

And then back to hand written journals.

But then my handwriting was bad, and, in part because the fit with whatever formfactor I had felt bad, I was inconsistent.

My journal writing quality was so bad that, when I came across a big bin with old journals in my garage, I was tempted to just throw them away!

They're illegible! And the few things I am able to piece together they are unreadable.

They aren't clear, coherent, thought-pieces that I think everybody else's journals are.

Part of this is my problem. I am the one who is incoherent.

So I realize that I need to have output which actually requires and produces high-quality thinking.

Venting in a journal was not that.

But...once I started to use the DayOne journal, I began to journal more regularly. And what I wrote as also legible.

The coherence....didn't improve much, however.

I know that's what I needed to focus on to really "benefit" from journaling.

A well-thought out journal probably does wonders for the mind.

However...doing so felt too "rigid" to write that way for me from the get-go. Lots of time I just wanted stuff to "hang out" and, as a result, it would be incoherent.

While maybe it was quasi-therapeutic, I now know that without at least some healthy dialogue, resolution or processing, it probably didn't do much for me.

However, when I tried to be more disciplined in the quality and structure of my writing, I wrote less frequently.

When I tried to relax those constraints, the quality went down even as the frequency went up.

Obsidian, however, solved it for me (for now). Obsidian fit how I think, and it's the tool II wish I had when, in the past, I tried to morph WordPress, DayOne, The Brain, Ulysses into what I actually needed.

It illustrates the full power of the "bicycle for the mind." With the right tool, I am able to race ahead.

For me, Obsidian lets me just "barf" into my vault, collect and interconnect the ideas.

And then when something more "coherent" emerges, publish it and, in the process, crystallize my own thinking.

This short essay, however, did not come from a bunch of barf notes. I expect future ones to do so.

But given that I just spent a week trying to figure out how to come up with multiple digital gardens I think the idea has been percolating for quite some time.

This "feeling" of being able to better organize and capture my thoughts puts structure around what has often felt like a storm of fleeting ideas bouncing around. That's chaotic.

In the same way that a bonsai tree is pruned and shaped, my thoughts are made more coherent in the writing stage after all the junk has been captured.

What would be the goal of doing so?

I remember reading about how Chinese calligraphy was an exercise to develop one's character. By writing and copying the styles of a Chinese philosopher, the writer was to then imbue themselves with their traits.

By doing so across different writers, the student developed themselves.

My goal for writing is to get greater clarity -- to strengthen my point-of-view and my character.

It's also a place to escape the emotional dysregulation which, I see, has created havoc in my life.

I think writing is an essential tool to sharpen oneself; but for me, the traditional pen-to-paper didn't work.

I truly did and do need the bicycle of the mind in the form of Obsidian.

I hate that I do.

I could have been so much more productive had I just stuck with the tried-and-true. And it makes me fearful that without this tool, I really am relying on a crutch.

I am thankful to have my mind's bicycle now.

What Can You Do?

If you're wondering whether you could be more creative, more expressive, more consistent in whatever it is you are working on, it's possible that you don't have the right tool to support the system and process that best works for you.

This can be trial and error. It can also be a sink-hole of spending time tinkering without actually shipping anything.

But I think starting with something and having a thought process to come up with your ideal process can make the difference, especially when you want to discover and leverage your personal category of one.

My Thread

Steve Jobs came up with a bad name but a brilliant concept.

What was that?

The name was "Bicycle", which was the name of his start-up before changing it to Apple.

But the origin was his concept of the "bicycle for the mind." This is what he envisioned the personal computer to be.

Obsidian helped me to think, write, and ruminate in a way that "fit me."

This wasn't just about optimizing an efficient workflow.

It was about melding technology to how I think and feel.

Obviously this is something that evolves over time.

If you aren't thinking, feeling, and expressing yourself as optimally, the right tools can make a difference.

I wrote more here: Finding Your Bicycle for Your Mind

https://twitter.com/timfong888/status/1632448402175975424?s=61&t=VPyJhgvcwhdlqer7IrsVlw