Improve Your Focus and Concentrate Better With This Bullet Journaling Technique by [[Lia Luzong]] on 2023-10-26

Reply to @Edmund https://forum.zettelkasten.de/discussion/comment/21907/#Comment_21907

Doto's book is the best and tightest yet for explaining both how to implement a Luhmann-artig zettelkasten as well as why along with the affordances certain elements provide. He does a particularly good job of providing clear and straightforward definitions which have a muddy nature in some of the online spaces, which tends to cause issues for people new to the practice. Sadly, for me, there isn't much new insight due to the amount of experience and research I bring to the enterprise.

I do like that Doto puts at least some emphasis on why one might want to use alphanumerics even in digital spaces, an idea which has broadly been sidelined in most contexts for lack of experience or concrete affordances for why one might do it.

The other area he addresses, which most elide and the balance gloss over at best, is that of the discussion of using the zettelkasten for output. Though he touches on some particular methods and scaffolding, most of it is limited to suggestions based on his own experience rather than a broader set of structures and practices. This is probably the biggest area for potential expansion and examples I'd like to see, especially as I'm reading through Eustace Miles' How to Prepare Essays, Lectures, Articles, Books, Speeches and Letters, with Hints on Writing for the Press (London: Rivingtons, 1905).

I could have had some more material in chapter 3 which has some fascinating, but still evolving work. Ideas like interstitial journaling and some of the related productivity methods are interesting, but Doto only barely scratches the surface on some of these techniques and methods which go beyond the traditional "zettelkasten space", but which certainly fall in his broader framing of "system for writing" promise.

Doto's "triangle of creativity", a discussion of proximal feedback, has close parallels of Adler and Hutchins' idea of "The Great Conversation" (1952), which many are likely to miss.

For those who missed out, Dan Allosso has posted video from the sessions at https://lifelonglearn.substack.com/ Sadly missing, unless you're in the book club, are some generally lively side chat discussions as the primary video discussion was proceeding. The sessions had a breadth of experiences from the new to the old hands as well as from students to teachers and everywhere in between.

Read A System for Writing by Bob Doto by [[Ton Zijlstra]] – Interdependent Thoughts

Interstitial journaling predates and may have induced Ryder Carroll's suggestion of using "=" for emotion in Bullet Journaling.

See: https://hypothes.is/a/l12OgFD7Ee-LjAevth_Piw in the piece Carroll mentions interstitial journaling.

https://www.cygnoir.net/analog/

It looks like the Stephen King entry has a picture of the book cover taped into it. This is an interesting idea.

I very much like this idea! I have years of journals that I sometimes peruse, and have lamented that so many "good ideas" live in there, but I never use them, or much see them. This has me wondering if I can incorporate them into my zettelkasten.

https://web.archive.org/web/20240307125758/https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/what-is-the-dominant-emotion-in-400-years-of-womens-diaries-180983834/

Women's diaries from 17th till now have frustration as recurring theme, analysis shows. Not a big surprise. I think journaling often is emerging when frustration rears its head. And women have had ages of deeply systemic reasons to be very frustrated by.

I've only ever journaled when there was something wrong with me or my context, when I was frustrated, sad, depressed etc. Perhaps except for those who treat their being as action research and make daily notes for later data mining, or those in a public role journaling to maintain first hand observations before spin gets invovled (keep a journal is a sound advice for anyone getting politically active).

https://shop.canvascorpbrands.com/products/gypsy-momets-card-today

http://sea.nathanstrait.com/journaling/

A lot of this looks surprisingly familiar... (even down to the ordering that it seems to have been discovered).

:)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k_6BjUzwJX8

via https://everbookforever.com/

Leather sheet folded into four sections onto itself like a book cover. It holds six folders of pieces of paper (most of them folded in half making mini-booklet pages): - blank paper for future note taking use - templates (project pack, weekly schedule/to do template, project list, project templates) - logbook, journal like, dated, - contains notes, outlines, brain storms, and scratch pad - next actions/workstation (to do lists for email, home, work, calls ) - Project Pack (9 projects for the quarter, each has their own page or mini folder with details) - Work Week or the Weekly Review Folder (areas of focus/project list, yearly calendar on a page for planning, whatever folder, wild ideas,

When done, all the pages of folders are packed up and wrapped with an elastic band for easy carrying. It's like a paper (looks like A5) notebook deconstructed and filed into paper folders and wrapped in a pretty leather cover.

As sections are finished/done they can be archived into small booklets and presumably filed.

This looks shockingly like my own index-card productivity system based on a variety of Memindex/Bullet Journal/GTD.

dead reference? couldn't find; url gone and not archived; DOI was for the Wolsey article and not this

(~10:00) "The context determines the meaning of the content."

Thus reframing is very powerful as you recontextualize the past, and therefore see it in a whole new light; the meaning of the past changed.

By asking what you have learned from the past, you become anti-fragile and flexible, as you turn the past into something useful; an asset.

"The past happens for us, not to us."

"How you frame the past influences your expectations for the future."

"You can't disconnect your view of the future from your experience in the present."

"You can't have meaning in the present without hope & purpose in the future."

One of the powerful things about journaling is that you can control the past; reframe it. What is the meaning of the past gets determined by both the present and the future.

Hardy recommends to often (even daily) reflect on the past and notice how different you are now compared to then. What you have achieved, what is possible now that was not possible then, etc.

What did I learn today?

(~4:00) We interpret reality in a (cognitive) schema. Reality exists only in the mind. We cannot view reality objectively because it is intertwined with perception and cognition (see also John Boyd's OODA loop).

Sidenote; because of this, time is also holistic; in our schema, the past, present, and future are basically all-existent at once.

Watch this video for much interesting information about journaling.

Journaling is all about agency

1. In the morning, prepare for the struggles of the day, by mentioning the possibilities.
2. Write for oneself.
3. Repeat what is most important.
4. Process stress on paper, in a healthy and good way. (If need be, continue this in a Kolb's session; not in the video)
5. Copy favorite quotes.
6. Ask the tough questions, and answer them truthfully. (As Dr. Hardy says: "All progress starts by telling the truth") Remember Socrates.
7. Review the day and the actions. Examine. "The unexamined life is not worth living."

"Journaling is an opportunity to think the thoughts that we're not allowed to say out loud."

reply to u/taurusnoises (Bob Doto) at tk

Yep, for almost a full year now on 4x6" index cards. (Receipts for the kids: https://boffosocko.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/wp-1688411021709-scaled.jpg)

Previously I'd used a Hobonichi Cousin (page per day) journal for this. (Perhaps I should have stayed with the A6 size instead of the larger A5 for consistency?) Decades ago (around 1988ish?) I had started using a 2 page per day DayTimer pocket planners (essentially pre-printed/timed index cards spiral bound into monthly booklets which they actually shipped in index card-like plastic boxes for storage/archival purposes). Technically I've been doing a version of this for a really long time in one form or another.

It generally includes a schedule, to do lists (bullet journal style), and various fleeting notes/journaling similar to the older Memindex format, just done on larger cards for extra space. I generally either fold them in half for pocket storage for the day or carry about in groups for the coming week(s) when I'm away from my desk for extended periods (also with custom blank index card notebooks/pads).

I won't go into the fact that in the 90's I had a 5,000+ person rolodex... or an index card (in the entertainment they called them buck slips) with the phone numbers and names of \~100 people I dealt with regularly when early brick cell phones didn't have great (or any) storage/functionality.

3x5 Life productivity cards have the usual to do lists on one side, but have a split AM:Gratitude and PM:Wins section on the back for tracking general progress.

https://kimberlyhirsh.com/uploads/2023/5976538a38.jpg

Putting a list of one's core values in the front of their notebook can be a useful reminder within their journaling or bullet journal practice.

Stream of Consciousness to Atomic Notes: A Powerful Note-Taking Workflow

Broadly a workflow that takes journaling/morning pages and then progressively refines them into atomic-like notes.

Uses the idea of open loops from the GTD-space.

🤪

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RJVHhwyx-Cg

An overly complex method of commonplacing, though oddly with absolutely no mention of indexing of any sort.

reply: <br /> If academia doesn't work out, then perhaps you could shill for "Big Notebook"? Seriously though, this is a pretty heavy/complex method of commonplacing. Do you index any/all of it somehow so you can find the pieces you know you've worked through in the past? A card index perhaps? John Locke's commonplacing method? I do something similar, but use slips or index cards the way Wittgenstein or Walter Benjamin did.... Perhaps one day I'll go more visual like https://www.denizcemonduygu.com/philo/browse/ ?

Journal and zettelkasten.<br /> by flin

One of the benefits of journaling on an index card is that the small space is much less intimidating than a large blank sheet, particularly when one isn't in the mood but feels like they ought to write. This is similar to the idea that many people find that microblogs (Twitter, Mastodon, Tumblr) are much easier to maintain than a long form blog.

I keep a wholly separate section of one of my boxes as a journal/diary as well, but it's less significant and is ordered only by date with very sparse indexing and an almost non-existent amount of linking. I have a bit of @Sascha's practice going on there, though certainly not as deep as his excellent description. I would caution newcomers to the practice of ZK to be very conscious of what, how, and why they're integrating a journaling practice into their workflow so that they don't risk what I call "zettelkasten overreach". Guarding against this sort of overreach can very easily be seen in my separate/distinct "journal on index cards" versus Sascha's more explicitly thought out "journal within a zettelkasten".

One might have considered some of this part of his (Roland Barthes') fichier boîte (French for zettelkasten) as a journal/diary or what some might today consider a private microblog of thoughts and observations.

reply lifted from my notes:

Henry David Thoreau kept both a commonplace book (essentially a traditional (non-Luhmann-esque) zettelkasten in notebook form) and a separate writing journal where he did what most would consider typical 'journaling', but where he also tried out phrasing, writing, and other experimental work that would ultimately become part of his published written output. This may be a useful model for some. His journals ran to multiple volumes, but a good edited version with a nice introduction to some of his work and methods can be found in:

• Thoreau, Henry David. The Journal: 1837-1861. Edited by Damion Searls. Original edition. New York: NYRB Classics, 2009.

Similarly Roland Barthes used his card index as more than the traditional bibliographical, excerpting, and note taking tool that many had before him. He also used it to accumulate notes on what he had seen and heard in his daily life, phrases he liked, and plans. It came to serve the function, particularly in the last two years of his life, of a diary or what biographer Tiphaine Samoyault came to call his fichierjournal or index-card diary. Published posthumously on October 12, 2010, Mourning Diary is a collection from Roland Barthes' 330 index cards focusing on his mourning following the death of his mother in 1977.

• Barthes, Roland. Mourning Diary. Macmillan, 2010. https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780374533113/mourningdiary.
• Budelis, Kristina. “Barthes’s Hand.” The New Yorker, September 8, 2010. http://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/barthess-hand.
• Samoyault, Tiphaine, and Jonathan Culler. Barthes: A Biography. Translated by Andrew Brown. 1st edition. Cambridge ; Malden, MA: Polity, 2017.

—Sasha Fast https://forum.zettelkasten.de/profile/Sascha

I love the deeper definition and distinction of self-care here.

Example of someone getting the crap and worries out so that their writing can begin apace. Its sort of like writers' therapy and closely akin to those who talk about morning pages.

Also similar to teachers of young children who encourage their students to get their "wiggles out" so that they can focus on the classwork at hand.

Henry David Thoreau repeated himself frequently in his journals. Damion Searls who edited an edition of his journals suggested that some of this repetition was for the beauty and pleasure of the act, but that in many examples his repetition was an act of drafting, revising, and constructing.

Scott Scheper has recommended finding the place in one's zettelkasten where one wants to install a card before writing it out. I believe (check this) that he does this in part to prevent one from repeating themselves, but one could use the opportunity and the new context that brings them to an idea again to rewrite or rework and expand on their ideas while they're so inspired.

Thoreau's repetition may have also served the idea of spaced repetition: reminding him of his thoughts as he also revised them. We'll need examples of this through his writing to support such a claim. As the editor of this volume indicates that he removed some of the repetition, it may be better to go back to original sources than to look for these examples here.

(This last paragraph on repetition was inspired by attempting to type a tag for repetition and seeing "spaced repetition" pop up. This is an example in my own writing practice where the serendipity of a previously tagged word auto-populating/auto-completing in my interface helps to trigger new thoughts and ideas from a combinatorial creativity perspective.)

!!!!

Henry David Thoreau from 1852

Is this part of the generative (and sometimes frustrating) part of journaling?

In general, this article seems rather utilitarian in its understanding of journaling. But I don't journal regularly so maybe I'm not one to talk.

https://borretti.me/article/unbundling-tools-for-thought

He covers much of what I observe in the zettelkasten overreach article.

Missing is any discussion of exactly what problem he's trying to solve other than perhaps, I want to solve them all and have a personal log of everything I've ever done.

Perhaps worth reviewing again to pull out specifics, but I just don't have the bandwidth today.

The "productivity" tone of the article made it pretty hard to read (as happens with me with all the "productivity" literature that doesn't account for structural imbalances that require productivity or made some populations more "productive" than others). But here passing from it to reflectivity conveyed the possible real value of interstitial journaling

Insight comes from doing.

In addition to an extensive note collection, Paxson kept a separate diary, indicating a different practicing in a different form.

I love this practice and may have been doing it wrong. Pluswhich, I no longer GO to the office (unless walking down the stairs is that). But mostly, I've made it too routine. More doodling is in order!

Teachers can model their own reading and annotating practices for students, but this can be expanded when using social annotation. This will allow students to show each other a wider variety of potential note taking and annotation strategies which help to reinforce the teacher's own modeling. This can be useful modelling of a practice in public which has historically been done privately.

By featuring notes which might be reused for papers or developing later research, teachers can also feature the portions of the note taking process which can be reused for developing new ideas. How might annotations within a text be linked to each other outside of the particular flow of the paper? Might there have been different orderings for the arguments that may have been clearer?

What ideas in the broader class might the ideas within a particular text be linked to? What ideas outside of the class can be linked to those found within the text?

In less experienced groups, teachers might occasionally call out individual annotations in discussion to ask the group for what purposes a student might have annotated specific portions to highlight the various methods and reasons.

What are the list of particular note types here? - Paraphrasing segments to self-test for understanding - Creation of spaced repetition type notes for memorizing definitions and facts - Conversations with the text/original author and expansion of the ideas - Questioning the original text, do we agree/disagree? - Linking ideas from the text into one's broader knowledge base - Highlighting quotes for later reuse - others??

Link to - double-entry journaling in Bruce Ballenger<br /> - types of questions one might ask within a text, Ballenger again

11 James W. Pennebaker, “Writing about Emotional Experiences as a Therapeutic Process,” Psychological Science 8, no. 3 (May 1997), 162–66

Did they mention any pedagogical effects in this work?

How does this relate to the ability to release thoughts from working memory because they're written down and we don't need to spend time and effort trying to remember them? What are the references for this work? I suspect I've got them linked around somewhere...

What other papers/work cover these intersections?

https://nesslabs.com/interstitial-journaling

It builds on many of these traditions, but there is a rather sizeable movement in the physical world as well as lots online of sketchnotes which might fit the bill for you Roy.

The canonical book/textbook for the space seems to be Sketchnote Handbook, The: the illustrated guide to visual note taking by Mike Rohde.

For a solid overview of the idea in about 30 minutes, I found this to be a useful video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=evLCAYlx4Kw

https://briansunter.com/blog/five-minute-journal/

Lists of prompts for writing/journaling:

• 365 Thought Provoking Questions
• 87 Self-Reflection Questions for Introspection
• 200 Icebreaker Questions
• 237 Icebreaker Questions to Try with your Team
• 36 Questions that Lead to Love
• 119 Journal Prompts
• 120 Questions to Ask Yourself

For a potential template:

• # Morning Questions
  • [[Morning Questions]] #daily
    • [[What Am I Grateful for?]]
    • [[What Would Make Today Great?]]
    • [[What Am I Worried About?]]
    • [[What Am I Thinking of?]]
• # Evening Questions
  • [[Evening Questions]] #daily
    • [[How Am I feeling?]]
    • [[What's Something Good That Happened Today?]]
    • [[What Did I Do Well?]]
    • [[What Could I Have Done Better?]]

Among the Nandi an occupational definition of time evolved covering not only each hour but half hours of the day.

This reminds me of hearing attorneys journaling their day down to 7 1/2 minute increments for billing their clients.

But based on science and with computers, we're now able to discriminate things down to the time it takes atoms to vibrate and we can date and timestamp things in our worklives to the nth degree. Even this post will have a timestamp on it down to the thousandth of a second.

This is certainly what is happening in the commonplace book tradition and even more explicitly in the zettelkasten tradition.

What other methods of offloading exist besides writing and speaking? Hand gestures? Dance? What hidden modalities of offloading might indigenous societies use that Western culture might not be cognizant of?

Often journaling or writing in a diary is a often a means of offloading the psychological cruft of one's day to be able to start afresh.

This is some of the philosophy behind creating so-called "morning pages".

https://nesslabs.com/plus-minus-next

The big benefit of this is that it tacitly gets you focused on planning the next thing instead of dwelling on the past.

The basic prescription of plus, minus, next journaling.

I generally take this approach, but it can be useful to compartmentalize things.

I've heard that keeping a journal can also be helpful for sorting out and expanding on emotions. This is assuredly related. More often it's framed from the perspective of getting things out rather than working them out.

This could be useful research to read.

Prompts for journaling.

Verbalizing your feelings and thoughts after meditation is very important in helping ourselves observe our thoughts and feeling.

This verbalizing can be done out loud or through journaling