Considering how to have ideas

My need is to self-actualise.
I value learning, connection and growth.

I read, to have new ideas.
I write, to clarify those ideas and learn what I don’t know.

And often (as now) I get stuck on “which tool would be perfect for this”.

I need a system that provides feedback and presents new ideas. Especially if I gaze at my thoughts in a new context.

Roam is where it’s at right now.

It has these features, that I want:

• There is power in the connections between ideas, and that has to become a first-class citizen in the second-brain.
• Enabling serendipity, through linking and showing you what could be connected.

It’s the shiny new tool that is distracting me from doing the reading I want, and the writing I want.

Today, I am letting go of the shiny new toy and going back to the simplest thing that could possibly work: A WikiWord system that -

• Has #hashtags for contexts I want to index on
• Has WikiWord ideas as single files
• Pulled together with a brain.md file

This is an idea from Pragmatic Thinking and Learning that I didn’t quite appreciate until earlier this year.

I’ll grow this brain.md of mine over time. It may want to migrate to Roam someday.

This is what I like about brain.md:

• As with the index cards I carry around, one file being one idea feels good
• It allows for refactoring (moving around) of ideas over time
• Having #tags may give me a little bit of serendipity
• It’s portable, in all the senses of that word
• It’s importable, into shiny-new-toy in the future

Also this: It allows me to get on with it, and read and write more.

PS For the geeks (especially Emacs geeks), you can implement your own WikiWord system in 10 lines.