Comment by nicbou
8 hours ago
At some point, organisation can become a form of procrastination. Building a second brain is not Doing The Thing.[0]
A note is not an intention. It commits to memory, not to action. I really don't care about having a whole searchable, tagged database; I hardly ever look at those notes again.
At work I have topic-based Markdown notes. Sometimes I collect information about a topic for a few weeks or months, and eventually turn it into a proper guide (making guides is my job).
I also LOVE paper notebooks, because they become a beautiful timeline of sketches, to-do lists, thoughts and plans. When I finish a notebook, I scan it then throw it in a drawer.
I also use Obsidian daily notes to journal, mostly because it's easier to open an app than to write in a notebook. I don't do anything special with those notes, unless I'm trying to "debug" something happening in my life.
[0] https://strangestloop.io/essays/things-that-arent-doing-the-...
Me too, I already exported my data from all platforms including HN and indexed them in a RAG database but I don't feel like using them much. They are past oriented and I need present oriented stuff. With LLMs I noticed I don't like when they use chat history search or memory functions, it makes them fall into a rut and become less creative.
I even got to a point where I made an "anti-memory system" - a MCP tool that just calls a model without context from the full conversation or past conversations, to get a fresh perspective. And I instruct the host model to reveal only partially the information we discussed, explaining that creativity is sparked when LLMs get to see not too much, not too little - like a sexy dress.
"anti-memory system" Cool~！
When it comes to stimulating AI creativity, it may indeed be better to impose fewer constraints. However, in most scenarios, problems are likely still solved through simple information aggregation, refinement, analysis, and planning, right?
+1 to “organization as procrastination”. I’m trying to avoid making the archive more “beautiful” and instead make it more actionable.
It seems you're more accustomed to treating stored information as memories rather than a knowledge base. That's perfectly fine. However, I personally believe that the progress humans and AI have made to reach our current stage likely stems largely from the accumulation of knowledge, combined with the evolution driven by new challenges!