Comment by item007
4 hours ago
I’m with you on “systems don’t guarantee outcomes” — the only reliable commonality is shipping (or at least producing something real) over time.
One thing I did take away from your posts is the distinction between the medium you think in (pen/paper) and an “authoritative knowledge system” that’s the source of truth for your life/work. That framing resonates: capture can be messy and human, but “what is true / what is next” needs a home you trust.
That’s pretty close to what I’m poking at with Concerns: not “optimize PKM”, but “reduce the gap between what you already know and what you actually do next”. The constraint I’m leaning on is forcing a small number of active goals/projects, so the system can’t pretend everything matters — it has to help you commit.
Curious: in your setup, what’s the smallest digital thing you’d accept as the authoritative source of truth (calendar? a single task list? a project index)? And what’s the trigger that turns a note into an action for you?
> what’s the smallest digital thing you’d accept as the authoritative source of truth
The atom of unassailable truth in my system is the calendar event, especially if it's in the calendar managed by my PA, or one of the automatic calendars fed by cal.com. I trust it without question, since it takes a fairly concrete, verifiable event to get something on the calendar e.g. adding my next therapy appointment at the end of my current one.
> And what’s the trigger that turns a note into an action for you?
My notes are all actions insomuch as they must all be digested into my digital note system, todos, or calendar events. If you mean my fledgling Zetelkasten, I don't make actions out of those. I suppose I also have my random list of project ideas and blog ideas that I grab things off when I finally have free time and some energy but not an idea already in my head of what to do.
Question for you: why do both you and several self help gurus I read use the format of "what's the smallest xyz that abc?" Is that some framework someone came up with? Not an attack, I just don't know how to ask that without sounding rude, sorry.