Ever since I started following mischa van den burg’s youtube channel (specifically his videos about productivity for developers, i.e his ~6-10 most popular videos), I’ve been on insatiable quest to reinvent my experience as a technology professional.
Although it was overwhelming at the beginning to say the least, my work has paid off in dividends. I have become an increasingly well-rounded software engineer. My understanding of operating systems, Unix principles, vim motions, and much much more have made me fall in love with my field beyond my previously academic infatuation with it.
It is the power to compress, to create, to compound. It is the promise of true “scale” - the hype word of the industry. It is self-agency, the responsibility of healthy cultivation, the craftsmanship of something that is so uniquely myself.
It was inevitable that I would start to read the book which was the original inspiration of Micha: Building a Second Brain: A Proven Method to Organize Your Digital Life and Unlock Your Creative Potential. Here are my takeaways as I read and re-read this insightful text for myself.
- CODE - Collect, Organize, Distil, Express
- A simple model for a sustainable creative process
- the importance of collecting ephemeral inspirations
- all prolific people have a method to their creative madness
- digital transformation and the cloud allow profound upgrades in personal knowledge management
- text search, sync, multimedia
- spend less energy remembering and more energy synthesizing
- friction is killer
- effective templating can reduce the friction between the C and the ODE
- externalizing your thoughts on “paper” can have therapeutic effects on your wellbeing
- taking notes in a PKM system is investing in your future self
Connections:
- The Zen of Python - PEP 20, Tim Peters
- aphorisms about complexity that seem to be highly relatable to this discussion