I think of this as seeing the opportunity for learning, which I sometimes miss out on because I take things for granted or I don't connect the dots. I can get better at this by slowing down and by borrowing other people's questions. I've been giving myself more time to write and draw these days. It feels a little weird ignoring the other tasks on my TODO lists that are more clearly defined or that are related to other people's requests, but I like the way this feels.

It's easy for me to come up with all sorts of ideas for things I want to tweak about Emacs. I can get better at this by reading more about what other people are doing and what other capabilities are there.

I can also get better at exploring ideas for non-Emacs topics, like ways to respond to parenting situations and things I can do support the causes I care about. I can expand my toolbox by reading books and blog posts, and depending on the topic, I can also listen to podcasts and videos.

It's useful to bump into things I might not think of looking for. One way to do that would be to save various manuals on my e-ink notebook and phone so that I can read them during quiet moments.

I've added some randomness to shuffle old blog posts and tasks, although browsing through this tends to be low-priority. (I never get to the bottom of my reading/thinking list!)

"On this day" might be interesting too. This is more for fun and serendipity. I used to have it on my blog, and it should be pretty easy to reimplement using 11ty.

I'd like to spend more time thinking about and building on other people's ideas, maybe starting with Emacs and then branching out to other topics.

I also want to get back to reading people's blogs through an RSS reader so that I can get a slightly wider view of people's interests and learn more about non-Emacs things. I've added Feeder to my phone.

I capture a lot of snippets in my Org Mode inbox. I'd like to get better at adding some more context and quick thoughts when I create a note so that it's easier to pick up the idea later on. I do most of this capturing on my phone, so I'm getting the hang of slowing down and adding some more notes.

I also want to get better at actually reviewing and refining those notes. My inbox tends to grow and grow, especially when I get interrupted by an interesting idea. I have some writing/editing time while I keep A+ company during virtual school, so it'll be fun revisiting the notes I stashed.

This is about putting a bunch of related notes together, which I usually do by refiling them. It's probably also related to clustering, which I'll get to in the next post about thinking.

I do most of this collecting on my computer, so I can write a few Emacs functions to make it easier. For example, I have some code to do the opposite of refiling so that while I'm looking at a topic, I can pull in a subtree from somewhere else.

Some buckets collect thoughts for blog posts, some for projects, some just for areas I'm interested in. I feel like I tend to lose track of the buckets that I'm collecting thoughts into–the list of slightly-less-active thoughts, as the active thoughts are easily findable. Maybe this is okay.

I want to get better at going from a microblog post/toot or a quick index-card-type sketch to a longer blog post or sketchnote.

Actually, since my current workflow focuses mostly on blog posts, I think this part is more about contracting: picking out a small thought that I can share right now instead of waiting until I write the rest of it. This idea might also include picking a medium-sized chunk and making it the first post in a series, and the current post is an experiment in doing so. I'm a little hesitant to do so because my brain tends to wander off towards the end of a series, but it might be worth an experiment.

I'll also need some code to make it easier to add links between things in a series, which could be manual (handy for other non-series links too) or possibly something handled on the 11ty side (like How to build a blog series with 11ty/Eleventy).

I can also experiment with spreading posts out by scheduling them as Org tasks. I've theoretically added support for holding back future-dated posts in my 11ty config, but I think managing that on the Org side might be easier for now.

This is linked to learning from others. Boosting what other people have said or thought can be a quick and easy way of learning out loud and enlarging the conversation. I can do more of that through Mastodon toots, rolling them up into my blog. I often add snippets to my config based on the things I come across in Emacs News.

I also like the commentary on blogs like Irreal and would like to grow into things like that.

Over the next little while, I'm looking forward to fleshing out the next sections. Let's see if breaking things up into posts works…

• Thinking: trying; reflecting; developing thoughts; shifting; reviewing; clustering; building on; searching (local, web, exact, approximate); questioning; reframing
• Making: organizing; writing; editing; drawing (sketchnotes, doodles); diagramming; plotting; charts; coding; showing
• Sharing: designing; linking; mapping thoughts; joining the conversation

By doing everything with the clear purpose of writing about it, you will do what you do deliberately.

I like chapter 5's focus on keeping writing in mind. I want to push most things towards writing and drawing (posts, code, whatever; public as much as possible) because it's a good way for me to remember and to learn from others. It's a reminder to not try speeding through my to-do list; it's good to slow down and write about stuff.

I only do what is easy. I only write when I immediately know how to do it. If I falter for a moment, I put the matter aside and do something else.

I always work on different manuscripts at the same time. With this method, to work on different things simultaneously, I never encounter any mental blockages.

During my discretionary time, I usually follow the butterflies of my interest: working on what I feel like working on, moving on to something else when I get stuck. Sometimes I will work on something I have to do because it's got to be done, but those moments are rarer. Amidst all those productivity books that exhort you to focus on a limited number of things, it was nice to know that Luhmann also jumped from interest to interest, that the process of accumulating these notes builds things up into clusters with critical mass, and that these good habits build themselves up through positive feedback loops.

I do all right capturing fleeting notes on my phone, but I want to get better at turning my fleeting notes into literature notes and permanent notes. I'd like to review them more frequently and spend some more time fleshing them out, with the goal of eventually turning more of those things into blog posts and code that I can share as I learn out loud.

I also don't really have a good way of putting topics "near" other topics yet. Categories are a little coarse, but maybe topic maps are a good starting point. It would be nice to have a quick way to put something before/after something else, though.

Writing a paper involves much more than just typing on the keyboard. It also means reading, understanding, reflecting, getting ideas, making connections, distinguishing terms, finding the right words, structuring, organizing, editing, correcting and rewriting.

I wonder if making these distinctions between the subtasks of writing will make it easier for me to break writing down into tiny tasks that can be completed and gotten out of my brain.

I want to get better at connecting ideas to other things I've thought about by linking to blog posts or notes. That might also help me build up thoughts out of smaller chunks, which would be helpful when it comes to working with fragmented thoughts.

Thinking about what's not in the picture is hard, and that kind of critical thinking is something I want to practise more. I can pay attention to the follow-up questions I have so that I can get a sense of where to look for more insights or what to experiment with. Questioning the way something is framed is also good and something I don't do often enough.

For example, I wanted to dig into this quote:

Luhmann’s only real help was a housekeeper who cooked for him and his children during the week, not that extraordinary considering he had to raise three children on his own after his wife died early.

I ended up doing a tiny bit of research on my phone and putting it into Niklas Luhmann's Zettelkasten and life with kids (the kids were in their teens at the time, so they were probably a lot more independent than A+ is at the moment).

• How to Take Smart Notes by Sönke Ahrens (2017) - author's website
• Sketchnote: How to Read a Book - also talks about thinking about the Great Conversation between books
• Sketchnote: How to make a complete map of every thought you think (Lion Kimbro) - pan-subject speeds: fleeting notes; map
• Sketchnote: Write Faster, Write Better – David A. Fryxell - shuffling ideas on index cards feels related to the slipbox