On starting a blog as note taking practice

All of my life I have kept all kinds of journals. Some of them have burned on house fires (not joking), some of them I have ripped apart myself. Recently, however, I´ve seen the benefits of keeping what Simon Willison frames as a “laboratory notebook¨ to maximize programming productivity in his 2022 DjangoCon Us talk.

Willison suggests that the key of being productive is not having to remember anything, which rings particularly true to me. I have a number of scattered org-files and handmade notes on programming that I constantly go back to. I have tried various kind of frameworks. Most recently, a combination of digital Zettlekasten and bullet journaling. However, I have always felt something was lacking.

I have not reached a way to ‘properly’ organize my notes. Perhaps the methodology has been flawed. Perhaps the intent and caring behind each note has not been the best. I think keeping a blgog will help in the practice of note taking. In making the note really ‘pop’, so to speak.

Something like this comes to mind:

It is impossible to think without writing; at least it is impossible in any sophisticated or networked (anschlußfähig) fashion. Niklas Luhmann, “Communicating with Slip Boxes”