Artyom Bologov on Nostr: thanks for this elaborate comment, I really value it! > I haven't dabbled in the math ...

thanks for this elaborate comment, I really value it!

> I haven't dabbled in the math and shorthand stuff, but did switch to analogue for a while, doing a Zettelkasten-like system of my own, using folded A4 paper, with IDs, thread chaining, indexes, linking, etc. A pencil and a ruler plus the paper were all the tools I used. I used it for journaling, writing, keeping lists of books, writing reviews and notes, task management, indexing my collections of psychical objects, and other assorted uses.

That’s a lot! Much more than I currently maintain even digitally, but I see how that might emerge.

> My verdict is: analogue has definitely been more productive than digital for me. It is slower in every way, so /speed/ is not how it did it. It was more through /focus/, friction making switching away from things more expensive, more accurate estimation and prioritization of tasks, and some kind of psychological effect from the meditative effect of preparing the documents, lining the paper manually, and drawing some flourish and some attempts at calligraphy in the titles; having beauty and care imbued into the work; craftsmanship of sorts.

I see. That ties into the “AI”-generated code discourse too: We don’t need to barf code out fast. We need better code applied in necessary points.

> I tried it even on other people, for example helping my wife with a long-term project by dedicating a paper to record her achievements, writing them down very carefully and slowly, with some ornaments around the paper, etc. It had a very visible effect on her excitement and dedication to get to her goals, and she was always coming back to ask me to write down the next thing she's proud of. I don't think this effect would be achieved by writing a bullet list in a plain text file.

Aesthetics are important indeed! I’m not the visual type of person, so I want to try paper information management because of persistence and intentionality. But beauty is there for sure, human-made and home-grown!

> The negatives of analogue are overblown usually. Most governments ran on paper machines, but too many salesmen wanted to sell us the "Digital Transformation" the past few decades.

Yes! I keep being surprised at Armenian government jumping on hype trains and destroying systems that worked for decades, all to digitalize and restrict the possibilities of these. We lose humanity and redundancy in that.

> Search is not a big issue, because you can have an index, and write keywords in it [...] Hyper-linking does not require a digital tool; you can have IDs and use them as links, and finding the right document can be fast if you have a good ID schema to sort your documents by. Even copy-paste works in analogue if you really want, by... you know, copying with a printer, and then pasting with some glue. Or just link using IDs.

This linking part feels really hard. Especially given that my thoughts are extremely unstructured and domain-permeating. Thus resistant against indexing approaches. But I think that keyword indexing might work there!

> I use simple nylon plastic sleeves as folders, give folders IDs too, and link to them from an index page that explains what things are in that folder.

That reminds me of https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/john-lockes-method-for-common-place-books-1685. I long wanted to make a Commonplace book with such kind of smart indexing, but had no use-case for it. Your analogue adventures fill me with determination to finally use one!

> For example, it takes me a few minutes to search online maps to make a trip plan to where I wanted to go, but since I'm using analogue instead of digital (I got rid of my phone completely too, by the way) I had to write the directions down on a paper and take it with me, as I couldn't access them on demand whenever I needed them otherwise. Well, not for long, because my brain suddenly started remembering the roads for next time

I have the same effect, just looking at a map once and then trying to not look it up on every crossroad. Helps in exercising memory. So yeah, I get that!

> I was just remembering the phone number off the top of my head. Much faster than searching any digital tool :D

Oh, that sounds extremely hard to achieve, ahah

> After a year or so, I went back to my digital systems to see if the lessons I learned can be helpful there. [...] The results so far, around 3 months in, are not very good.

That’s unfortunate. Being a digital kid, I really like optimizing my workflows. But now that I want to try out the paper life, I might come to the same conclusions 😢

> I recommend the book Paper Machines by Jacques Derrida, which I found very interesting (though I haven't finished the entire book yet).

Oh, will read it. Sounds exactly like my kind of Critical Science reading!