
Andy Matuschak's Notes - telotortium
https://notes.andymatuschak.org/About_these_notes
======
gandalfgeek
Thorough indictment of productivity porn:

[https://notes.andymatuschak.org/zUMFE66dxeweppDvgbNAb5hukXzX...](https://notes.andymatuschak.org/zUMFE66dxeweppDvgbNAb5hukXzXQu8ErVNv)

"People who write extensively about note-writing rarely have a serious context
of use Many bloggers and “life-hackers” have made a full-time job of
suggesting how you should organize your journal, or how you should most
effectively Write about what you read. We should take this advice seriously
insofar as those practices have helped the authors achieve meaningful creative
work: “Better note-taking” misses the point; what matters is “better thinking”

But most people who write about note-taking don’t seem particularly
accomplished in their own fields, whatever those may be. In fact, most such
writers aren’t applying their notes to some exogenous creative problem: their
primary creative work is writing about productivity."

~~~
wenc
I suspect a lot of folks who are into note-taking methods have this mindset
that if only we knew how to take better notes, we'd be able to reason better,
produce better output and become more accomplished. I also suspect we are
cerebral types and have rich inner worlds, so it's only natural that we think
that more and better analyses will help us understand the world better. Yet,
despite the many tools that we have, many of us only hover just a little above
mediocrity in our accomplishments.

(I'm describing myself in the above paragraph.)

Outside of certain fields like academia and writing, I've observed that
accomplished people tend to focus more on "doing" (including doing the "wrong"
things) rather than constructing a super coherent model of the world. They
rely on rough heuristics and feedback loops to learn, rather than careful
analysis.

I read an article this week "Action Produces Information" [1] that made me
think that maybe the more cerebral among us ought to step outside our mental
models occasionally and actually try to interact with the gritty world and let
reality be our teacher (instead of our models). By interacting with reality,
we actually generate new information.

Quote:

 _Watch any group of entrepreneurs for a long enough period of time, for
instance, and you would notice that the best entrepreneurs aren’t necessarily
the best calibrated Bayesian updaters or expected utility calculators.
Instead, the best entrepreneurs tend to have a mix of bias-to-action and fast
adaptation in response to new information._

It seems to me that better note-taking methods are great for sharpening the
brain (which is a valuable thing in itself), but a bias toward
action/empiricism might be better for sharpening the skills needed to do
meaningful things in the world. They're not mutually exclusive, but given a
finite amount of time, my intuition tells me that putting more weight on the
latter will tend to have a higher payoff.

[1] [https://commoncog.com/blog/action-produces-
information/](https://commoncog.com/blog/action-produces-information/)

~~~
meheleventyone
I also think people get stuck in optimising their process because it’s easy to
see, easy to change and makes you feel productive. Versus most creativity
which is very woolly and hard to make tangible. Both can be approached by
doing and empirically evaluated though. For me at least it’s more about
biasing towards tackling the actual problem or challenge in front of you
rather than polishing tools. Note taking in particular should be pragmatic and
straightforward and I’m amazed at the complexity people can put into it.

------
joaorico
Right now, Andy is perhaps the most sophisticated thinker in this space
sharing his insights and prototypes (meta-knowledge work, backlinked evergreen
notes, spaced repetition, new UX/UI for these systems, etc). Here's some
additional pointers:

\- Andy livestreamed a demo of him on a typical work session:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DGcs4tyey18](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DGcs4tyey18)

\- this Patreon post explains in greater lenght his OS-level spaced repetition
approach: [https://www.patreon.com/posts/bringing-
ideas-36925173](https://www.patreon.com/posts/bringing-ideas-36925173)

\- Andy is working on a prototype of that system, called Orbit, which might be
available soon: [https://twitter.com/withorbit](https://twitter.com/withorbit)

\- in regards to his specific writing/thinking system, here's a couple more
clarifications:
[https://notes.andymatuschak.org/z4AX7pHAu5uUfmrq4K4zig9x8jmm...](https://notes.andymatuschak.org/z4AX7pHAu5uUfmrq4K4zig9x8jmmF62XgaMXm)
[https://notes.andymatuschak.org/z6f6xgGG4NKjkA5NA1kDd46whJh2...](https://notes.andymatuschak.org/z6f6xgGG4NKjkA5NA1kDd46whJh2Gt5rAmfX)

\- Obsidian has a plug-in which replicates the sliding panes of Andy's notes:
[https://forum.obsidian.md/t/andy-matuschak-
mode-v2-7-updated...](https://forum.obsidian.md/t/andy-matuschak-
mode-v2-7-updated-for-0-7-new-panes/170)

I think the space of graph/backlinked personal notes/knowledge systems is
taking off [1], with many solutions free and open-source. (Of that list, many
have spaced-repetition plug-ins not referenced there.) It will be interesting
to how the field matures in a couple of years.

[1]
[https://www.notion.so/db13644f08144495ad9877f217a161a1?v=ff6...](https://www.notion.so/db13644f08144495ad9877f217a161a1?v=ff6777802811416ba08dc114e0b11837)

~~~
awake
You seem to know a lot about Andy. Do you know which tools he uses to write
his notes and keep track of back links?

~~~
bschne
If you check out the livestream on youtube, you'll see that he does the
writing in Bear (Mac/iOS only app). Presumably there's some custom code to
export everything and build the HTML with backlinks, but as mentioned in the
link posted here, this code is not public anywhere.

~~~
joaorico
He has shared part of his toolkit, namely the exporting and syncing of the
Bear notes, and “link-janitor” for the backlinks [1]. Although I wouldn’t
recommend it in general - it’s a brittle prototype. And right now there are
better tools out there (linked above) many of which appeared in the last few
months.

[1]
[https://www.reddit.com/r/bearapp/comments/enbk65/sharing_a_s...](https://www.reddit.com/r/bearapp/comments/enbk65/sharing_a_script_which_maintains_a_backlinks/)

------
a1pulley
I was in Andy's dorm (house) at Caltech. When I matriculated, I chose
begrudgingly to study a "real" science--physics--instead of what I actually
liked--computer science. It was in no small part thanks to Andy's contagious
and unabashed excitement for CS that I eventually switched over and became a
happy software engineer.

~~~
xvedejas
Great to have such upperclassmen as role models as a student. Doesn't surprise
me that it would have a big effect on what majors students choose. But
sometimes we wonder if too many people take cs at caltech these days just
because it is trendy or just easier? Guess I really Don't know if that's a
"problem" Either, I am happy it worked out for you.

~~~
qwhelan
As yet another housemate of Andy's at Caltech, it is perhaps worth mentioning
that he was also involved in updating Caltech's CS curriculum prior to it
becoming as popular as it is today.

Hard to say how much of the trend is just what happened everywhere, but CS1
being in Python rather than Scheme probably helped a bit.

~~~
grugagag
Was swapping Scheme for Python a good thing though? Scheme is a very good way
to understand the concepts of CS in a more fundamental way. Python can be
learned independently anyway through SICP.

~~~
qwhelan
IIRC, CS1 was a mandatory class for other majors (like MechE) and a course in
Scheme was basically hazing from their perspective.

I forget if Scheme was moved to a later course or made optional.

~~~
andymatuschak
It was moved to a later course, thankfully. I’m a big SICP fan!

(Hi Chris!)

------
edfletcher_t137
>If you had to set one metric to use as a leading indicator for yourself as a
knowledge worker, the best I know might be the number of Evergreen notes
written per day.

Oy.

~~~
branweb
what's the problem with it? Isn't a good metric going to be numeric, kinda of
necessity?...also since these are his personal notes, shouldn't we assume the
"you" there means himself? So who's he keeping outside the gate?

~~~
meheleventyone
I guess the biggest criticism is it promotes quantity over quality. Similar to
counting lines of code or pages of a book written. Although I think it’s safe
to assume in this case there is some implicit notion of minimum quality to
consider a note “written”.

~~~
branweb
ah i see that and yeah after reviewing the concept of evergreen notes, I think
your assumption is a safe one ...though the original post (pre-edit) was
something like "oy using volume of notes written as a gatekeeper for knowledge
work", which seems like a slightly different criticism of the statement.

~~~
meheleventyone
I didn’t see the pre-edit version so did wonder where the gate keeping bit
came from. That sort of uncharitable take is why I’d never put my notes
online. I’d find it extremely stressful.

------
why_only_15
Some of the notes seem to be restricted? e.g. i get an error: unauthorized
when clicking the link "Relationship between evergreen note-writing and
Zettelkasten" on this note:
[https://notes.andymatuschak.org/z2QvtE9w5zs49x7WUeG8Ut1vywHD...](https://notes.andymatuschak.org/z2QvtE9w5zs49x7WUeG8Ut1vywHDLiG2Wkm9p)

~~~
andymatuschak
Ah, sorry; some of them are indeed restricted, but that was just a broken
link. Here's a correct link for that note:
[https://notes.andymatuschak.org/z4AX7pHAu5uUfmrq4K4zig9x8jmm...](https://notes.andymatuschak.org/z4AX7pHAu5uUfmrq4K4zig9x8jmmF62XgaMXm)

------
rpmuller
Andy and Michael Nielsen put together a set of very nice, flashcard-enhanced
introductory lessons for quantum information sciences at
[https://quantum.country/](https://quantum.country/) where they explore some
of the mnemonic techniques that Andy talks about in his notes.

------
xuki
I watched Andy's presentation at one WWDC (probably 2010) and left thinking
"This fella is really something".

~~~
twright
In that same vein, I regularly think about a lightning talk on gestures he
gave at React Conf 2016.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uBYPqb83C7k](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uBYPqb83C7k)

~~~
xuki
Thanks for the link. I can't find the link to the WWDC presentation, but it
was about the introduction of the same multi touch system he talked about in
the talk you mentioned.

------
branweb
Was expecting to bypass this pretty quickly, but this is great! Lots of
interesting ideas about how to gain and use knowledge effectively. Spaced
repetition for habit formation, non-linear reading as the norm, needing a
writing surface to think...good stuff.

------
warunsl
Krystal plugin for TiddlyWiki mimics the sliding panes of notes on Andy's
website. I have been using it for a while and it's been neat.

[https://crazko.github.io/krystal/](https://crazko.github.io/krystal/)

------
gitgud
> _" PS: Many people ask, so I’ll just note here: no, I haven’t made this
> system available for others to use. It’s still an early research
> environment, and Premature scaling can stunt system iteration."_

Damn, looks like an interesting way to browse knowledge... I want it!

~~~
telotortium
[https://notes.azlen.me/g3tibyfv/](https://notes.azlen.me/g3tibyfv/) seems to
be inspired by Andy Matuschak's notes. They have a Github that might implement
this, though there isn't an obvious package to implement this:
[https://github.com/azlen/azlen.me](https://github.com/azlen/azlen.me)

------
waffletower
Andy's functional programming evangelism back in 2015 helped lead me swiftly
down a path away from being a professional Apple ecosystem developer. I am now
a professional Clojurist. Thank you very much Andy.

------
siscia
Speaking of notes, is there some simple knowledge base system for someone that
wants to keep its note in a web accessible place?

~~~
nikivi
I use GitBook. It just takes in markdown files and renders it nicely on the
web.

Scales well with number of notes too. I have over 30,000 lines of markdown
thus far:

[https://github.com/nikitavoloboev/knowledge](https://github.com/nikitavoloboev/knowledge)

~~~
siscia
Yeah I am mostly looking for some place a little more private, so I can store
ssh passwords or other stuff that I don't necessarily want google to index...

~~~
jszymborski
You might not want to store secrets in anything but a secret store/password
manager/application explicitly built for storing secrets.

You can also run DokuWiki locally for notes you wish to keep private, it's
rather easy to do.

------
nicky0
Interesting insight into a mind that works absolutely nothing like mine.

------
082349872349872
> Knowledge work rarely involves deliberate practice

Hacking is playful practice.

------
harry-s
cool ux!

