---
in:
  - "[[Questions]]"
related:
  - "[[2023-02-13]]"
created: 2023-11-26
---
 


Clean this up at some point

# What is holding back linked notes (if anything)
from 2022-12-23, dictated on Drafts
One of the reasons I got into linked notes was to feel clarity, groundedness a sense of calm because my thoughts seemed scattered I'm not alone in this reason it's a very popular one. Especially just saying my thoughts feel scattered. But it's the flipside of that that I hear less frequently. The solution that is. And that is , if your thoughts feel scattered think of that, like thoughts being blown in the wind, it's chaotic. So what's the opposite of that? It's to feel grounded, the ground, the earth connection to something solid, and tangible. The more information out there, the more we have a tendency to have scattered moments, and therefore the rising need to be able to ground our thoughts reliably as needed.

Having connected thoughts, linked thoughts, is a powerful way to ground our own thinking in a reliable way. But there are two common problems. The first is our desire for control over her our mental state. The second is going to atomic in the size of the idea that's being grounded, saved.

Let's talk a bit about that first issue because it's huge. Colon, our desire to have a sense of control. Again the world, especially in today's information and digital ages, means that quite often we will find our thoughts have become too turbulent, too scattered. to combat that we desire a sense of control. It doesn't matter if it's true control, or false control, we desire some sense of control. It's why, when we feel scattered in our mental thoughts, it feels surprisingly great to clean up a physical part of our space, like our desk, or our bedroom, or the kitchen floor. That physical cleaning is a way to immediately see an impact that we've had, that's tangible, that's visible, that's clear, and that action and result gives us back a sense of control. Little moments like that go along way. But it doesn't go all the way, and that's where we need to figure out how to get a handle on our non-physical thoughts. So we turn to the keyboard and start typing we turned to the screen, and we start writing sentences or making other digital connections, and it feels good and because we now use something outside of our brain not to clean the floors, but the clean our mental space we want to keep going. So the trap is to keep organizing, to keep structuring to keep going. And these sessions often happen, and very concentrated surges of enthusiasm. This is the moment where we don't say out loud, but we are thinking internally "oh boy, I am creating the perfect system right now, and it is going to be awesome, it's totally worth putting off all the other things I wanted to do today"and we keep structuring this perfect system. And, of course, as long as were honest with ourselves, that multi hour, enthusiastic sprint to create a perfect system never lasts. And a month later, we're not using it, and we might even be a little sheepish at even looking at it. But that doesn't mean that we won't be able to rationalize it to ourselves and others saying "well I'm not using it, but it was totally helpful for me to organize my thoughts. "and there is a sliver of truth in that rationalization, but it often becomes an addictive and vicious cycle. It goes like this we want to do something, and we have things we want to accomplish, we start working on them, life happens, there are multiple inputs, we get distracted, I thought, start to feel scattered, and then we hit this mental squeeze point. so what do we do, we try again to organize our digital thoughts, which is fine, except for that moment, where we just keep organizing, and organizing, and organizing, and again, we don't say it out loud but we're thinking "I'm making the perfect system "only two avoid actually doing the things we wanted to do. so that's one where our desire for a sense of control, can lead to a vicious cycle of over, organizing and over structuring, which provides a nice coping mechanism for that day, but but if that becomes a habit, instead of feeling scattered, feeling the mental squeeze point, and masterfully, re-grounding ourselves, effectively, organizing our thoughts, and then, using that sense of control to actually do the things we want to do,, well, then we get in trouble. so one of the big pitfalls with knowledge management is trying to always re-organize everything at the first moment of mental anxiousness. Which I got to be honest mental anxiousness is going to happen in the digital age we live in, so it is imperative that we develop healthy mechanisms to ground our thinking in effective sustainable ways that allow us to feel good about where we're at. We are in our headspace, so that then we can continue doing the stuff that we actually want to do.

Now, the other thing that happens with linking notes together is the idea of making ideas atomic. Making them really small because when you do that, it makes them easy to link to other ideas and you have a very clear sense of how one idea is linked to another idea. But first, why is this even desirable? Well, the thinking goes that the clear and more specific links you make the clear the connection. And there is truth to that. I mean we could look at examples of this in action, but it starts to get a little nerdy and technical. So for now take it on faith that there is some advantage to having clear concise, and generally smaller notes, linking to other clear, concise generally smaller notes. But the problem is when people become dogmatic about making atomic notes. So instead of having 100 normal size notes, they might have 1000 tiny notes. And the problem is they run the risk of scattering their thoughts on the other extreme of things. So instead of feeling scattered because of the onslaught of noise in the digital age, the scattered feeling is from over splicing and splitting and fragmenting your own ideas so much so that it requires you several clicks clicking from one tiny note to another tiny note to another tiny note just to get the jest of an idea. So the key is just to write write write and link when it makes sense. And when you want to link to something you wrote in a really long note, then you'll start to intuitively realize that oh wait, I don't want to link to the whole note because it's actually talking about five entirely different subjects, so I should maybe think about splitting that note into another note so I can link directly to the subject I want to link to.