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Software can’t think for you

Casey Newton has a great insight about productivity and thinking software.

…software can’t automate your thinking. But I do think it can create the conditions for improved thinking: for making new connections between ideas; for reducing the number of times during the day that your attention flits from one app to the next; and for organizing your reading and making it more useful to you in the future.

This is one of the consistent issues I see when people take up Obsidian or any other note-taking tool. They figure that the tool is magical and simply by opening it and typing out some notes they’ll start to get amazing insights that will rock their world. Given this, my most consistent coaching advice is to make time to work your notes and think. If you don’t make time to do the hard work of thinking and reviewing don’t expect results.

I confess I missed this point from Casey when I read the article first, but Matt pointed it out again.

Use RSS

Cory Doctorow has a plea to use RSS, which is where I read his article. RSS has to tracking, it has no algorithm, unless you choose to use a service that provides one. RSS is available anywhere, I use newsboat synced with feedbin¹. Combine your reading experience with writing for your blog and you’ve got a great source of entertainment and information that’s free from big tech overlords.

Software Rabbit Holes

Nicolas recently wrote about the rabbit hole of BBEdit and while I think it’s a great piece of software, I work primarily on Linux (Fedora) and thus BBEdit isn’t an option for me. I do have similar feelings though for Vim/NeoVim.

After a few false starts² I’ve used Vim for most of my 15 year programming career. I use it with obsidian.nvim to edit many of my Obsidian notes. NeoVim adds a bunch of niceties to Vim, and then adding LazyVim turns it into a full code editing suite.

The very few times I’ve moved to another tool, I’ve come back in a few weeks because there is so much power in Vim that whatever problem I was having causing me to try another tool can be fixed if I put a bit of work in and fix it. Then I have a text editing tool for MacOS, Windows, and Linux that is accessible on a server if I need to work there.

I look forward to another 15 years of going deeper down the whole with Vim.

1. See how I configure Newsboat with Nix Home Manager ↩︎
2. Yes I remember seeing a tutorial that got me to open Vim but never told me how to use :x to save and quit and it took a user group to help me overcome that hurdle. ↩︎