Category: Book Club

  • Bob Doto on Note-Taking – A No-Nonsense Guide to Writing with Purpose

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    Next month the book club is reading Think Again by Adam Grant Join the book club to get all the content in your inbox. While the most famous book about starting a Zettelkasten may be How to Take Smart Notes it’s not necessarily the best book on the topic. Valuable entries have come from Dan

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  • Good Notes Take Discipline – Not Magic

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    So far as we’ve looked at A System for Writing we’ve talked about words being scary, taking more time to process your notes, and exposed the “writing is easy” lie that gurus try to pass off. What we haven’t covered is what I think it takes to have a good note system. Not Magic I’ve

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  • Guru’s Lie – Writing Isn’t Easy, and That’s the Point

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    It will not literally speak to you. But visible areas of increased connectivity within the slip box, what Sonke Ahrens calls “clusters” can guide you towards ideas ready for expression. – A System for Writing Pg 111 This is one of the big misconceptions with a Zettelkasten/PKM system, it will do the writing for you.

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  • You Don’t Need More Notes—You Need More Time with Them

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    In chapter 4 of A System for Writing Doto covers all the work that goes into connecting notes, and to many I’m sure it feels daunting. He talks about stretching the meanings of notes when you’re starting because you don’t have many notes yet and you need to start making connections. My first thought when

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  • Words are the Edge of Fear

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    There’s a lot at stake when putting thoughts into words. Words that remain in our head are free to exist independent of how they’re used by other people. Once we attempt to put our ideas on the page, words that previously strutted self-assuredly across our synapses become sheepish and soft-spoken. – A System for Writing

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  • From Chaos to Clarity, Using Systems Thinking to Make Sense of Complexity

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    This review is for the book club. Next month we’re reading A System for Writing by Bob Doto. Check out the future reads and join 500 other book lovers Most of us interact with complex problems daily. If it’s not in your job, look around at the economic systems or political landscape we live within.

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  • What If We Designed Systems to Work for People, Not Just Profits?

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    Reminder, next month we’re reading A System for Writing by Bob Doto. You can find future books here. If you have suggestions I’d love to hear about them. Systems need balance and buffer, but both of these things can be tricky to keep around in the face of a system that appears to be working.

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  • The Hidden Addictions of Our Economic Systems

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    Not everyone recognizes that addiction can appear in larger systems and in other guises — such as the dependence of industry on government subsidy, the reliance of farmers on fertilizers, the addiction of Western economies to cheap oil or weapons manufacturers to government contracts. Thinking in Systems Pg 131 We want our systems to be

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  • Shifting Blame and Taking Responsibility

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    It’s almost irresistible to blame something or someone else, to shift responsibility away from ourselves, and to look for the central knob, the product, the pill, the technical fix that will make the problem go away. Thinking in Systems Pg 4 I love this quote because it relates closely to something I always tell my

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  • Can you do the right thing even when others don’t?

    Can you do the right thing even when others don’t?

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    This is the third book in Ryan Holiday’s series on the four cardinal virtues from stoic philosophy. Courage is Calling covers courage, temperance is covered by Discipline is Destiny and this covers justice. His coming book will cover wisdom. Holiday’s investigation of justice covers three different areas. First he covers what justice means in your

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