A Metabolic Workspace

Joan has articulated something I’ve been feeling deeply. I’ve always sucked at the pursuit of Zettelkasten, but felt like I just wasn’t trying hard enough. I’m immediately embracing my own metabolism as I get back to work after a long winter’s nap.

the core idea is simple: information should be treated like food, not furniture. I don’t keep every meal I’ve ever eaten stored in my basement. That’s a disgusting notion. I eat, extract the nutrients, and let the rest go. Ideas have a half-life, and clinging to them past their expiration date actually poisons my ability to think clearly.

I reviewed old notes recently. Can confirm they’ve lost some nutritional value.

you’re not building a Second Brain; you’re building an anxiety management system that happens to look like productivity.

So much of GTD systems are activities masquerading as productivity. I need minimal organization that helps me achieve the results I want.

The note is documentation of a transformation that has already occurred. Deleting the note doesn’t reverse the transformation.

Notes as documentation, not aspiration.

The person who reads a book, thinks hard about it, discusses it with friends, and then forgets most of the details has genuinely engaged with ideas. The person who highlights the same book, exports their highlights to Readwise, auto-syncs them to Notion, and never looks at them again has performed the ritual motions of intellectual work without the substance. One of these folks will grow. The other will grow their database…

“The ritual motions of intellectual work” are some times necessary. Sometimes ritual and routine gets me through a drab season. But I ultimately need actual intellectual work that is making life better for some subset of humans. It’s about human connection, not information accumulation.