First, thank you for the feedback!
You made it clear that last time, I skipped the core idea and jumped straight to details.
So I tried to describe the workflow I envision, how the Cortex fits in, and realized it could easily take an entire book o_O!
I'm nowhere near even a complete "table of contents" yet, but we have to start with something. We will sketch it first and then iterate thru details in the next posts.
The elephant in the room
In Values and Vision, I tried to describe "what makes Cortex stand apart" and "who could use it." Naturally, as I focus on building, the differences, nuances, and yet-unfinished parts came to mind first.
But I missed the elephant in the room, skipping parts that felt "solved" or just too obvious to me. Indeed, the common theme among responses was, "OK, sounds cool, but how does it feel? What exactly would change to me if I'm not using Evernote or Roam or whatever already?"
You're absolutely right. Tools aren't magic, and that's especially true of tools for thought. They can enhance your senses, automate or streamline repeating tasks, enable workflows previously impossible, but they can't replace your workflow.
Breaking down the Workflow
Understanding the workflow is as important as the tool itself.
Maybe even more important.
We're trying to optimize it, and you can't change what you can't measure.
At the same time, it's hard. Apart from deadlines or checklists, it's completely invisible to you—because you're used to the way you live and work.
Let's start with the very-very-very big picture, and try to break it to manageable parts first. It might look abstract at this point, but bear with me, this is the way to connect tons of diverse points you'll see below.
To have at least some context, let's take some existing tools and try to put them into some common frame of reference, so we'd get to a shared vocabulary faster.
Exploration vs. Execution
It's tempting to start talking about knowledge, and we'll get there, but right now, it's too vague. I like to think in terms of entropy.
Entropy increases when you get news, ideas, experiments, conclusions, new people, data, etc. When you fill a blank sheet of paper with an essay, picture, or code. Here, tools that are too rigid or too "smart" will often interfere with what you're trying to do.
Entropy decreases when you summarize, generalize, aggregate data, discover patterns, and split the signal from noise. When you focus, proofread your drafts, refactor the code, or make a decision (an ultimate distillation, sometimes up to 1 bit of information). Unlike the exploration zone, guard rails streamline and structure the process, keeping it from turning into an unmanageable mess.
Sensing vs. Acting
Relaxed thinking is about slow, deep (or wide) processes and moods. To get the big picture, to plan, connect the dots, build a strategy, or view things in context. That's also the "Zone," which can take hours to enter and be destroyed in minutes with a poorly timed phone call.
Sometimes acting immediately, fast is important to knowledge work as well. You don't get an hour to think about how to answer during the meeting, to capture what's happening right now in the field or with your experiment, etc.
Interestingly, this part has already been covered by tools surprisingly well (apart from the integration between them), by search engines and all kinds of recorders and journals. Maybe because it’s the most streamlined and transactional one.
Moving between zones
While the split above is in no way comprehensive, it already does raise a lot of questions.
There are no clear boundaries between the zones, but they're still clearly distinct from many perspectives—different emotions, different contexts and tools
At the same time, no quadrant is self-sufficient. Regardless of topic, industry, skill, role, or seniority level, you move between quadrants having to keep the context, memories, and direct your attention to what matters to you. I think this is where at least half of the "Unify All The Things" ideas originate—often killing the distinction between zones in the process :)
Flows (contexts? streams?)
There's an age-old meme of "tag filesystems" among ex-USSR engineers that a “TagFS” (filesystem organizing files with tags, not folders) would be enough to organize everything.
This approach never took off for two fundamental reasons:
a) Hierarchy of tags is called an ontology, and there's no such thing as "universal upper ontology" in philosophy, and infinitely many equivalent algebras in math.
b) Life is not static, the focus is not static, and I'd argue the learning itself is about making new tags that reflect perspectives you just learned.
So the most we can do is to organize incoming flows of information into a network of smaller flows, progressively closer and closer to actual projects and tasks we encounter; and making maintenance of this network require as least effort as possible.
Tools and Environment
At this point I'm getting exhausted, LOL, so let’s keep the rest as just an outline :) I'm sure I will rewrite, reshape, and re-fit it dozens of times anyway.
Attention and Retention
Focusing attention (moving to the Focus zone)
Facilitating retention (and finding things)
Backlinks, Filters, Aggregates
Moving to serendipity? (aka "systematically lucky")
Pools of ideas, methods, and solutions
Engaging background thinking
Causes, Facts, and Opinions
Temporality. Bitemporality. Causality. (Rhythms? Multitemporality?)
How to handle inconsistent, incomplete, untrusted, subjective and rapidly-changing information
How to organize experiments, facts, and projects
Less fancy, still important things
Disarming Frustrations
Flow is a balance between boredom and fear
How to maintain it (incl. GTD and stuff)
Breaking down large tasks
Stress Response and Feedback
Remembering where you left off (Restoring Context)
Big Picture is Too Complicated
How to present my work-in-progress
Resources, Time and Planning
(Tons of ideas on how to express Tàijíquán in words here. But really, get yourself a teacher and see for yourself)
Design your workflow and tools for the worst case—tired, distracted, sleepy, and annoyed you.
Agility is impossible without reserves and resilience. What this means for tools.
Balance, loops, decisions, and turning points.
Habits, Routines, and Agility
Training and re-training yourself.
Rapid adaptation, briefs, debriefs. Switching contexts. Active Listening. Listening while Acting.
Maintaining skills.
Action and Reflection
Meta-positions. Observing yourself. Observing the discussion. Observing processes.
Tracking slow-changing processes
Tasks, Projects, and Zones
Planning for finite games. Planning for infinite games. Keeping an eye on the zones.
Team Knowledge Management
Oops. Completely forgot this one. A huge area in itself. Let's have at least a couple bullet points here.
Shared Vocabulary. Evolving Vocabulary.
Communication Styles - push\pull, sync\async, topdown\lateral.
Software Development specific:
Code and issue documentation
Architecture is Culture is Team Structure
Information Security
Complexity is an enemy of security
Balancing security and productivity
Speed vs. security
Need-to-know
Undiscovered Topics
Things that belong here but which I have no ideas for (or at least I think I have no ideas) yet, much less how to optimize them with tools.
Storytelling and persuasion
Rapid situational awareness
How to stop and release aka dealing with perfectionism
Attraction and Distraction (and values, I guess)
Managing Energy
(last one is more of a personal nitpick, I can do 72-hour-long marathons and then break down completely exhausted. Still an area to explore. Related to “attraction and distraction,” as well.)
Niche and Advanced topics
(really you'd get much more by getting basics right first, but hey, it won't hurt if we'd have some fancy-shiny looking stuff too)
Automating Exploration
Automating Invention
Practical TRIZ
Automating Triage
Debugging
software, hardware, and people :)
Distracted Programmer
There really are areas that require long, uninterrupted periods of time.
But if it's *just* distractions (not depression, anxiety or whatever), then a lot of them can be covered surprisingly well from the technical side.
Architecture, source control, deployment, all that stuff.
Wrapping up
Last time, I started with differences and nuances. This time, it's an attempt to sketch the big picture we're trying to augment.
Buuut I realize the information density closer to the end of the outline is insane %))
I don't have much hope you've read all of this, really)
Still, I see Cortex connecting many small parts together, being a seamless complement to your mind, and empowering your workflow, whatever it would be.
See you next time!