Stop Procrastinating With Note-Taking Apps Like Obsidian, Roam, Logseq

there are people out there who don't even know what personal Knowledge Management means and they're doing work that you want to do better than you because they're not procrastinating and they're not trying to get things perfect and all optimized first so personal Knowledge Management is a term that's kind of blown up over the last few years with tools like obsidian Rome log sick notion and a bunch of others this idea that you can link for together that you can take notes in a way that's not just standard Word documents or you know pen and paper but actually build a second brain so to speak for some it's been an incredible opportunity to speed up their workflow and to get more work done and be more effective at what they do but for many it's just resulted in another way to procrastinate but it's a sophisticated form of procrastination it's not obvious see obvious procrastination is things that we know we shouldn't be doing watching Netflix when we should be working on that essay that there's a close deadline for or playing video games when we should be emailing the client that we need to follow up with this type of procrastination doesn't feel good we usually feel guilty when we're engaging in it but sophisticated procrastination is different it's activity that makes us feel smart it makes us feel like we're making progress but we're not some examples of sophisticated procrastination include things like overly complex planning Beyond what's necessary instead of actually just starting what you need to do endlessly researching reading books Beyond what's necessary or talking to people about your ideas about your plans without ever really taking action these are all things that make us feel like we're making progress but we're not and in that category for a lot of people is personal Knowledge Management two here's why first of all personal Knowledge Management makes you feel smart the first time I use drone research and played around with bi-directional linking I thought I'd found the meaning to life I thought this will change everything and as I added notes and added these bi-directional links between turns and Concepts and words I felt like a genius I even looked down upon people who are still using peasant tools like Evernote and Apple notes that didn't have this functionality but it didn't take me long to realize that I actually wasn't doing better work and that just because I felt smart it didn't mean I was being smart or becoming smarter the takeaway here before we move on is that creating complex systems for note-taking makes you feel smart feeling smart is a good feeling but just because it's a good feeling it doesn't mean that we're doing good work or even doing work at all now the other reason why personal Knowledge Management again for many people not everyone I'm not saying personal Knowledge Management is bad I'm just saying for most people they don't use it properly another reason why it's a sophisticated form of procrastination is because it's chasing the elusive what do I mean by this so many personal Knowledge Management addicts are on a hamster wheel they're chasing something that they'll never reach they think that if they just optimize a little more make a few tweaks to their system or download that new note taken app that has these fancy new features that everything will finally click and they'll experience superhuman productivity but this never happens the click that they're chasing and it might be what you're chasing doesn't exist it's Elusive and it doesn't exist because there's no perfect system and also doing good work almost always involves uncertainty frustration confusion and disorganization trying to eliminate these elements is futile and it's a robust exercise and procrastination you need to learn and you need to know how to make progress despite the mess now another reason why personal Knowledge Management is a form of procrastination is What's called the collector's Galaxy so collecting notes bookmarks PDFs highlights and impulse buying Kindle books doesn't make us more effective it doesn't make you more effective it doesn't help you do better work and it doesn't move you towards productive outcomes it's only when you use that information in a way to tangibly produce something whether it's a book an article a YouTube video or something else entirely and there's a good quote from Sasha at zitocarston.de and he writes about this there's a tendency in all of us to gather useful stuff and feel good about it to collect is a reward in itself as knowledge workers we're inclined to look for the next groundbreaking thought for intellectual stimulation we pile up promising books and articles and we store half the internet as bookmarks just so we get the feeling of being on The Cutting Edge that feeling of being on The Cutting Edge means nothing it means nothing if you're not actually producing Cutting Edge work as a result of your note-taking efforts so we've established that personal Knowledge Management as a form of procrastination it's a very sophisticated one so how do we both recognize that a we're in this form of procrastination because a lot of people don't realize what they're doing and secondly how do we get ourselves out of it well we need to start by understanding that personal Knowledge Management is not work it is not work and it's also not a prerequisite to work and if you believe that it is then you're going to run into issues you can argue that personal Knowledge Management or note-taking is work right but it will be more beneficial to you if you don't and that if you categorize it as non-work even if technically it is when you treat personal Knowledge Management as work you give it free running to take up as much of your schedule as possible you can procrastinate and absolve yourself of all guilt because at the end of the day you're doing work but when you treat it as non-work you intentionally limit it you realize that at age your work but at the end of the day it is not the work that matters most for example the person who wants to build muscle knows that the work that matters most is getting to the gym lifting weights and eating well finding an optimal workout routine May Aid the progress but it is not the work that matters alone it's not going to do anything likewise the aspiring an author who wants to write a book knows that the work that matters most is right in every day putting in that work putting words on paper note taking research you know planning is going to Aid in that process but it's not the work that matters ultimately it's not the work that matters most it's just an aid and so you shouldn't avoid personal Knowledge Management but you need to understand that it is an aid to the work that you're ultimately trying to do instead of something in and of itself the writer who has an established note-taking and research process will be far more effective than the writer who doesn't but the consistent writer who doesn't have any complicated form of personal Knowledge Management System will absolutely crush the writer who can't sit down and do the work because they keep procrastinating taking notes to bolster this you have to understand that personal Knowledge Management is not a prerequisite to doing good work it's only an aid Knowledge Management is beneficial putting this video together without existing notes that I've put in obsidian and structured it all or it would take twice as long and it wouldn't be as good but there are some things that you can only learn by doing the person who's writing an article or an essay uncovers insights while they're writing it things that come into their head that wouldn't have come into the head if they were just taking notes the entrepreneur who's building a business comes across Solutions and ideas that he couldn't come across during the planning phase but it can only come through action and so if you view personal Knowledge Management as a prerequisite to doing good work even on a subconscious level then you'll spend all your time theorizing thinking and planning without ever doing it now I know what you're thinking well No One Believes that it's a prerequisites are doing good work and you're right no one's going to say that no one's going to admit to that but the thing is people act like it is a prerequisite now before we get to the five actionable principles I want to share two traps that people fall into when it comes to personal Knowledge Management the first is what I call the optimization procrastination trap many people fall in to this track they have a misguided desire to create the perfect system and this manifests itself in two ways first of all they constantly switch to new tools they download the new app they chase shiny objects and they think that some new software that's just come out or some features that have been released are going to fundamentally fix everything and change everything for them which is a fallacy and it's not going to happen and the second way it manifests itself is in constant optimization beyond the point of necessity right beyond the point of diminishing returns so they might use something like motion or obsidian and they find themselves constantly making tweaks to their system watching YouTube tutorials on how to do things a certain way or do things in a more complex way that feels better to them and makes them feel smart but doesn't help them do better work the truth is you will never have the perfect system every software every note taking app has good features and flaws and there'll always be another app that does something better than your app but also has other drawbacks the mental switch you need to make here is that if you suffer from this optimization procrastination trap then settle in for good enough is one of the best things you can do for your productivity and your work output because the person who gets their system to good enough ends up doing real work and improves their craft much sooner and faster than the person who's endlessly optimizing this system trying to get it perfect an example of this is a good friend of mine who's an entrepreneur he scaled his business extremely quickly he uses this messy combination of Evernote and Microsoft Word docs that when I see it it makes me cringe because it looks so messy and disorganized but he crushes it and he does the work and I have another friend who just uses pen and paper like they don't have any digital note-taking system at all really and they also crush it so there are people out there who don't even know what personal Knowledge Management means and they're doing work that you want to do better than you because they're not procrastinating and they're not trying to get things perfect and all optimized first so get your system to good enough and then use your system don't try to optimize it further when you do this it's just another form of procrastination another trap that's similar to this is the perfect tool procrastination trap so personal Knowledge Management addicts switch to us all the time I've mentioned this if you browse any subreddit like obsidian or Rome or log set you'll see an array of posts from people talking about why they switched from motion or obsidian to this new tool and the pros and cons and so on and so on and so on and this is a trap that I find all into time and time again I started off with Evernote I moved to Rome and then to obsidian and Bachelor I'm an intercraft and I played with heptabase before finally landed on obsidian after a brief stint with mem dot AI if I'd avoided jumping around like this I would have got so much more work done when I look back there were hours and hours of time just spent my grading and setting things up and feeling smart about it it was a waste of time if you're jumping around from toe to tall you're really chasing that elusive click that we talked about earlier that doesn't exist so this is just another form of procrastination you need to understand that there's no tool out there that's going to enable you to do amazing work if you can't sit down and just do the work regardless so now that we've established all that how do we move forward how do we stop ourselves from being these personal Knowledge Management procrastinators well there are five principles that I think you should adopt the first one is to stick with one tool for the next six months minimum you need to escape this perfect tool trick that I just talked about and unless you can make an extremely robust argument for why you need to switch to another tool and I bet you can't then all you're doing is procrastinating you're looking for a shiny object you're looking for that thing to give you a dopamine hit and to make you feel like you're smart to combat this you need to stick with one tool ideally the one that you're already using so you don't need to migrate and spend time doing that stick with it for the next six months minimum and be warned during this time there is a high chance that you will see some new note-taking app pop up on the internet and you'll think I need that that looks good that will solve all my problems that's got a feature that I need don't do it stick with your current tool and do the work because if you don't you'll fall back into this cycle again and you'll just procrastinate one thing that helped me break out of this cycle of just switch in from app to app was to remember that people have done great things and great work without these complex systems right like there's authors in the past that wrote books in prison without access to obsidian or bro more the next new thing you don't need these complex systems to do good work they can help but you have more than you need to do great work these features and apps are announcements they're not Necessities the second principle is to trust your brain more so I'm all about this idea of building a second brain which has become a little bit of a buzz phrase but I think it's good but a second brain is not a replacement for your actual brain many personal knowledgement addicts take notes on everything they consume but don't leave any room for actual thinking work you need to trust that as you consume information and as you think through things that insights will come to you organically and not necessarily when you're inside your note-taking system for me the best ideas always come when I'm out doing something when I'm walking when I'm sitting down having a coffee and you know looking at the Sunrise when I'm away from my computer away from my phone there hardly is a result of structured note-taking so you need to trust your first brain that you will have insights come to you as you do work and as you consume information as long as it's good information another way to interpret this principle is to just relax I know that you think you have to take notes and everything there's obviously this fear of missing out on information uh but that's an irrational fear good ideas will come to you if you're consuming the right information the third principle is to be Project based with your note-taking what do I mean by this well taking notes for the sake of taking notices textbook procrastination a better strategy is to be Project based so choose a project that you want to work on maybe it's a book maybe it's a a product a digital product maybe it's a YouTube video take notes around it link Concepts and ideas and thoughts but you can use bi-directional links if you want link it around your project leverage the tools available to you as you take this approach you'll notice a few things first you'll notice that you naturally filter out irrelevant information that would otherwise clutter your note-taking system second this fear of missing out on information it subsides right you more or less know what you need to take notes on and what you're looking for and you can safely ignore the rest because it's not relevant to your project and the other thing you'll notice is that you will likely procrastinate less because you're working towards a tangible outcome instead of just taking notes for the sake of taking notes which is an endless sort of task principle number four is to improve your work capacity and output before you start thinking about how to structure your note-taking system if you spend more time structuring your note-taking system your personal Knowledge Management System then doing actual work then you're procrastinating most note-taking systems have amazing search functionality you can find what you're looking for when you need it because of this you don't need as much structure as you think develop the habit of doing the work first even with the perfect structure once you have this momentum and once you can sit down for three to four hours straight and do the work then start making some optimizations but only then and the fifth and final principle is to set yourself some actionable limits so if you are a chronic procrastinator in this space then it's worth seeing some boundaries it might be something like I'll only work on my note-taking system on not in I'll only work on my note taking system and try and improve it for 30 minutes per day maximum or two hours on a Saturday morning Max and I won't touch it other than using it for work outside of those hours right another helpful thing is to set up a process for note taking and capturing information so that you don't get sidetracked and start procrastinating so for me I personally don't like to capture information and sort of process it at the same time they are two distinct things to me I capture a bunch of information and then at a later time a secret time I'll process it I'll look into it I'll structure it a bit more but those two things are distinct because when I'm capturing information I want to be looking for the right information not having to worry about how to structure it over here right so I would split those two up set some boundaries there and anything else that you think might be useful so to wrap this up we have looked at why for many people personal Knowledge Management is just a sophisticated form of procrastination we looked at how it manifest itself in the form of the optimization procrastination trap and the perfect tool trap and the collector's fallacy and then we looked at five principles for basically being better and not procrastinating as much now if there's one thing you take away from this video I want it to be this your personal Knowledge Management System or your note-taking system is there to help you do better work if you find when you look back over the last three to six months that your work output is lower as a result of your system then that system is not a good system if you find that your work output is higher both in quantity and quality then you have a good system that is the sort of metric or the litmus test that you want to adopt and with that I wish you the best hope you enjoyed this video make sure to like And subscribe if you didn't let me know your thoughts down in the comments I'd love to hear what you think and if you disagree then let me know as well I'm always open to counter arguments and feedback thanks for watching

Channel: Sam Matla

Views: 334,203

Keywords:

Id: baKCC2uTbRc

Length: 19min 58sec (1198 seconds)

Published: Wed Dec 14 2022

Reddit Comments

[u/micseydel]

It would be procrastination for me to watch this video. But I only procrastinate on Reddit.

[u/andrewloomis]

Stop judging others based on your behavioral mistakes.

[u/lordcarnivore]

I do what I want.

[u/averagetrailertrash]

Sometimes I get like this and try to push through a big project, then fail and remember why I needed an organizational system in the first place, as I sit overwhelmed and confused between piles of paperwork. 1/10 don't recommend.

Like it's good to periodically focus on getting that stuff done and using your wip notes more deeply -- if just to get more in-tune with what kind of systems you need -- but it's miserable in the moment depending on what work you're doing.

I think it's too easy to glorify whatever you're not doing or blame what you are. The grass is always greener, and all that. But you started developing these systems for a reason. There's no harm in having a little trust in your past selves.

[u/Crazy_Tourist_2944]

So, yeah I probably use my pkm stuff to procrastinate a little bit every so often, but I disagree with some of the points he made.

So at work, I use my system primarily for task management. I don't find the "pkm organizing/managing" stuff super distracting since I don't really touch the "knowledge" documents during work, just my daily note and any notes that have information I need in that moment.

The organizing/managing/linking/etc. doesn't really happen "instead" of something else happening. Its something I like to pick through every so often and clean up a few things. It gives me a chance to review some of the stuff I've taken notes on and I find it relaxing. And yeah, it makes me feel smart when I'm doing it...I know it doesn't make me smarter but I like that feeling. And I don't do my "optimizing" during work time. Whenever I want to make a change, or run into an issue, I add a note about it to my "backlog" of optimizations/template changes/etc. Then when I'm reminded of it on the weekend, typically when I'm dealing with personal task management, then I'll make one or two changes.

It lets me do one or two things on the weekend that make my work life a little bit easier or nicer. I like treating my obsidian "system" as an iterative thing. Just a few small changes at a time, a video or two when I see one that's interesting, maybe a script or two when I notice I'm doing something repetitive frequently.

That said, I'm not really trying to produce content or anything like that. It's just my coping mechanism for my adhd brain not remembering things. I can 100% see how these tools could turn into sources of procrastination for people. I think alot of the systems that people go and read about are way to complex for people just starting to get into pkm stuff, and alot of content about them doesn't do a good job explaining who this system is for and who it is not for. Like the Zettelkasten stuff looks like it works well for academics and content producers, or even someone trying to stay on top of their D&D characters/etc. But the idea of "atomic notes" just gets in the way when your system has a total of 3 files in it, and it doesn't work as well if you are doing more "manage my life" kind of stuff. PARA is good for that, but even that has its moments where it gets too nitty gritty for someone without much content to manage. I wish more of the advice out there was along the lines of "start by using daily notes, and when something feels inconvenient - make the smallest change you can that fixes it". Maybe I'm not the norm with that, but growing it myself was the only way it made sense to me.

[u/keizo]

i agree. hold on. I'll just make my own pkm software.