Ben Borgers

Web of Thoughts

March 21, 2022

The new thing for note-taking apps is that you can link your notes together with ā€œbi-directional linksā€Ā ā€”Ā if you link from one note to another note, the other note also indicates that it was linked to by the first note.

Thatā€™s the idea behind apps like Roam, Obsidian, and Reflect. The bi-directional linking model is supposed to be a better representation of how your brain works: thoughts with connections between them. And if you put enough of yourself into one of these note-taking apps, youā€™re promised a beautiful graph view showing the different notes and their connections:

An example graph view from Obsidian. Not mine though. I donā€™t have that kind of diligence.

Iā€™ve played with a lot of these kinds of note-taking apps before, but I always end up falling off the wagon. I never really get into creating and maintaining a web of thoughts like this, and my graph view always looks sad: either a bunch of individual notes with not a lot of connections, or forced connections between notes that donā€™t really feel that helpful (but look pretty when graphed!).

But through writing this blog, I think Iā€™ve come to the simple reason why these apps didnā€™t work out for me: I didnā€™t have enough notes in the note-taking app. I didn't have enough thoughts in there in the first place.

Itā€™s a simple conclusion. But in order to graph your thoughts in a note-taking app, you have to write your thoughts down. And thatā€™s easier said than done.

Itā€™s a lot of work to pour all the thoughts that you have into a note-taking app, and to remember to keep that up to date as your brain comes up with new ideas or gathers new information.

Writing in a note-taking app is solitary. Youā€™re the only one who will ever read and edit any of it. Whether you pour out your thoughts and connect them to become a better thinker or not ā€” youā€™re the only one who will ever know.

But newly, with this blog, Iā€™m forced to churn out a certain rate of things since Iā€™m writing every day. Itā€™s a cadence of putting-thoughts-into-writing that I never had with a note-taking app. And as a result, Iā€™m finding that my thoughts naturally overlap and connect to one another.

Iā€™m finding an urge to sometimes link from one blog post to another, when the ideas naturally connect.

However, I donā€™t think this is just an idea that I can bring back to one of those note-taking apps and produce a Productivity YouTuber-worthy web of connected thoughts. Just write more thoughts down!

Instead, I think my writing output on this blog only really works because itā€™s a performance.

On this blog, Iā€™m aware that itā€™s getting published somewhere. A handful of other people will read it. And that public performance pressure makes me write a lot more, since Iā€™ve committed to writing daily. Itā€™s like the feeling that you get when you should be doing work in public but youā€™re procrastinating instead: Maybe someoneā€™s watching me make a fool of myself. I should probably just do my work.

So thank you, reader. Whether youā€™re there or not, the thought of other people reading this blog motivates me to write more ā€”Ā in order to not embarrass myself and miss my goal of writing every day. And I think thatā€™s good for me. So thank you.

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