Massimo Curatella

Category: Posts

The Note-Taking Nouvelle Vague
I am looking for new prompts to fuel my research, writing, and publishing. I am a bit tired of improvising every day so I am looking for stronger themes to follow through.
What follows is a sample of questions I would like to explore.
I am posting them here to make them bounce through your brains and harvest useful interactions.
Everybody is jumping on the note-taking app wagon
In the world of Personal Knowledge Management tools, there is a tsunami of new software applications to manage note-taking and note-making.
1. What does it mean for thinkers, writers, publishers?
2. Graphs as thinking tools: what are their usability issues? How do they facilitate serendipity and visual thinking? Do we think better or worse with a graph?
3. A huge catalog of connected ideas is creating a cognitive avalanche: was it already existing on the web? What’s different? Why should it work? Why didn’t the web work, or did it?
4. How did great thinkers in the past think great things without modern digital tools? What’s the added value of thinking digitally?
5. Rebranding the obvious: “Tomato/tometo” and Note/Node. Why searching for new names for millennia-old concepts?
6. Isn’t a note-taking app just a database management system? Isn’t every software application just data management? What’s the novelty of a note-taking tool?
7. Tool-agnostic frameworks, what’s the role of the method in being effective in note-taking and its creative outcome? Is the framework driving the choice of the tool or vice-versa? How is the tool allowing the full expression of workflows?
Ideally, I am looking for better questions but anything useful to go deeper is appreciated.
Thanks for playing.
La question n’est pas de travailler, c’est de fair croire aux autres qu’on travaille.
14 January 2021
Artificial Intelligences are children to be educated
The perplexing questions
How do you relate to Google, Alexa, and Siri?
How do you feel when you are typing your personal diary in Google Docs and Google tells you that “you already wrote about this, here” with a link to your previously written document?
How do you feel if a software tool replies to questions without your intervention?
How do you feel chatting with a bot? Have you ever chatted with a bot?
How do you feel about Google or Facebook suggesting ads or information about something that happened in your real life but you did not remember you typed in Google or Facebook?
How do you feel about Google Calendar reminding you that “it is about time to reach the destination of your upcoming appointment”?
How do you feel when Google Maps sends you a monthly summary about every single place in which you have been during the last 30 days? Were you always in places you wanted to be? I hope for you. Were you in places you don’t want everybody to know about? (hey! Where did you go?)
Is that the right photo you wanted to be reminded of that day, 7 years ago, by Google Photos?
The nice surprises
When Alexa tells you that coffee is about to be delivered and one second after the doorbell rings.
When Google Calendar reminds you that it is your favorite uncle’s birthday in a week and you should get something nice for him.
When Google Fit gives you monthly totals that you have to sum up to get the 1,000 Km you walked during the last year.
When Grammarly suggests rephrasing your convoluted sentence.
When the Android keyboard suggests how to write “serendipitous”.
When your Fitbit reminds you to move! Now!
They learn to be better
When you like a post or a photo, when you dismiss a suggestion, when you reply to a Tweet, when you star a website: each time you interact with the same software that is giving you suggestions you are training its Artificial Intelligences.
What’s the boundary between the usefulness of the suggestions that you receive and the information you have to provide to get them?
13 January 2021
Creativity preparation rituals: infallible!
Prime your brain with the ritual of preparation. You know that nothing can stop you when you’re cleaning up your mind and your environment to start doing creative work.
Finding the right preparation routine takes time and experimentation. You might start with one simple gesture and, since you have to repeat this for the rest of your life (right?), add, slowly, all the steps needed to bring you into the perfect creative environment.
What to do to get into a creative flow
This is non-scientific, personal, and maybe not suitable for you. It’s an example of how you could prepare yourself to do creative work.
Turn off all devices
Besides one using which you would be creating, of course. Do you work with rocks and scalpel? Good. Turn off all electronic devices emitting any form of sound, noise, or nuisance.
Warn your people. You’re not going to be reachable for the time you decide.
Agree with your important people that they can contact you for urgent matters. Like if that was needed to say. Define clearly what “urgent matters” means to you.
Turn off all notifications
What? Your phone is still on because it has a nuclear battery, and only specialists from Chernobyl would be able to switch it off? Then, put it in airplane mode. You can’t? Put it on mute, no vibration. (and explain to me, then, why you can’t turn it off)
Close all browser tabs
Why is your Web Browser open? If you need it for research, you are researching. You’re not writing. If, instead, you want to “be in the flow”, entirely concentrated on your productive medium, close all tabs. This would allow you to use an online text editor if any. Otherwise, use Notepad!
Minimize all user interfaces
So, I get it, your creating on your computer. Question: do you need all buttons, icons, menus, scrolling bars, toasters, pop-ups, reminders, notifications, slide-in menus, flying turtles, fighting Pokemons on your desktop? Remove, close, minimize, and hide anything not related, strictly, to your creative session.
Remove everything not strictly necessary for your creative task
I cannot think of anything else you might want to get rid of but, seriously, anything that does not answer positively to the question “do I need this to create?”, remove it.
Set a Pomodoro timer
It’s just a fancy way to say: set a timer to 25 minutes and start to do the freaking work.
Start to work
At this point, if it is the first time you’re going through this, you should have already spent quite a few minutes preparing for work. How do you feel in front of an excellent, shiny, blank page? Scary, uh? Isn’t it? You have no excuses. You have no distractions. It’s only you and your thoughts.
Listen to your thoughts
Waddaya say? You don’t know what to do? Shh, be silent for a second. Listen.
Listen.
Can you hear it?
If you’re lucky, you can hear absolutely nothing.
Try again.
Wait now. Can you start to hear something more?
See?
Do you know what you are finally hearing?
Let me introduce you to yourself!
Did you prepare well?
If you are scrupulous and lucky: at this point, you can hear your thoughts.
That’s what we were looking for.
Now there are absolutely no other options than listening to your mind talking.
Let it talk.
Let it go.
Can you keep the pace?
Listen to it. Now.
And, finally, damn! Write exactly what you are thinking!
Verbatim.
Don’t tell me you don’t know what to write anymore.
I will link you here, my friend.
Shhh!
12 January 2021
Find and give meaning
I always loved technology and computers since I was a young boy, so it was natural for me to take engineering studies. It’s only after years of efforts, sacrifices, and struggles that I discovered the abstract nature of academic assignments. I’ve decided to publish my software, I’ve started a technical publishing company, and I followed my natural tendency to share my knowledge with others. It’s only after having tried ten different jobs in various business fields and cultural settings that I’ve learn a little bit more about myself.
Nowadays, I still feel there is so much to discover about me. Journaling and writing are such indispensable tools for self-exploration, and I cannot do without them.
I love the concept of helping others in expressing their potential. It is one of the goals I am trying to pursue. It’s good to think about being useful to others, as much as possible, in any situation, with any positive contribution.
Experimentation to avoid making the wrong choices
Choosing a learning path can change your life, especially when you discover you didn’t like it along the way.
Prompt: how can you test the waters without plunging yourself deep into a life choice as the one of a study field?
We can give meaning to others’ lives
We are social beings, and we live thanks to the relationship we have with others. It’s innate our desire to provide a service to them and to contribute to our community.
Prompt: how can you be the best person possible to contribute to others’ development in pursuing and expressing their potential?
I might have some answers, but they are my answers, coming from many different experiences, trials, and errors.
Adopting this mindset means making small steps, evaluating the land, observing, reflecting, and deciding on the next steps.
You need to find your answers, build on top of what others have already learned, and experiment by minimizing risks and damages while maximizing the learning.
You can’t get always what you want.
11 January 2021
Rebranding the obvious
I used to create an index of ideas in the front matter and the back matter of books since the 80’s. Yes, I am that old. But I’ve never thought to brand it to give a unique name to it and desiring to be recognized as the inventor of the “idea index”.
Well, it seems like the “idea index” now is a unique technique invented and branded to list, exactly, the ideas found in a book.
I had the idea of the idea index years ago but I’ve never thought about calling it “Idea Index”.
I hate branding ideas since they are just notions about something that exists and everybody can know. Who brands ideas for the first time seems to get a sort of “Juris primae noctis“, they are the creators.
When you realize that that idea is something really simple or, worst, that you thought about for a long time you feel like… stupid.
Who re-brand ideas or brand them for the second time are either naive or presumptuous.
Why calling something already existing, known, and named with another name? Why creating redundancy and confusion in a VUCA World in which complexity and too many labels are dominating our clarity of vision?
Still, when you brand an idea is like you’ve conquered a bit of dirt in a new land (when it is new and when it is a land). It’s a sort of free but branded IP you can have your name attached to and bringing you popularity for your supposed discovery.
When is it worth to name and brand an idea? When shall we re-brand an existing and well-known idea?
The “not-hot-not-cold” water (TM)(R)(C)
10 January 2021
How to be a Systems Thinker: simple steps
On 9 January 2021 at 12:07, Marco Genovesi replied with an interesting contribution to my article: Minimize unintended consequences by thinking in systems.
Marco said:
[…] Sometimes, it’s quite easy to imagine the consequences of our actions, and yet we decide to ignore what common sense suggests or history has eminently taught us.
Sometimes it takes time and extensive researches. So, what’s the best way to broaden our views and increase the complexity of our system thinking without stumbling into paralysis by analysis or an exaggerated, numbing relativism?
Marco Genovesi
I share Marco’s sincere and straightforward curiosity. Being a better Systems Thinker is all nice and good but how do you manage to do it in our chaotic lives?
It was a great opportunity to try to find some direction and, here it follows
Be pragmatically curious—research questions before trying to get answers. Talk about what concerns you rather than pushing it back. Expand your network of thinking people, the more diverse, the better.
And map what surrounds you with the same passion and excitement an explorer could have on an adventure looking for the ultimate truth. Knowing that it will never end. It all sounds romantic and maybe too far-fetched. But simple things could lead the way.
1. Ask questions. More. And listen.
2. Capture interesting knowledge in a permanent and accessible medium.
3. Review your thoughts and connect interesting ideas.
4. Share your findings within your network to increase their value.
5. Plan experiments at all levels: dining on the floor to see how the family reacts, up to taking the wrong road to office, what did you notice?
6. Reflect on your observations and change experiments.
7. Iterate.
It would be nice to know if any of you tried any of my suggestions. What did you learn?
What’s next? Another chance.
9 January 2021
Celebratory rituals define yourself
Why do we celebrate?
What’s the purpose of counting time?
One year ago, something happened, was it relevant?
Fifty years ago somebody was born, what’s to celebrate?
A celebration is an act of reliving an event with the intent of having the same experience again. A thing that is, by definition, impossible. We’re not the same, and the world is not the same; we cannot feel the same.
So why do we celebrate?
We celebrate to define who we are today. By remembering what happened in the past, we restate a commitment: what we have promised in the past, or the responsibility we took charge of that day. A celebration entails emotional engagement and reevaluating our identities. If we are not the same as we were, why are we renewing our commitment to that memory?
We celebrate to create unity. To bind our present with our past with the intention and the hope of keeping this relationship in the future.
We celebrate to keep sanity. To have the illusion of our identities and our cultures. Especially for public celebrations and remembrance. If everybody is doing it, we can join the group by celebrating together with them. We feel part of a tribe.
A celebration can be part of a belonging ritual. By remembering certain events and specific beliefs, we’re reinforcing our belonging to a group, a movement, or a tribe.
The recurring celebration of the critical events in our lives is part of our culture and identities. We celebrate to convince ourselves we are part of a relationship, a culture, of a group of people. Who doesn’t want to celebrate is an alien, a reject, a separatist, a loner, and is usually seen as disrespectful or undeserving by the group.
It takes courage to question your celebrative rituals.
Questioning the deep motives behind your celebration shatters your identity from the foundations. It’s a disruptive act to redefine yourself.
Cure the flame.
8 January 2021
Minimize unintended consequences by thinking in systems
What is an unintended consequence?
When you obtain effects you didn’t want and you did not expect, following your actions, you are experiencing unintended consequences.
Too much love at the family level
If you squeeze too much your children because you love them you might figuratively and physically suffocate them. Instead of making them closer to you, you become an annoying person and they don’t want to be near you.
Wrong killing incentive at the government level
You are in In India and you want to reduce the danger of having too many Cobra snakes around. You could reward people for killing Cobras with the unintended consequence of making them breed this species to collect the prize. So you are actually making things worst.
Hurting lost children
In World’s poorest countries some of the worst orphanages are pushed toward corrupting families, to sell them their children under the false promise of a better life for them. They will be resold to the best offerer in the international black market. Sad but true. And that’s why children should skip the intermediary step of orphanages.
Why is this interesting?
Negative consequences are unintended when we don’t know the chains of causes and effects leading to them. It’s difficult, very difficult to know and connect all forces in a context and to establish their relationships but it’s the only direction to take to minimize the unintended harmful effects. Sometimes we have to focus on not making mistakes rather than winning so the right move is to not make the bad one.
Systems Thinking is what we need more of
Systems Thinking is an interdisciplinary approach providing one of the most effective and efficient models of reality. By mapping parts and their relationships within a considered system, we have a better understanding of the contexts and we can work to identify to promote the system to a healthier status.
I’ve always been thinking in systems and I didn’t know that. It’s only a few decades ago that I’ve discovered this way to think and to look at the world and I’ve never stopped researching more about it. Systems Thinking is a vast discipline and you will find one definition for every scholar. One life wouldn’t be enough to study all researches, approaches, and frameworks but it is worth it to find our way to be better systems thinkers. As today is one of the best chances to survive as a species.
Go down! Go down! Oh, wait…
7 January 2021
Keep on writing
The more I write the more doubts I collect. I am grateful for all the learnings and the growth, I cannot deny it. But the enthusiasm of the beginning is fading away. Writing every day with the intent to publish is not the same as writing in my private journal. I can feel those few pairs of eyes reading these lines and I cannot help but think about their reactions.
Since I am writing for my future self, these writings are for me, first of all. So I am part of my audience. I have, at least, an audience of one. But knowing that I am sharing these thoughts of mine with a few hundred people makes me think really hard.
The good news is that, well, I am writing, every day. Not only in my journal but in this eclectic sequence of minimal, abstract, sometimes surreal illustrations along with about 200 words of text.
I felt the fluidity of the Shipping 30 for 30 Challenge. It was fun. It was exhilarating. I was reflecting aloud about what I have been doing in private, journaling, for a few hundred days.
What worked was my being full of experiences, reflections, inspirations, thoughts, discoveries, stories. Really, I just had to curate my long list of drafts. It was so easy writing 30 small articles in 30 days I could not believe I did it.
And there was the public commitment and the incentive of sharing with a small group of fellow shippers which helped a lot.
And then: it all stopped. I’ve experienced again the hedonic adaption. When it ended I felt the inertia going, that’s why I’ve reached 51 in a row, exactly today, with this post.
But while the first 30 have a strong theme, a great package, a title, a foundational experience to refer to, now I feel like I am not able to recreate those conditions. So I went back, like a rubber band, to going broad and sidewise on the plethora of things passing through my head. Not very well connected.
The worst feeling is that I perceive this daily task as a choir. I am still not sure why I should do it, although I am perfectly aware of the derived benefits, and, being lazy and still not disciplined, I end up usually rushing it, almost despising it. I don’t always enjoy writing daily blog posts. The only positive feeling is the one of having done it. So, I ask myself, why? Is this a prescription?
It could be. Or better, I am prescribing myself another 50 days of daily writing and publishing.
I’ve got the prompt for writing this article by reading how and why other great minds wrote. It resonates, vividly, what George Orwell wrote in his Why I Write.
So, thank you, George.
Half empty and half full. Who’s watching?
6 January 2021
A Zettelkasten as a tool for thinking
How can my note archive be a creative tool?
That’s the most critical question to ask to a Zettelkasten, meaning “slip-box” in English. It’s your archive of notes, one concept per note, tightly interconnected.
Ideally, starting from access points, you should be able to navigate, like you would do on the Web using a Web Browser, from note to note, from concept to concept.
It works only if you always connect the new notes you create. Otherwise, you make isolated islands, or worst, dead ends.
Working with your creative mind should be something you should never force yourself to do. There should always be something interesting to be done.
That’s the purpose of a Zettelkasten, and it is a tool using which you think. It is not an archive of dead words.
You should even be able to pick one note randomly, and like Alice, in the rabbit hole, you should be able to find shiny threads of inspiration.
As Dave Gray somewhere wrote: “you cannot build your network when you need one,” I would paraphrase it by saying, “you cannot build a Zettelkasten when you need one.”
That’s why the systematic and continuous creation of well-written and well-connected notes feed the network of thoughts of your Zettelkasten.
When you have enough notes connected, you can start letting your creativity emerge out of it. That is the moment when you can begin to practice your networked thinking.
But, just by telling this story, I feel like I’ve collected some useful thoughts. It might become my revised description of what is a Zettelkasten and how to use a Zettelkasten.
It’s a good blog post working as an excellent starting draft for my notes.
Capture bits of information into well-written and well-connected notes. Add them to your Zettelkasten to make it grow and become more connected. It will become your favorite thinking tool.
Connect the White Rabbit.
5 January 2021