As a beginning/ reemergence
About Brianline
Brianline is a tool I designed a few years ago to keep a summary record of ideas, projects, reading, etc. each week. I have numbered each week of my life (the week I was born was Year1Week1 which was May 20-26, 1975); since I was born on a Tuesday, my weeks go from Tuesday to Monday. This past week was February 20-26, 2024 and was Year 49, Week 41. I have kept sporadic records this way, off and on, for several years. I am currently trying to improve my work processes and I feel the Brianline project can be a helpful part.
Several times I have thought about putting these online, in hopes that this would encourage me to be more consistent with my recording. These are personal notes for myself and are raw, sometimes undeveloped, often flawed. But if I make a consistent habit of writing down what I’m thinking about and reading and post it consistently, it could also prove helpful to someone else down the road.
Recent energy/creative cycle
The last couple of years I have gotten off the path I was on. Things changed: we sold our house in the country where I had spent the greater part of ten years gardening, working and being pretty independent. The freelance work patterns I had been operating under changed significantly. I started to feel middle aged.
More recently I have felt vaguely more tired, less able to concentrate and generally mildly depressed. I think the way out of this is more exercise, more social involvement, and better organization of my work habits. These three things have proven harder than expected. Inertia. Perfectionism. Thought spirals. Classic Gen X underachiever. Old, uninformed, foolish, nothing to offer, past it.
And sometimes I feel maybe I should just embrace that general thought pattern, that in some ways what I have been trying to force myself into no longer seems right. But giving up and going so negative isn’t healthy either.
My purpose/ obstacles
As time has ticked by, I have crystallized what I want and do not want. I think, approaching 50, I have the clearest understanding of my purpose yet.
That is, to help encourage and nurture creative expression (in myself and others). That is a big, broad statement that covers a lot of ground. And I have always known this to be my purpose. At four years old I knew I was supposed to be a teacher. How I have defined what a teacher is has changed over my life as I have grown and had many different kinds of experiences.
I feel that my biggest obstacle has been that I am such a big picture thinker that I am overwhelmed by the scope of what I want to achieve. So, I need to break it down into small pieces that seem more achievable and can be shared with and appreciated by others along the way.
The other big thing that has become very clear over the last few years is that structure is required for me to do beneficial creative work.
Work process/notetaking/ Zettelkasten/
We have a glut of self-help and productivity tools/ writings/videos/strategies/hacks/processes. So many of us feel out of whack and we hope an app, a book, a notebook is somehow going to begin to bring some sanity.
I think choosing one place to begin and focusing on that one thing is where I have to be right now. And my ideas are so big, I do want a way to capture and record it all. I went back to the way I was taught to do research way back in grade school. Bibliography cards and research cards. And I have identified some books about notetaking and systems. Many of these are about academic writing. The couple I received this week have been read.
I discovered the concept of the slip file and the Zettelkasten accidentally on a blog post, and ended up ordering the book and reading it this week. It seems like such an interesting idea but I have my doubts about implementing it fully. We shall see.
Weekly Engagement
Quote of the Week
Read This Week
Ahrens, Sönke (2022). How to take smart notes: one simple technique to boost writing, learning and thinking, 2nd edition. Hamburg, Germany (self-published). takesmartnotes.com
Niklas Luhmann’s slip box system as a method of organizing ideas. Keep ephemeral notes, notes on your reading and your projects separate from the slip box notes (referred to as permanent notes). Write each idea on a slip of paper, restating other’s ideas in your own words. Each slip is filed next to the card it relates to, or if it is a new idea, after the last card. Cards are numbered, and an index made. Digital versions of this system have been created. Once set up this system organizes your ideas, provided new connections and ideas. The basic points or arguments of writing about an idea have already been developed.
McPherson, Fiona (2018). Effective notetaking, 3rd edition. Wellington, NZ:: Wayz Press.
A basic overview of notetaking strategies. Headings are a good way to organize notes; rewrite provided headings if your reading goals are different from the writer’s goals. Summaries can be topical or graphical. Key with summary is to find a way to connect what you already know with new information provided. Includes a nice section on learning styles and preferences.
Watched This Week
Moulin Rouge (2001) Probably 12th time watched, but first in a while. Saw this the first time in the theater the week it was released.
The Taming of the Shrew (1967) Watched for 2nd time, first time was in the 1990s.
Listening
Started listening to French language music through my Spotify account to help enrich the French language studying I’ve been doing this year. Goal is to listen to it about 20-30 minutes a day.