How to access your digital data
The discussion I’m going to bring aims to answer a kind of “promise” I made in two previous posts: the one I talked about Capturing new ideas in the informational age and the last one about The Second Brain method.
❓The purpose of this article is to deal more with the following question: how to access the knowledge that we accumulate digitally in our second brain as a result of the projects we aim at?
It is a question of a Library sciences nature or taxonomic order. If we don’t organize all the information we assimilate, we will have that notorious image of disorganization with the desktop full of files unable to find oneself.
However, we are talking about two types of organization. The first is how we organize our pdfs, videos, books etc. To that end, there’s no problem in using the same method as used in the Library of Congress Classification Outline.
The second type revolves around the digital ramifications that a Luhmannianian heritage allowed with the emergence of link-based text editors. By Luhmannianian I basically mean a reference to Niklas Luhmann’s Zettelkasten, which organized his review in cards and put in a series of slip box around themes and very specific references that served him when he wanted to write about a certain topic; and by link-based text editors i mean the most famous Obsidian, RemNote and RoamResearch.
Applying the Zettelkasten in digital text editors has the facility that you don’t need to think of a sort of classification and dispose of the physical space that Luhmann spent during his period. If you want to create a “box” around the theme “Work” the only thing you need to do is create write [[Work]] (in square brackets) which will create a link with all other links with the same work, from Marxism to the page about how to reduce psychical suffering in [[Work]]. And to access all the information on a particular topic, just look for the expression and the different apps will bring all the referenced links.
With this it is possible to answer the initial question. The knowledge is accessed because when we are reviewing a certain subject, we are already creating links on the central themes and when we want to look for them, the themes will already be organized and linked.
💭As always there is a catch. These new editors are only for text files. The challenge posed is precisely how to organize all our sources of information. For that, the best exhibition that I consider was presented in this video by Brie Watson, which has a lot of information, but allows us to think about how we can organize ourselves. I think the most valuable and universal lesson — in the sense that anyone can use it — is to try to standardize both the text editor and your operating system folders. If you follow the P.A.R.A. method, you leave the organization of 1. Projects, 2. Archive 3. Resources on all platforms. 4. Archives.
