Why I created a digital home for myself
I was super inspired after reading Sönke Ahrens' book How to take smart notes over a year ago, and since then I have been trying to develop my own system for notes, using a notes app called Obsidian. I used to just take highlights from books but then never do anything with them, and since I am a learning science geek I knew this was a missed opportunity as I needed to interact more with the books (and articles) I read to really absorb the contents. I wanted a comprehensive digital space where I could write notes about everything that interests me, and share some of them online.
This space has gradually become my digital home (a term introduced by Nick Milo), a place I go whenever I open up my laptop. Instead of rushing to distractions and consuming new content, I can start off in a more reflective mood. I can write a note about how my day is going, especially on days when I am overwhelmed by thoughts or strong feelings. Or I can write a note about an interesting concept I came across in a book, such as Radical incrementalism (the idea that you can get a lot of creative work done over the long term if you make some incremental progress every day, such as writing for just 15 minutes, mentioned in Oliver Burkeman's book 4000 weeks).
If I am feeling low on energy I can do a bit of digital housekeeping - moving new notes to where they belong, adding links to existing notes so I can find them in the right context, or look for new book highlights I have recently imported but have not yet written a note about.
I am not yet consistent with these new habits - sometimes I still go straight to news website for quick distractions that leave me feeling more scattered and overwhelmed than before. But every time I notice these feelings, and every time I notice how I feel more grounded and coherent after spending time in my digital home instead, I am nudged to do more reflecting and writing and less mindless information consumption.
My digital home is also an extension of my mind, a place where I can record the contents of my working memory whenever I have an interesting thought or have just read something inspiring. I never know when I will have the opportunity to come back to that thought, but when I do, it will be with a much clearer view than if I had to dig around in my murky memories like I would do if I had not written it down.
A few times, I got a bit too bogged down trying to find or build the "perfect system". At one point I had templates for to-do lists which automatically added themselves to a "daily note" and at that point it ended up looking more like a productivity system than a mindful digital home. I even developed an aversion to opening up my notes since I would be faced with a to-do list with so many un-ticked boxes it made me want to go and hide somewhere. Luckily, I came across bullet journalling last summer and since then, all my task management has been in a physical notebook, while my ideas and reflections are digital.
My system will probably go through more iterations as my needs and interests change, but my notes remain. Everything I have written about over the last 15+ months is easily accessible by searching or finding a related note (assuming I took the time to link them up). This has made it even more fun writing notes, as I often find old ones explaining similar things and I can compare them.
People have called this approach Personal Knowledge Management (PKM), a second brain, a digital garden or an ideaverse. I prefer thinking of it as my digital home, but what is more important than what terms you use is what you do with it. For me, it has simply become the central hub of the me-time part of my life, where I can develop my thinking and learn new things by writing about them.
In my next post, I will share some screenshots to show more specifically how it looks in practice.