My digital mind

January 04, 2021

For the past 3 years, I’ve had an unintentional New Years tradition. I’ve come to think of it as refactoring my digital mind. Basically, my goal is to have a framework for reflecting on and developing my thoughts. It’s fulfilling to think through ideas and come to new conclusions, to more deeply understand systems, concepts, and myself. Structure makes me better at this, otherwise I’ll more often be consuming media and encountering more fascinating ideas, but not developing them much after I jot them down.

This year, I’m finally happy with the organization of my digital mind, and I wanted to share it here. In brief, I use Google Keep and Google Drive to organize my thoughts from inspiration to evolution to conclusion. My current framework is described below.

Google Keep - Short-term memory

I keep 3 notes on Google Keep:

• Quick notes - immediate thoughts to return to later in the day/week
• Instant journal - record of ideas to save for some point in the indefinite future
• Reminders - quick reference for items like a shopping list or a reminder to drink more water.

Google Drive - Long-term memory

Google Drive works well for a majority of my infrastructure, both personally and professionally. My Drive is roughly structured into a few different sections:

• Current topics - folder containing numbered docs (e.g. 001_Predatory journals.gdoc). Each doc contains my notes on a topic, which progress from brainstorm, to researched notes, to organized thoughts, and ideally to a coherent narrative.
• Archive - a much bigger folder that contains all the crap I’ve written down in the past and don’t plan to develop further.
• Priorities - key folder of my memory consolidation
  • Week - The main Doc, which is always pinned in Chrome. First, it lists what I’m currently doing, which I reference when deciding how to spend my time. Additionally, it contains evening journal entries, a weekly retrospective, and a gradually-changing list of goals.
  • Reminders - Mostly unchanging high-level goals, and a list of reminders I review monthly. These are things I want to keep in mind, e.g. drink more water, there’s no free will.
  • Activities - Docs containing prioritized lists of what I want to read, watch, research, and more. This helps me stay more focused and make progress on the things I value most.
  • BONUS: Work - my work documentation has also gone through several iterations. I’ve found having a Google Doc for each week works well. Its main sections are:
    • Current list of tasks, backlog, and things I’m waiting for time or others on
    • List of questions and comments for others
    • Notes on the week’s meetings
    • Handy list of reminders (e.g. common series of command line commands)
    • Links to other Docs detailing ongoing projects.
    • Misc personal documents