In the previous page I explained the Snippet Loop “verticals” structure for managing your info flow. Now this “verticals” structure has one fatal flaw: Everything passes through BrainStormWFO. That means that everything gets chopped up and blended.
This is fine as long as we are dealing with a couple of lines or paragraphs. But when we write longform documents, there’s a value to the structure and flow of the document. Pass that through BrainStormWFO, and the structure is lost forever.
So there has to be a way to preserve the flow of our longer thoughts. Enter the Longform Loop.
I also call this “the Tri-tier Blogging Method”. Basically, there are 3 levels of longform content:
3. Raw mind-dumps. This is just you, blabbing away.
2. Polished posts on a specific topic. Like a solid blog post.
1. Interconnected finished content. Like a wiki or a book. Or an e-course.
So I call #3 “Tier-3 content”, #2 “Tier-2 content”, and #1 “Tier-1 content”.
I host my T3 content on a personal installation of WordPress on my local harddrive. Every time I write a longform thought, I upload it there and tag it with the appropriate category(s). This lets me easily build a comprenehsive chronological record of my thoughts on a subject.
My T2 content usually gets published to one of my public blogs.
My T1 content takes a lot longer to develop. While it’s gestating, I build it up on a private, password protected wiki. I use wikidot.com. Over time, I build up book-length quantities of content. I organize by wikidot’s tagging system and with wiki-style interlinking.
The great thing about wikis is you can easily edit and interlink stuff and create new pages, to create a complete map of your brain on a topic. Then, when you’re ready to publish a book, it’s a simple matter of stringing together those wiki pages into a pdf. Voila.
The Longform Loop operates in parallel to the Execution and Snippet loops. Basically, that means that when you batch process your scratch files, content gets uploaded to all three loops.
Every time I make a significant modification to my T3, T2 or T1 content, I also copy it back into my chron tape for digestion there. This way I can blend new thoughts back into BrainStormWFO outline for later processing. So I get the best of both worlds: I get to keep my longform thoughts intact, and I also get to break them down for analysis and reintegration with my mental outline.
In practice, having a parallel Tri-Tier longform system VASTLY cuts down on the amount of BrainStormWFO sorting that you have to do. Why? Because writing out stuff in longform sets it firmly into your memory. And you can easily go back, using the tags in your blogs and wiki, and find that thought again.
So it becomes very easy to build your eventual book-length content:
- Write a T3 essay whenever inspiration strikes you.
- Write T2 posts while referring to your T3 raw material.
- Write T1 content while referring to your T2 posts.
Nothing could be easier. Yet over time, it accumulates into a tremendously powerful intellectual reservoir.
You are always having long, complete thoughts. They’re always rattling around in your head. Why not start capturing them, and converting them so that they become permanent long term assets??
The Longform Processing Loop lets you do exactly that.