The Creationist Michael Behe’s argument for irreducible complexity has been famously answered by an illustrated series of progressively more complex mousetraps. This purports to show how something so complex as an human eye could have evolved by functional intermediary stages.
(image from here.)
I do not intend to take sides in the evolution vs. creationism debate. After all, it’s possible that both sides are wrong.
Rather, I intend to use this famous example to introduce a closely related principle: Every complex working system [that is built by humans] is the descendant of a simple working system.
This is due to the process of trial and error and gradual refinement that humans employ when developing complex systems, whether in business or info management or whatever.
Cyborganize has undergone exactly this process.
It will be much easier for you to understand Cyborganize, by seeing how it evolved from a “single wire mousetrap” to its present complex state.
So let’s begin with the simplest possible version of Cyborganize.
The Single-Tool Version
The primordial Cyborganize will use a single program, BrainStormWFO.
BrainStormWFO is a high-speed dedicated power outliner.
Our workflow is simple. We enter all text into the “inbox” of a single .brn file. Then we sort it into the outline.
This is a very inefficient system of info management. Here are the two main problems:
1. Sorting destroys the original order of the captured text.
2. The massive volumes of info require tediously long periods of sorting, just to keep track of shifting task priorities.
However, a well sorted BrainStormWFO outline is capable of processing all tasks and producing a mindmap of thoughts and research.
The Two-Tool Version
To remedy the above shortcomings, we now “evolve” a system that is twice as complex.
We will use one plain text file and one BrainStormWFO file.
Everything is first written in the plain text file. New entries are periodically dumped into BrainStormWFO for sorting.
Now we have a complete searchable chronological record of our work. Very handy.
We can fearlessly delete from our BrainStormWFO outline, and don’t need to worry about keeping track of chronology while we sort.
However, the system is still quite inefficient. A couple of problems:
1. Action items are buried in reams and reams of information, requiring lots of sorting to isolate and prioritize them.
2. It’s difficult to distinguish your own words from copy-pasted material, potentially leading to plagiarism.
That said, the system can still work.
Splitting One “Silo” Into Three
The main problem with the last version was that different types of information are mixed together indiscriminately.
To fix this, we can keep them in separate “silos.”
We’ll have three silos:
1. Actionables
2. Notes (your own words)
3. Quotes (copy-pasted stuff)
This means three text files and three .brn files. Action text is entered only in the actionables.txt file, notes in the notes.txt file, and so on.
Now we are really getting somewhere. This system is lightweight and fast. You don’t produce very many actionables in a day, so sorting them is a breeze. You can rapidly pivot.
However, there are still problems.
1. You need to do a lot of sorting on the notes silo to keep your knowledge up to date. This involves heavy rework.
2. Quotes generates such a deluge of material that managing it all is hopeless. It’s like a black hole – throw something in and never see it again.
* Split the “Quotes” Silo Into Four
If one split worked, why not split again? Then we can fix the black hole quotes silo problem.
I personally use four silos of quotes:
1. Epic.txt
2. Elite.txt
3. Quotes.txt
4. Reference.txt
Each has its own corresponding .brn file.
The epic silo is very sparse, which allows me to pivot quickly on truly lifechanging pithy quotes. The reference silo lets me preserve full text articles I don’t have time to digest.
Now our research isn’t completely going to waste. So that’s nice.
But we still have a pretty kludgy system.
Action items flow nicely, but the constant work of remapping our entire brain in BrainStormWFO, just to update a small piece of our mental map, is really excessive.
Plus, it’s difficult to work in this silo model while you’re in “flow.”
You’ll be thinking and writing about a combination of action items, quotes and notes. Separating them out across all those different files is a constant interruption.
Add “Scratch Files”
The solution? Let’s create a “staging area” for our current focused burst of work: “scratch files.”
Scratch files temporarily allow us to mix info from every silo. When we’re done, we delete the scratch file and sort everything into the proper silos for long-term reference.
We only work on one scratch file at a time. No mental fragmentation – that’s a Cyborganize design principle.
But we don’t have to process our scratch files immediately after when we finish with them. So we can build up a queue of scratch files, and reintegrate them when convenient.
Whenever one scratch file gets unmanageable, we can simply start a new one and carry over whatever’s still relevant from the last one.
Now we have a focused workspace, with no interruptions. Progress indeed!
But hmm, wouldn’t it be nice to preserve the original flow of our scratch files, for future reference? What if we want to return to that complex thought stream, later on?
Add a Longform Blog
Right now our scratch file sessions are getting chopped up twice.
First they get separated into silos. Then later they go into BrainStormWFO and get sorted into outlines. This totally destroys their original flow of ideas.
Worse yet, what if you write a paper? It will get completely chopped up again. Sure, you may have your revisions and drafts in your original capture text file, but it’s hard to know which one is the right version. And continually repasting the whole paper into the capture text file results in a lot of repeated info. Which you have to remove when sorting in BrainStormWFO.
Let’s solve these problems by adding a private WordPress blog. Whenever you write a longer, complex thought, you can post it to the blog.
You’re saving it to the blog IN ADDITION to sorting it into your silos for normal processing.
WordPress will automatically datestamp each post. Plus, you can tag it with categories. If you give each post a good title, you can rapidly reconstruct your thoughts from any time period, on any major subject. And don’t forget, your blog has an internal search engine!
Now you’ve got the best of both worlds. You have the original record of your meditations, long documents, and complex thoughts. But you also get to chop them up and rearrange them to fit in with everything else.
But… there’s still a problem. Some of your long thoughts will be barely more than rambling messes. Others will be polished essays, maybe even books. Mixing them all together makes it difficult to manage your work.
Split Your Longform Into Three Tiers
There are three tiers of longform content, ranked by complexity:
3. Braindumps, rambling messes, working notes
2. Polished, focused, single-topic essays and blog posts
1. Integrated bodies of publishable knowledge, like wikis, books, or presentations
We want to segregate our work by quality, because each quality level has different objectives.
Tier 3 is just for you. Tier 2 is publishable, but there’s no attempt to create an integrated whole. Tier 1 needs to be comprehensive.
If you mix all three tiers together, it’s going to be very difficult to keep them straight and meet your objectives.
We already have a private blog. That will keep the T3 content. Now we just need something for T2 and T1.
You can get either a private or a public blog for your T2 content.
For your T1 content, only a wiki will do. A blog doesn’t have the capacity for interlinking that a wiki has. A blog is designed to be serial and chronological. A wiki is designed to continually evolve in sophistication but remain non-chronological and non-serial. That’s exactly what we need for growing bodies of comprehensive knowledge.
For convenience, I like to duplicate all my T2 content onto my T3 blog, to reduce the number of places that I need to search.
Adding a Journal
The above system will do a pretty good job of indirectly creating a record of your life. Processing all your info greatly enhances your self-awareness.
However, you may want to add some kind of system exclusively for journaling.
I use a very simple system, and adhere none too perfectly. You could easily improve on it. I have plenty of ideas should I want to expand it.
I keep a journal.txt file, and add timestamped entries. I record everything that happened since the last timestamped entry. A journal prompt goes off every 15 minutes, but I may make only 0-5 entries per day.
I keep a second weekly-review.txt file in which I review my time on a weekly basis. And another for monthly-review.txt, and so on.
The advantage of these extra text files is that they let me scroll through an increasingly compressed description of my life.
I do not have corresponding .brn files for these text files… that would be unnecessary. The succession of text files, from weekly to monthly to yearly, is all the sorting that need be done.
Feel free to add other self-tracking info streams or text files, if you like.
Additional Miscellany
We’ve covered the hard stuff, the rest is bells and whistles.
Other stuff that’s nice to have: Google Calendar, Gmail, a computer alarm clock for periodic alerts, project management software, auto-screenshots of your screen every 2 minutes, Rescuetime, MoodTracker, SuperMemo, etc etc etc.
Evolution Complete
Now I hope you can see how Cyborganize evolved for me, personally.
Of course it didn’t happen exactly this way… this is an idealized version. The actual learning process was a lot messier… quite a nightmare. I recommend you skip all that.
This is not meant as a tutorial on how to start using Cyborganize. Rather, it’s a tutorial on understanding the PURPOSE of each additional layer of complexity within Cyborganize.