Roaming Around My Brain
Obviously, there has been a lot going on in the last week or two. When I initially set out to write this newsletter, I was sort of intentionally going to avoid talking about the pandemic. I had considered scrapping what I have and writing something more timely. I decided to go with this and let things settle a bit before potentially diving deeper into current events, even though they are consuming a large part of my thoughts. Before we get into this week’s main topic, I also wanted to share two videos I have come across recently that were both more fun to watch than I thought they would be. They really have nothing to do with anything, so it’s kind of nice. I am not even going to tell you what they are; here is video one and video two, enjoy.
Roaming Around My Brain
As I mentioned in the last newsletter, I have sort of become obsessed with a new tool(for simplicity’s sake, we will call it a note-taking app) called Roam Research. I have been using it for about a month now, and I feel like it could be the answer to something I didn’t fully understand I was looking for. Just as a note before we get into it– Roam is still in beta at this point, and because they had a massive influx of users recently, they have locked it down. As of right now, you can join the waiting list. That aside, I am going to show you why I think Roam is going to be a fantastic tool for me by trying to explain how my brain works, this seems simple enough…
Let’s Start With the Why
The older I get, the more I realize how much my brain fails me. Most people would probably say that I have a pretty decent memory. This has served me well, but I know it still isn’t good enough. For years I have been trying to figure out the best way to sort of create a second brain or back up to my brain. There are a few reasons for this; I know that not only do I forget things, but memory is a weird thing, and if you look into any science behind it, you can see how twisted memories can get. Another part is that with losing the people that were around when I was growing up, there is a lot of my history that I will never be able to find out about anymore. I don’t want my kids to have to deal with the same issue. I hope that if for some reason, I am ever gone, they will have access to all of the stuff I have kept, and they will have insight on how things were. And then, of course, there is just so much to keep track of. The longer the internet is around, the more our lives become digital. Then, on top of our own lives, all the stuff we consume is endless. So, how do you keep track of everything?
This Brings Us to the What
I love tracking different kinds of data. I love looking for trends. I love being able to have a slight memory of reading something and being able to pull up exactly what I am thinking about with just a quick search. This all means I am keeping a lot of different types of things. I save articles I find useful. I keep notes from books I have read. Notes about newsletter ideas, random thoughts I have, dreams, stuff I need to do, project ideas, quotes, things to buy at the store, goals, books to read. The notes are endless. Then you have kids, and you have to keep track of all of their stuff. If you start researching something that becomes a whole entity upon itself. Every account you set up, you have logins to remember(this one is much easier, you should use a password manager). You have PDF’s of all types you need to keep. Finances to track. Car maintenance records. Journals to keep. Letters you write people in the future. That’s just the more typical stuff. I like to keep weird data too. I keep track of when I see movies, and who I see them with. For a while, I was tracking all of the food I ate, everywhere I went in a day, how much I slept every night(or day). Some weird data points I still keep track of. This all has to go somewhere though right, and preferably it has to be easily searchable and backed up.
And on to the How
Over the years, I have tried several different ways to store everything I want to keep. I have gone all-in on Evernote, I have tried using plain text files(which in some ways is what Roam is doing) in a dropbox folder with different apps accessing it. I have tried using spreadsheets and new start-up apps and everything in between. Then you run into the choice of using just one app that sort of keeps all different types of data, or a bunch of apps that specialize in different parts. I have gone back and forth in these to camps as well. The issue with this is sometimes you can’t remember which system you put something in, so you have to search three different apps. The other side of this is your one catch-all app handles some types of info really poorly.
Then there was automation, I had all sorts of fun stuff going on, Instagram likes being put into Evernote and Dropbox, contacts moving into spreadsheets. Every trip our car took was automatically put into a spreadsheet. The possibilities seem endless. This gets messy too, though, API’s change and break your tasks, companies go out of business. Keeping up with this can end up being a lot of work.
Then there is the faltering between digital and analog. Digital is a million times easier to search and use, but sometimes just having a pen and paper is much better. I kept logbooks for a long time in paper journals. I always end up re-digitizing that, though, too. In the end, digital almost always wins out. I still always carry a little Field Notes notebook and a pen for quick notes.
I have split things up so far in the past that I spent just as much time figuring out how to use the systems I have built as I have spent actually being productive. I have literally written my self a fifteen hundred word note that is basically a workflow telling me where what stuff should be. Setting up each new system gets harder and harder as you have more data. Is it worth your time to re-set everything up when you don’t even know if a new service will last, or will it just get acquired by a more prominent company and rolled back in or shut down? Right now, there are a bunch of different apps I am using, but I think Roam may eliminate a bunch of them.
This Brings Us to Roam
Roam’s most significant feature is that it uses bidirectional links, allowing all the pages to connect to each other. I think a good comparison to this is IMDB, you can click a link of an actor from a movie they were in, and then you could click back to that movie, or a different movie they were in. I feel like this is how my brain works; following connections and seeing where things intersect. Using the notes this way, you don’t have to try and figure out which one folder it should go under, they all just sort of connected together. It is shifting the whole idea of how data can be laid out. You can even look at it from the graph view.
Here is a picture of my current graph; every dot represents a page I have created, and the lines are what they link too.
The other thing I really like that it does is start you out on the Daily Notes Page. Each day gets its own page. So I can use this both as a log and a place to keep notes. I like how this ties things together with days; for some reason, my mind has always grouped memories in relation to when things happen, so this helps keep that connection healthy.
Here is an example of a daily page, every entry is a bullet point, and they can contain whatever I want. Here we have when I was working, a book I was reading with some notes, and some links to different articles.
Here are a few examples of how these connections might work; - Maybe at some point, you saw John recommend a book on Twitter, then a year later Carl recommends the same book. You might have the book in your notes, but not remember why you added it. With Roam, when you go to add it the second time, then click on the page for the book, you could see, oh two people I trust now have recommended this book. It would list both entries under the page of the book. - Let’s say I come across a quote I like about leadership from Marcus Aurelius in a Ryan Holiday book. If I put this quote in my Daily Notes page from the day I found it, it would create an entry would come up under my Quotes page, the Marcus Aurelius page, the Ryan Holiday page, the page for whatever book it came from, and on that dates page. - If I go see a movie with Owen, I will log that. If I ever look up that movie, I will see the link to when I saw it and with who.
I know there is an inherent risk in using Roam, it is new, it is still in beta, you never know if these things will last. One thing that helps alleviate the risk is that every page is written in Markdown(a form of plain text that almost any app will read). Every day or two, I export my entire database of pages in a zip file to keep as a backup. Even if Roam were to go away, my data would still be usable. We are already starting to see other note-taking apps adding in the same bidirectional linking as well. Even if Roam went away, I could potentially use the same method in another app later.
I am still in the process of moving all of my notes from various places into Roam. It has taken longer than I would have liked, but I am enjoying looking through them all. While I understand the risk involved, I really hope Roam stays around. I don’t remember instantly clicking this well with another tool in a long time, if ever. I look forward to finding the connections from come moving all of my notes and seeing how my graph has grown by this time next year.
Appendix
- If you are more interested in the idea of the second brain, there is this video from the Verge, from a long time ago, that first turned me onto the idea. It sort of inspired me to set up my data this way in Evernote for a while.
- Drew Coffman has a video about Roam as well. If you want to learn more, this is an excellent place to start. I also admire his strong branding.
I hope everyone is staying safe out there, it has been a crazy week. Remember that while a lot of important things are happening, it is still ok to take a break from the news cycle. I have seen a lot of book recommendations going around the last few days. One book I haven’t seen on the lists that I think would be good for everyone right now is Talking to Strangers by Malcolm Gladwell. If anyone needs help or just to talk, let me know.
Thanks for reading,
Mike