Powerfully Powerless Tools
Some tools must choose to be dumbed down. PKM tools are one example.
There is a repeated paradigm in the Tools for Thought Software as a Service market. They are too complicated to use. Calendars, Objects, Comments, Backnotes, Blocks, Tasks, etc, etc, etc...
To pull out the most from these tools, you must first grow some skillfulness in these tools and aggregate enough information over a threshold. For team tools, you must ensure this for every member. If you're choosing a tool based on what features it includes, instead of where it can take you, it's like when you prepare for an exam, you try to make a perfect note instead of actually studying.
To successfully harness the productivity tool, you must flow at one point. Tools and infra fade out, and you only focus on the content. Our brain must outpace the tool; our brain must work more than the tool. Even Notion is too complicated for personal task management.
Based on my experience, tools must have the minimum friction, only having...
- Journal. You write daily notes.
- From there on, highlight keywords by adding double brackets.
- Regularly explore the double-bracketed keywords. Write more details.
- Voila! You realize that things are interrelated in a way you never imagined.
Out of intense complexities, intense simplicities emerge. -- Winston S. Churchill