Firstly, thanks to the author for taking such time and care with the illustrations.<p>However, by way of contrast to many of the other comments on here, I found this particular explanation quite unhelpful, both in terms of the presentation communicating the idea as well as the parts of the idea that I was able to glean.<p>It’s probably an individual thing, but I don’t want to combine things into projects, and I certainly Don’t want to go down the route of having a folder structure.<p>Having recently converted my somewhat-organised notes into a Zettelkasten workflow, I have been amazed by the freeing nature of the medium. The core of my method is simple markdown files that can be easily written without the aid of any software. I have had fun building a significant amount of automation around the notes - building a traversable and plottable graph, implementing backlinking, templating and that sort of thing, but it is purely assistive and not necessary.<p>Some sibling comments make the point that BASB seems to be more of a complete theory, where as a Zettelkasten is a method alone. Here, I humbly beg to differ. It is the simple and mechanical nature of the Zettelkasten that frees the mind from the burden of too much information.<p>This is obviously an individual preference, but I think I’ve found the method that suits me.
The graphic design is stunning.<p>I did find it to be a massive distraction after the second or third page however.<p>There is a time and a place for an artistic touch and in this case, I found it distracting.<p>I find hand-written text difficult to read past 24pt and when done in gray, even more so.<p>Ultimately however, I think the greatest disagreement I have comes from the content itself - it reminds me of all the little tactics project managers I've had tried to use. All the 'team building' and 'team lunches' and 'daily stand ups'.<p>Life is about strategy, the long haul, not tactics. This approach is non-stop tactics and it never pauses to ask why go through all this? What are you trying to accomplish and is lack of organization bordering on OCD <i>really</i> the thing holding you back? Maybe it is, and if so, great.<p>This obsession with arbitrary processes to me, is simply manager-types trying to justify their existence and slick sales-men, trying to sell yet another 'productivity booster' that has no empirical evidence behind it, just slick advertising, such as these beautiful illustrations.
I recently built a note-taking system [0] to capture ideas quickly. The notes are parsed as a DSL that understands different organizational techniques. It also picks up on symbols for tracking things over time, such as transactions and events.<p>What is great about the DSL is that once learned you can express a lot of information without disrupting flow. To me that is one of the biggest barriers for taking notes via phone or computer. Once a good note-taking habit is developed it's wonderful to have that reservoir of information and ideas to pull from.<p>0. <a href="https://www.tatatap.com/how-to" rel="nofollow">https://www.tatatap.com/how-to</a>
A tangential point. I didn’t go through this article in detail, but I loved the illustrations so much that I ended up looking at a few other articles by her (Maggie Appleton). As someone who fails at Pictionary with very crude drawings, there’s something about those illustrations that’s simple, eye catching and admirable. I’m feeling envious.
These illustrations are great!<p>Regarding software, one thing I’ve long wanted and/or dreamed of making is an app that can be pointed at any directory of markdown files and images that would then use some kind of AI to analyze the data, look for patterns, present statistics, automatically tag things, etc. I want to be able to dump things in without much organization, but then to be able to view it in an organized way. One small example is the way that the Bear app finds to-do items in any of the notes and presents them in a separate list. That, but with all kinds of data.
I've basically built a version of this with trello, the butler addon, and some custom code to use custom fields to rank cards.<p>have a been toying around with productizing this.<p>let me know if you're interested
I've always found it a bit odd (and a bit frustrating) that many programs around knowledge-building/note-taking are Mac-only. Anybody know why that is? Devonthink sounds like such an interesting tool that I'd love to try, but it's Mac only. This article's author relies on two tools which, at first glance, are also Mac-only.<p>That said, am I the only one finding it really hard to parse pages of illustrations? It feels like I'm stuck having to analyse every single illustration to figure out what the author is talking about and that a bit of supporting expository text is missing.
I'd never heard of BASB until this post, but it seems so much more useful than the usual type of content about "zettelkasten" and such. Those seem so focused on the mechanical actions you take and not enough on the steps towards getting value from your notes.<p>Is there a book form of BASB, or is it a course only?
I have not taken this course. I do feel I have a second brain. I have constructed my own system of keeping my thoughts organized and making progress in better understanding in a cohesive manner.<p>By taking longer to finish grad school and ending up with mountains of debt.<p>And this second brain would be lost to the wind as soon as I take up a 9-to-5 Monday-through-Friday tech/STEM job where I have to do mainly what my boss tells me to do.<p>Go figure.