# Build a Better Exobrain: Week 0 Overview

# BBE Overview

## One Sentence Idea

The spirit of [Hammertime](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/rFjhz5Ks685xHbMXW/hammertime-day-1-bug-hunt), applied to the subject of [Obsessive Notetaking](http://users.speakeasy.net/~lion/nb/html/).

(On further consideration, [Gwern](https://www.gwern.net/About) catches the intention I'm going for better than this does.\*)

## Quick Disclaimer

This is **not** an **Intro to Notetaking** course. Perhaps I will write one someday, but this is not it.

This is the write-along of one notetaking superuser, trying to work out how to be an even better notetaking superuser.

This is aired in public for a few reasons. First, it is part of the nature of writing to want some of it to be read. Perhaps it will be of use to other notetaking superusers.  Also, I wanted to summon the blunt force of visible accountability.

It is my dream that this will come to resemble -in equal parts- a love-letter to notetaking, and a grueling practice-regimen.

With that said, let's see how I do.

## Core Goal

My core goal is to make at least 4 reference-docs over this next month that I pull up *at least* 100x afterwards. Ideally, more like 1000x.

(For it to count, it must be brought up for the purpose of *reading* it, not writing to it. Constant updating is a cost, not a benefit.)

This seems achievable to me. I already have a few notes that probably pass this bar. My cheatsheet for BASH is top among them, but my personal list of Hamming Questions Variants gets pulled up a lot as well.

### Secondary Goals

There are many secondary goals that would go well with this. Here are just a few of them.

* Post on LessWrong 1/week
   * Could be things from the notes
   * Could be meta about the notetaking process
   * Could be double-meta about the notetaking learning process
   * There is No Triple-Meta
* Learn things I expect my future self would endorse
    * Train to Retain, not Learn to Lose
    * Long Description: Make lasting seeds that my best future-self would endorsedly chose to repopulate her brainspace with, via looking them back up.
* Keep a reference system that pays dividends
    * Have a laconic lookup for my [Hammers Nails and Models](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/QzBuuNEqJGQFeWM4f/hammers-and-nails)
    * Move the best of my old notes to a good lookup system
* Better Structuring of Thought
    * [Better Knowledge of the Structuring of my Thought](http://users.speakeasy.net/~lion/nb/html/)
* (Complete list in personal notes)


## Materials

My core notetaking software is the personal wiki software [Tiddlywiki](https://tiddlywiki.com/), with a side of [StackEdit](https://stackedit.io/) for quick uncategorized thoughts.

I have been extremely happy with Tiddlywiki. I don't expect this to change. I might go over why some other time; it would likely be an entire post in itself.

## Mechanisms

The main way I think I will do this is to produce *many* good notes, all of which have a reasonable chance of being re-referenced.

(Meta-note: It has been a week since I started, and I noticed that I've leaned more towards "systems" than I originally anticipated. This is not yet a problem, but could become one if it extends into the 2nd week)

However, I am likely to try a few things from every major angle of attack.

Broad strategies:

* Improve my notetaking
    * More notes
    * Better notes
* Make my notes easier to... 
    * Retrieve
    * Reference
    * Use
* Improve my Strategy
    * Choice of Subject
    * Templates and Indexing
    * Better Plug-Ins
    * TAPs

## Last Thoughts

I started on this at the beginning of the month, so I already have things to report!

Week 1 split into 2 threads of thought, so check out one or both of...

* [Categories of Notetaking Software](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/8eXgAEq9fogYBfx4k/bbe-w1-hmcm-and-notetaking-systems)
* [Personal Notetaking Desiderata Walkthrough](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/xqQJ7K7G9bmCF35Hq/bbe-w1-personal-notetaking-desiderata-walkthrough)

# Footnotes

\* The [Kimbro](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/8eXgAEq9fogYBfx4k/bbe-w1-hmcm-and-notetaking-systems) link caught some of that slightly-manic quality that helps get projects off the ground, but [Gwern's](https://www.gwern.net/About#target-audience) description of long-living (alive, updating, revising) reference repositories for your future self hits closer to the core of my personal notetaking goals.