by komali2 | 2026-01-31 04:57:17+00:00
I think about this a lot and have written about it a bit.

First off, it doesn't seem to matter whether you maintain a Zetelkasten or an org mode system or follow GTD. There have been some very productive people that have used these systems, and there are people we still talk about 2,500 years after their death who definitely didn't use these systems.

I know a girl who knows pretty much nothing about personal knowledge management systems and puts todos as notes in her apple notes app. She's a baker. Recently she used some random LLM app generation platform to launch an app wherein you take pictures of your nails and then can put random designs on it to see what your nails would look like with that design. Last I heard, she had several thousand downloads already, in just a week or so.

I know a guy worth multiple tens of millions because he thought Bitcoin was going to be the global currency by 2016. He's otherwise unremarkable and spends his time going from regional Burn to regional Burn, getting high, and playing videogames.

I'm not sure why we use personal knowledge management systems or try to optimize our lives, I guess it probably doesn't matter. For me I'm also not sure; maybe to be as actualized as possible? Maximize the "potential" of my life? Get rich? Get famous? Get powerful (read: some combination of rich and famous)? To what end? Because I admire the changes Newton and Feynman and Torvalds wrought in the world? Did they even use these systems? Am I smart enough to have anywhere near their level of impact? Can I make up the difference with a highly tuned external brain, like Manfred Macx?

Well, it doesn't seem to matter. Stephen King has a rigidly disciplined writing schedule and is an incredibly prolific author. George RR Martin is so much the opposite he once asked King on stage for advice on being a more productive author. Both are world famous authors, both have had multiple tv shows made from their works. The only thing consistent between them is they both have some kind of output into the world, and that output happens to be really good. Now let me introduce you to some highly successful authors who write atrociously. After that I'll introduce you to some writers you've never heard of, who write a huge volume of good work but just haven't "broken through."

Cynically, it seems like we have about as much say in the outcome of our lives as a dice roll, and all the decisions we make can at most trigger a second or third roll that could end up anywhere, and whether it's a better or worse roll is uncorrelated with whether the decision was a "good" or "bad" one as we typically measure these things (I know a recovered drug addict that found success in life through a combination of using his past as inspiration to fuel not wasting any more of his life, and leveraging the connections he made when making his way through the legal / recovery system. The decision to try heroin is directly correlated with his now enviably successful life).

The interesting thing is, you can experience this for yourself, cheaply and relatively quickly. Make a play at a successful YouTube channel. Film a couple hbomberguy style deep dives into any topic that interests you, and join the hordes of video essayists clambering for Algo attention, hoarding a couple hundred to a thousand views per. After 5 years you might get a viral hit that completely turns your channel around, or not.

I guess unsurprisingly, Life is an unsolved problem. I just wish all the little experiment I try had at least a measurably positive outcome over time. It seems to not matter outside of making me feel good.