For the last several years, I've taken part in the Goodreads reading challenge [https://www.goodreads.com/challenges/show/11650-2021-reading-challenge]. I tend to come up 3–5 books short each year, but I'm happy overall with how much I've been reading. However, I'm not crazy about what I've done with the books I've read. Often, I've done very little beyond reading the words on the page. I made highlights and perhaps a short blurb somewhere in my notes. But as this was all before I had…
Joel Hooks shared this post about writing more and worrying less about the polish. He mentions how shifting from thinking about his writing and site as a blog to a digital garden helped him to write more: > Seriously. The idea of a "blog" needs to get over itself. Everybody is treating writing as a "content marketing strategy" and using it to "build a personal brand" which leads to the fundamental flawed idea that everything you post has to be polished to perfection and ready to be consumed. I…
In a recent post [https://chrisbowler.com/making-sense-of-roam-research/], I made an offhand mention that Obsidian [https://obsidian.md] might be a better fit for some people than Roam Research [https://roamresearch.com]. What was that all about? Well, for one, I believe both are good tools. If you're looking to use Roam as a Zettelkasten tool, Obsidian offers many of the same benefits. I've been keeping my eye on its development all the months that I've cautiously used Roam. It's super easy to…
I signed up for the beta of this app [https://getmatter.app] because there have been a few instances where I wanted to listen to a blog post I had saved. My first thought was that iOS must have some kind of functionality for this (it does). But then some people in the Roam community mentioned Matter. On a recent run, I gave it a try and listened to two blog posts that were around 2,000 and 4,000 words each. And it was a fairly pleasant experience. It's still an AI voice reading text, so it…
Just over a month ago, I gave an intro tour of Roam Research to the Wildbit team. We have a call of this type on the first Friday of each month, and I'd wanted to do this for a while as a few people on the team started to use it. But each person seems to come away from the first few log-ins to Roam with this same question: How do I use this thing? The truth is, after months of using it, I still didn't have a firm sense of how I wanted to use…
I've been focused on enhancing my reading over the past couple of years (not to as much success as I would like). It's a desire to ensure what I read truly impacts me, to put effort into my reading. Or, as Adler puts it: > And that is why there is all the difference in the world between the demanding and the undemanding reader. The latter asks no questions — and gets no answers. But of late, I've rediscovered another area this is of great benefit: deep listening. One recent evening, an evening…
I have done well to stay away from new productivity apps the past couple of years. I'm still using Things as my main repository of projects and AoR (areas of responsibility) — this has not changed since Things 3 arrived and I wrote about it [https://thesweetsetup.com/apps/best-personal-gtd-app-suite/] for The Sweet Setup. The biggest change in recent years has been the use of pen and paper for daily planning and tracking. I still do this today (currently with a Do Journal from Baron Fig, but I'…
My wife gave me an awfully nice gift for Father's Day this year. She took the kids out of town for a week to visit her family, leaving me all alone at home for 6 days. The irony of this being a Father's Day gift is not lost on me. But to all the introverted dad's out there who've been working at home along with your children for the past five months, I feel you ✊ I love 'em all, but I was definitely looking forward to a lot more peace and…