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by jwells89 995 days ago
Maybe procrastination isn’t the right characterization of note-taking.

For me, Obsidian is a place to dump thoughts, keep ideas for later, and a scratchpad. It lets me clear my mind of all of the random things that pop up so I can focus more on the tasks at hand. It might sound silly but writing out all the things I’ve been thinking about does wonders for freeing up mental bandwidth, which in my experience is critical for being productive — it’s a lot harder to maintain focus when you’ve got a bunch of different thoughts vying for processing power.

I might not revisit all of my notes, but that’s fine. They’re there when/if I decide to turn them into projects.

I don’t go too far on the organizational or bells and whistles aspects though, the extent of that is folders and the odd tag here and there, because neither really matters much so long as I can find my writings easily.
2 comments
grozmovoi 995 days ago
> It lets me clear my mind of all of the random things that pop up so I can focus more on the tasks at hand.

I think this is key here. It's the same for me. If I don't dump my thoughts int o an organized form they will nag me. When I write them down (and about most of them, I forget or delete later), it allows me to work on the task at hand. If I don't, I end up thinking about all the avenues of exploration of those ideas, todos, etc...

It's akin to how instead of keeping those thoughts in RAM I put them in my SSD. RAM is just for what's happening now.

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jwells89 995 days ago
Yep. It’s an interesting effect. I think half the reason things get stuck in my head like that is because they’re interesting and I don’t want to forget them, so my mind keeps wandering its way back to them. “Hey, what about that fun idea?”

By writing them down I no longer have to worry about them being forgotten since I can always scan over my notes when I’ve got spare mental bandwidth to work with, which stops my mind from wandering.

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the_fury 995 days ago
Due to me procrastinating with my notes, I was able to remember that I had touched on this before. According to my Obsidian notes:

"Zeigarnik Effect Directs Our Focus Onto Unfinished Tasks"

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