Question: What has improved your cognition 10x?

[vicktorium]

we've had many great improvements from everything from electronics to communication ... but i'm asking if you can list something(technology, idea, company, protocol, ??) that has improved your cognition 10x?

i'm talking major improvements here.

[cc101]

Write to think. Type some poorly developed idea into a word processor. Then, try to improve and extend it. I can easily cycle a dozen times over a given idea. The result often amazes me with its insights and clarity. Save the results or you will likely lose them.

[gala8y]

I'll second cc101 (writing is thinking) and MountainMan1312 (accessible, searchable notes help a lot). Also... you know... the usual... proper nutrition, proper sleep, moving your body.

[_g0wg]

PKMS, or the "second brain"

Basically anything I did prior to 3 years ago didn't really happen. I can't remember it, I can't find it, it's gone.

One day I needed to take some notes, and I knew I needed to remember these notes for a long time. Being autistic, I had to come up with a system. So I started a folder called `~/kb` and started shoving everything in there. Immediately I became dissatisfied with the disorganization, so I started using a hierarchical naming convention. Now I keep all of my files in this one folder.

For example, I have notes about Star Wars. The main note is `lore.sw.org`, but separate from that note, I have a note detailing the chronological watching order: `lore.sw.chron.org`, and `lore.sw.tcw.s1.e12.avi` is my legally-obtained copy of one of my favorite episodes.

As you can see, notes aren't the only thing that go in there. The hierarchical naming system (x.y.z.ext) makes it so that file-extensions are part of the hierarchy. Continuing with the Star Wars example, take the following two files:

- `lore.sw.ships.venator.org`

- `lore.sw.ships.venator.png`

See, they're named the same thing except for the extension. Years from now I'll know exactly what I named that one file, because there's only ever one logical name in my mind.

Part of what makes it so easy to name things is my use of top-level hierarchies. These include but are not limited to:

- archive (arc.)

- concepts (con.)

- film.

- game.

- groups of people (grp.)

- languages (lang.)

- lore I didn't create (lore.)

- lore I did create gets its own top-level node for each project

- people (ppl.)

- products (prod.)

- projects (proj.)

- school.

- self.

- social.

- software (soft.)

- systems (sys.)

- vehicles (veh.)

There's lots of other details, but I'll keep things short:

- any filename appended with `.agenda.org` or `.log.org` automatically gets used by org-agenda as an agenda file.

- occasionally I something to be in a subfolder inside ~/kb. These get named with the hierarchical system, with a `.d` appended (for example I keep my work from C: A Modern Approach in `lit.k-n-king.c_a-modern-approach.assignments.d`)

This has been the single biggest improvement to my life in general that I've ever done. I can actually remember things, make progress on things without forgetting everything, it's great!