Vim Second Brain

I wanted to create a repo to describe a method of note taking that combines some of the best ideas on the subject with minimal reliance on third party vendors. The ideas are taken from Tiago Forte's Building a Second Brain podcast, and the Zettelkasten method, particularly as it's implemented in TheArchive. To get the most out of what I have to say below, I'd recommend spending some time with those resources.

Organization

I use the following directory structure to organize all of my notes:

All markdown notes go in: notes/
All image files go in: notes/media
All single file scripts go in: notes/scripts

That's it. To search my notes, I use the The Silver Searcher. For using the Silver Searcher in Vim, see this article.

The scripts included in this repository are there to speed up note creation. For example, if you want to create a new todo list, you can run .\new_todo.sh day_plan and a new file with a link to itself and the relevant tags for a todo list (see below for info on tags). I alias my scripts like this:

  alias bbt="new_todo.sh"
  alias bba="new_article.sh"
  alias bbf="new_flash_card.sh"
  alias bbs="new_snippet.sh"

I've also include a script for pushing notes to a git repository every minute, so that you're always backing up your precious infos. I do all of my work on a Mac. For convenience, you can just drop the contents of push_notes.sh into an Automator task, make it an app, and then run it from cron.

Types of Notes

There are three kinds of notes that I currently recognize in my implementation. Each kind of notes receives its own tag:

1. Checklists (#todo)
2. Factoids (#article)
3. Flashcards (#flash_card)
4. Code Snippets (#snippet)

Links Between Notes

A core concept of the Zettelkasten method of note taking is that linking notes to each other can faciliate creativity and problem solving. Vim allows you to link to files with the gf command. Whenever I write a link, I surround it with square braces so that it stands out.

When I'm writing a note, and I'd like to link it to another note, all I need to do is paste the path to the other note in the current note. See the note examples below for how I do this. Whenever I create a new note, I place a link to that note at the bottom of the note, so that I can easily yank the link and pasted it in other notes.

Tags

I've got three kinds of tags at work in my system:

1. Datetime Stamps
2. Type tags, see above
3. Project tags

I write a project tag like this #_project while the project is live. When the project is finished, I write it like this #!_project. I use a sloppy bash script to list all of the project tags in my notes directory. I don't maintain a ton of project tags, but I will use them for my workouts, e.g. #_workout.

Examples

Checklist

  # Day Plan  
  #todo 20051588542134  

  # Morning  
  -[x] make gorditas  
  -[x] visit Mom  

  # Afternoon
  -[x] spend time with spouse  
  -[x] plan the week  

  [[20051588542134_day_plan.md]]

Snippet

  # Vagrant  
  #snippet 20051588542134  

  To configure Vagrant for ssh, running Ubuntu 18.04, you'll want to ssh as the vagrant user, whose password is vagrant. E.g.,

      ssh [email protected]
   
  To place your key on the Vagrant box:

      ssh-copy-id [email protected]

  [[201904011100_vagrant.md]]

Article

  # Slow is Smooth and Smooth is Fast  
  #article #04142020  

  FROM: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/4FZfzqMtwQZES3eqN/slow-is-smooth-and-smooth-is-fast  

  Apparently "Slow is smooth, and smooth is fast" is a Navy SEAL saying. The meaning is pretty clear. Practice slowly so that the correct motor patterns are ingrained. And perhaps equally importantly, execute "slowly", that is to say, don't rush. Pushing your nervous system to perform faster than it's trained to will simply cause you to fumble what you're doing, and the end result is that your rushed performance is slower than if you had attempted a measured cadence in the first place.  

  [[202004140825_slow_is_smooth.md]]

Flash Card

A flash card is two notes, making it possible to link back and forth between a question and an answer.

# ImageDataGeneratorQuestion
#flash_card 20051588547204

Question: What is ImageDataGenerator good for?

[[20051588547352_ImageDataGeneratorAnswer.md]]
[[20051588547204_ImageDataGeneratorQuestion.md]]

# ImageDataGeneratorAnswer
#flash_card 20051588547352

Answer: ImageDataGeneratorAnswer is good for data augmentation to extend training examples etc. by shifting, zooming, and flipping image
data serialized into numpy arrays.

[[20051588547204_ImageDataGeneratorQuestion.md]]
[[20051588547352_ImageDataGeneratorAnswer.md]]