(highlight:: Beginning With No End in Mind: Collecting Bits of Knowledge to Form a Mystery Whole
Key takeaways:
• The speaker thinks of their work as passing data through a transom to generate insights.
• The speaker considers the transom to be an important factor in their work.
• The speaker asks questions and uses tools to determine what form the insights will take.
• The speaker applies this approach to personal projects as well.
• The speaker believes that generating knowledge is the primary goal of their work.
Transcript:
Speaker 1
So the way that i kind of think of it iss as a researchor, you bring in data and it goes through some sort of a barrier or a transom of some kind, and it comes out the other side in insights. And i think about that barrier is like one of those, you know, big bubble frames that you use as a kid, you know, where youve got like hundreds of little bubbles that come out of this big Frame. You stick it in the water, and you stick it up to the wind, and the bubbles come out the other side, right? That frame. A lot of people, i think, don't about the frame as being so important, but i'm constantly thinking about that. So i'm thinking, ok, so if i start by asking people questions in this way, with these tools, with these recording devices, with these questions that that the what does it look like coming Out the other side? Does it turn into like a filmis evocative that way. Does it turn into structure, data that i can mabe, quantify, or at least sort and filter? Does it turn into, you know, just a rich picture? Like, what does it turn into? And so i think a lot about that transom rigt, that filter, that bubble maker. So when i'm doing my musenplas for a new project, i think, k, where am i going with this? Case in point, im giving a presentation. Internally, we have like, an internal, you know, kind of a conference, i guess you could call i it. And i thought about doing a talk on this. Month ago, when i started having we redid our front yard, and we put rocks mostly in it. Got rid of the grass, you know, few plants with their low water desert orimented plants, and it's like a rock garden now with a few plants in it, except where we have this huge tree. And it started like raining leaves, no these rocks. It was like, i had a suspicion that this was going to happen, like ia thot, ok, now, you don't know until you do at right? Oh, god, you're not going to get out there and sweep up those leaves. And i was doing it so regularly, and with such, like, no wringing of hands. And it made me think of so much of how work functions like it feels useless, and it feels like tiny bits, like i'm literally picking up leaves with my hands to some degree, you know, and Then sweeping and moving. And i thought, oh, you know, really, this is an interesting testament to work. And so i started taking pictures, and then i started keeping track of how many trader joe's bags i filled upd worth of leaves. So i have the numbers of trader joe's bags over time. Turns out, i probably that's not going to be a great chart, but i thought maybe it might be a good chart. So i took it, and i thought, oh, taking pictures is a good thing. I might be able to tell stories an pictures. So i took pictures, and i put little captions on my pictures, and then i took som video. And then, you know, i thought, oh, video might be good. O'ka, i'll take some video. And then i made little notes on the video. So i was like thinking, there's a transom here. I'm passing things through this transom. What's coming out the other side? What bubbles? What's the shape? And form of these bubbles that i want. I didn't know, right? So tok a bunch of different shaped bubbles, and i used those. That's basically how i think about my work. And i don't know if a lot of people think that way, because they're not thinking, necessarily, about generating knowledge, which is all i ever think about.)
- Time 0:13:07
-

(highlight:: Maintaining a Practical, Iterative, and Imperfect Tagging System
Key takeaways:
• Tags should be pruned regularly on a regular basis instead of doing it all at once.
• It is not necessary for the tag system to be perfect; practicality is key.
• Updates should augment and add new tags, not necessarily displace the existing ones for an effective system.
Transcript:
Speaker 2
Have you found good ways of doing that, given that it's distributed among all these different systems? Yes.
Speaker 1
That is, prune is a really good word for that, cause it is pruning rit when you prune a tree, you know, it's not going to stay pruned, like, you have to go back, right? You have to prune it again. So i try to treat it not like is a big, you know, one off session where down and i prune oll my tags. I try to keep it as an iterative process on a regular basis. And i try to think of a good example, and i can't off the toff my head, so ill just make one up. But let's imagine that my older sabe files, right? Let's say something i read in grad school, you know, in two thousand and four, or something like that, i found, i'n like, ok, there's this article that i read, it's a periud article. And mendela, i look at the tags that i add there and there there seem archaic to me. I might add simply a new tag that is a little bt more of my contemporary taxonomy, just when i see it. I won't go through. I mean, i've literally got four o five thousand citations and mendela, like, i'm not gon to go through all those individually, but when i see it, i will update it. And because it's not a field like, you know, it's, i won't be displacing the existing tag. If i add a new one, i don't feel compelled to go back into the old ones necessarily. I'll just augment and add an additional tag. I'll do it on a regular base, it's just a little bit of pruning, you know, every couple months.
Speaker 2
But it sounds like the objective is not necessarily to have a system of perfect tags, but to have one that is practical and correct. All right, correct, correct.
Speaker 1
I mean, i think we get, anybody who's tried to make the perfect system will discover quite quickly that itwill outrun it. So, i don't really remember when i kind of gave up on that, but i did, like, i was like, no, there's no need to worry about it doesn't have to be perfect. It just has to be, as you say, practiccal usable. You know, something that is actionable and it produces good enough results. It doesn't have to be perfect. I think it was probably about a decade ago that i gave up on perfection on that one. Nd, i'm kind of glad i did, because i just kind of kept going with my imperfection. And it turns out, over time, it yields great results.)
- Time 0:23:17
-

(highlight:: The Importance of Adding "Thick Description" and Context in Note Taking
Key takeaways:
• Thick description and its understanding will help in personal note-taking and information architecture.
• Thick description is about choosing things that will have sufficient ambiguity to be meaningless without context.
• Knowing when to dive deep into thick description is useful in providing context and cultural significance.
• Adding just one sentence to provide context can make notes more useful and understandable.
Transcript:
Speaker 2
I'm wondering what, if anything, folks listening in might learn or might apply, particularly from sociology, that would help them in their own productivity. But in away that satisfies us, right?
Speaker 1
Like, without going overboard, you know, i think thick description was a really, i mean, that's actually from anthropology, i'll be fair. That's hof from sociology, but close enough. Thick description and understanding what that means will help you in your own personal note taking and information architecture. And what does that mean? It means, i'm sure everybody here has looked at old notes that they've taken and, you know, complete confounding wonder, what did i mean by this? It's a single bullet point, and it doesn't mean anything to me. You know, anthropologists knew that this was one of the reasons why, you know, most research is not very good. It's because it didn't have enough thick description. So thick description doesn't mean in writing deeply every single time about every single thing. It's about choosing things that in the future will have sufficient ambiguity to be meaningless unless you get the context ound it. The classic example that clifford girtz gave was the wink. So if you see somebody wink, it's not the same as a blink. If somebody blinks, that's an inadvertent movement of the eye. And if you don't have the description, a wink will, in your notes, will just appear exactly the same as a blink. A wink has cultural contect significance, message, a web of significance, as gerd says. So knowing when and where to dive deep into thick description is very useful, even if it's just a few sentences. So i actualy have to force myself to do this still to this day. I'm like, oh, you're not going o nderstand what this means in two minutes. Lake just add another sentence, just one sentence or oh. And the i write this is because, you know, if you say things like, john objected to this thing in the meeting, wut? Why? Who's john? I don't what's he objecting about, and i don't even knowho john is? John p you know, when he joined the meeting, objected to the speed at which we had already made the decision. Period. Way more useful.)
- Time 0:26:21
-