🔮 The Cosmos

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LYT Kit

Author: Nick Milo Publisher: https://notes.linkingyourthinking.com/ Publish Date: N/A Review Date: 2022-12-30 Status:🌐

Annotations

  • MOC stands for Maps of Content because these notes map the contents of some of your notes.

  • MOCs help you gather, develop, and navigate ideas.

  • Whenever you start to feel that tickle of overwhelm that’s when you need to become a cartographer of your own content and create a new MOC.

  • Note: We can use our stress as a navigational tool to help guide our lives

  • MOCs help you manage anxiety in a positive way by allowing you a dedicated space to place related notes together.

  • In that space, MOCs create a concentrated environment that encourages rapid ideation through the interaction, exchange, and development of thoughts, notions, and ideas.

  • After you’ve developed an MOC you’re happy with, it becomes a reference for whatever project you need to complete: an essay, a product, a summation of thought on a topic. Thanks to developing your MOC, you might find that your new project is already 80% complete.

  • The MOC remains as a reliable navigational tool to the rest of your digital library.

  • The MOC also acts as a reminding tool on a subject.

  • The MOC remains ready to evolve as your thoughts grow, mature, develop complexity on a subject.

  • MOCs maintain their fluidity: As opposed to folders, MOCs are nondestructive, non-restrictive, non-limiting perspectives. Unlike a folder, you are not forced to use them to access your notes. MOCs are “overlays” that add relevant information but that don’t affect your base level notes.

  • MOCs allow for limitless flexibility. Unlike folders or Table of Contents (TOC), MOCs are not hierarchical. They are heterarchical. This means that different MOCs can map the same info in different ways, to fit whatever your current needs might be.

  • Evergreen notes

  • Most people take “just-in-time” notes. They take them for a specific short-term purpose—like a test or a project. When the milestone concludes, the notes lose their value. That’s “Churn and Burn”.

  • Evergreen note-making is diametrically opposed to this type of short-term note-taking. Instead of losing value over time, evergreen notes are able to grow in value and evolve. That’s “Know and Grow”.

  • Common properties of evergreen notes

  • Clear, Concise, & Distinct (Atomic) The title for evergreen notes should be a clear title or statement. Formulating this one-liner clarifies and sharpens your thinking. And the hidden beauty is that this process naturally enforces an atomic note size—meaning “one note = one idea”.

  • Own Words & Unique Perspective Writing in your own words is yet another constraint that forces you to actually think about what you’re trying to say. If your goals are to learn and grow your own thoughts over time, then your evergreen notes should be in your own words.

  • Non-static The modular, linkable nature of evergreen notes allows them to grow and evolve over time as you encounter anything that might relate to the note. In this way, your evergreen notes are like living entities—gaining in insights and complexity as time passes.

Many evergreen notes should be statements with clear opinion. That’s because it forces you to really think about what you’re trying to say. However, these “clear opinions” need “clear things” to talk about! What are these “things”?

  • ”THINGS” like:

Concepts: which can and should stand on their own Known Things: “The magna carta was signed in 1215” Standards: Things with a pre-set language (whether that’s programming, Things that follow a process, manuals, etc - examples include anything from mathematical formulas, to the basics of language, to the process of putting a bike together *Definitions, terms, topics, persons, places, or generally any other nouns

  • these THING-based notes will naturally spawn ideas of your own that have clear opinions (or statements). For example:

The note on the [[Magna Carta]] (Clear Thing) can then link to a personalized note titled [[No one is above the law]] (Clear Opinion), which could link to another note titled [[Protests can invoke radical change]] (Clear Opinion).

A note on [[Defining a variable]] (Clear Thing) can link to a personalized note on [[Understanding variables leads to higher level thinking]] (Clear Opinion).

A note on the concept [[Like begets like]] (kinda both Clear Opinion and Fact) can link to the opinion [[The neural formation of habits are additive]] (Clear Opinion) and a bunch of other notes. See this example below:

  • Linking your thinking encourages leaps of insights

  • Something amazing happens when you start linking your digital notes. You develop the muscle to make leaps of insights across domains of knowledge. It’s truly a super power—and a habit worth cultivating in today’s age because “value” is created when strangers on a plane start talking.

  • As you make rare and unique connections between different disciplines, you start to think more holistically about the underlying patterns inherent in both. These leaps of insight are not only fun, but they are all potential sources of new value creation (along with making you more interesting to interact with).

  • Evergreen notes maximize reusability

  • As the number of your evergreen notes grows over time, their value compounds into a priceless amalgamation of modular, agile thought-units.

  • MOCs Overview

  • MOC (EM-OH-CEE) stands for “Maps of Content” because these notes map the contents of some of your notes. (Hey, if you call ‘em “Mocks” that’s fine too.)

  • In a nutshell, MOCs help you gather, develop, and navigate ideas.

  • The ability to know when and how to make an MOC is a key skill in overcoming overwhelm and project slowdown. Whenever you start to feel that tickle of overwhelm (Mental Squeeze Point), that’s when you need to become a cartographer of your own content and create a new MOC.

  • For example, let’s say you have 20 scattered notes on the project you’re making. Just like putting 20 index cards on an inviting rustic workbench, putting links to all 20 notes into a new MOCs is the digital equivalent.

  • (That’s from a bottom-up starting point. You will also want to use MOCs to make sense out of existing knowledge from a top-down starting point.)

  • Why use MOCs

    1. MOCs help you manage anxiety in a positive way by allowing you a dedicated space to place related notes together.
  1. In that space, MOCs create a concentrated environment that encourages rapid ideation through the interaction, exchange, and development of thoughts, notions, and ideas.
  2. After you’ve developed an MOC you’re happy with, it becomes a reference for whatever project you need to complete: an essay, a product, a summation of thought on a topic. Thanks to developing your MOC, you might find that your new project is already 80% complete.
  3. The MOC remains as a reliable navigational tool to the rest of your digital library.
  4. The MOC also acts as a reminding tool on a subject. Years later you can quickly return to it and remember, “Oh I remember now, that’s what I thought about the how the evolution of fonts related to the broader movements of Art History!”
  5. The MOC remains ready to evolve as your thoughts grow, mature, develop complexity on a subject.
  6. MOCs maintain their fluidity: As opposed to folders, MOCs are nondestructive, non-restrictive, non-limiting perspectives. Unlike a folder, you are not forced to use them to access your notes. MOCs are “overlays” that add relevant information but that don’t affect your base level notes.
  7. MOCs allow for limitless flexibility. Unlike folders or Table of Contents (TOC), MOCs are not hierarchical. They are heterarchical. This means that different MOCs can map the same info in different ways, to fit whatever your current needs might be.
  8. MOCs encourage “Relational Positioning”: Don’t argue with the Ancient Greeks and Romans about the value of spatial relationships. It helps us remember better when ideas are not floating in isolation, but as a part of a spatial constellation.

  • Gather Phase

  • The first non-linear phase of MOCs is where you assemble, collect, gather, curate, incubate your ideas. This is where you put related stuff on a new digital workbench.

  • Imagine having a warehouse of limitless workbenches, and for each workbench you curate the notes placed on it. Whenever you feel you need to get a handle on a bunch of notes on Subject XYZ, just throw them all onto a new workbench—i.e. place their links into a new MOC note titled Subject XYZ MOC. Now it’s easier to begin.

  • A Mental Squeeze Point is when your unsorted knowledge becomes so messy it overwhelms and discourages you. Either you are equipped with frameworks to overcome the squeeze point, or you are discouraged and possibly abandon your project. This is usually followed by yet another search for the next app that will make all the difference.

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