Failing to update this space has been on my mind a great deal the last two weeks. Leaving it barren for so long an interval was not undertaken without awareness of risk in this age when everything is to be forgotten in a moment in order to make room for the next thing.
But it had to be done.
The great jeopardy of this little, “I Will Teach You to Be Smart,” non-fiction, non-theology, i.e. contribution to “natural philosophy” book-writing endeavor of mine is that every layer of precision information recall I uncover in my own framework development is itself something worth writing about right now. Not for publication. Not for you or anyone else. Not yet. This is writing for me today, tomorrow, the next action. This is exploration. This is play with a new toy, testing out a new tool. So, when it comes time to spend a few weeks reformatting and reinventing your archive system, which two weeks also happen to involve the light flooding of your workspace and your puppy nearly chewing his own tail off, one must at times let the 6x4s fall where they may.
Meanwhile, we’re founding a Spiritual Retreat Center slash “gap-year bible-school for men” outside Rockford Illinois, dedicated to the Psalms, the Proverbs and the Struggle of the upright and narrow Way. The more shovels I scoop from this ground on this one, the more I realize what an all-consuming adventure I’ve put hand to plow on. I remember the entrepreneurial prophets whom I once gave my ear to via podcast preaching that any new business venture that hopes for success requires the utmost sacrifice of nearly every other endeavor by its founder for the better part of a decade.
So be it. I’m all in. My wife and kids are with me, as is a good crowd of people here in Illinois. But that means this space must readjust its place in the big schema.
My primary goal with this space remains to provide a landing page for all the other work I do. This is the place to “follow me.” Publishing new content as a serial writer is just a bonus project. Even so, it is one that I want to commit the kind of excellence in attention that I desire to give to all my projects.
So, please expect this space to by more of a dance with history that a newsflash of infotainment, and please enjoy the ride with me. I’m not going away. I’m just getting busy in more real places.
For those of you interested in the fast, dirty version of the archiving lessons learned in the last two weeks, read on:
The primary discovery was not that my archive hungered some form of internal structure or framework. The discovery was what those first branches of information would turn out to be.
A key insight of Luhmann/Ahrens work is that, over time, contemplating the vast stream of inputs that you note as valuable, including the many categories and structures that others have harvested from the tree of knowledge, you will inevitably create your own. That is to say, until you discover your own mode of thinking, you can only ever be an imitator. The power of smart is not to copy but to translate.
Finding such deep personal categories as this will only happen over a great deal of time allows you to congeal and digest a great deal of information, leaving behind something that can rightly be said to be marked by your identity, your way of thinking. In this journal that is ever reformatting itself, in this “slip-box,” your partitions won’t be just theoretical ideas. They will be real distinctions, labels with the power of discernment baked in.
Here is what I discovered my archive framework wants to seed its first major partitioning-refraction:
Archive 1 is in an Inbox for the archive. Anything I am done with or even do not have a clear action on goes here immediately to reduce drag. If I can’t decide what to do with it and it is not time-sensitive, it parks here. The idea will return whenever I next decide to dust off the archive, or whenever I want to empty the archive inbox (quarterly? bi-annually?) Point being: out of sight, out of mind, but hardly gone. I always know where it is, unless its meant for….
Archive 2 is Deep Storage. This is where I put anything I don’t think I will ever need again, but still find too valuable to throw out. These things don’t need to be thought about any more. This is all appropriated and internalized now. Looking at this old “journal” brings a bit of nostalgia and keeps me from having to go through the emotional pain of throwing out these things I worked so hard for. But in the end, I’m never planning to see these notes again, except when I go in to file away some more. That’s the moment when tesseraction can happen, as you try to safely forget “this,” you happenstancely remember “that,” and “that” is exactly what you didn’t know you were looking for. To summarize, Archive 2 is A. a Safety Net B. a Nostalgia Sink C. Random Future Discovery Potential
Archive 3 is reserved for stand alone cards that read as sentences or paragraphs. This one is pretty particular, as it may have a use here at substack someday. But for the moment, it is a place for solid, complete thoughts. Better than bumper stickers, more potent than memes… proverbs, of a sort. Maxims. Good ideas. One good note at a time.
Archive 4 is my Special Reserve These are the cards that I don’t need to see again until I remember that I have them. Then, I will want them badly, and they will be here. This is the kernel, the slipbox proper, the gist, or where the gist shall collect and distill over time.
I am confident there are more layers, just as I am confident that only some of this is truly fundamental. Finding your own is part of the glory of the theory: God so hid information that we each have our own viewpoint, but there is only ever one Truth.
What I have shared is a ripe blend of strategy and tactic, so not all of it will translate. If I were to guess at it, I would suggest that giving the archive an inbox is a particularly valuable action, as is distinguishing between the archive you want to find on purpose and the archive you’d rather leave to luck, chance or predestination to bring back around.
Artwork: I no longer remember where I found this beauty.