Authors Note: This blog post was imported from substack
“Pretend to be making something, until you actually make something.” – Austin Kleon
The first post on this page was an idea stolen from Nicky Case, who, after leaving Twitter, created a format to share the things that added value to their life. In order to avoid the anxiety of a “bad first post,” here’s what added to mine!
Make It Yourself: 1000 Useful Things to Make
https://makeityourself.org/
For a project that looks as though it took hundreds of hours of work, it is criminal that the video behind it only has 68k views after 10 days.
Put simply, “Make it Yourself” by NODE is a free, open license, digital book that showcases over 1000 useful DIY projects from all over the internet. Each project has been categorized, linked, and tagged with the materials needed to make it. Ranging from leatherworking to DDR Dance Pads, every single DIY listed in this book has a beautiful illustration resembling that of an IKEA instruction manual.
The philosophy behind this book is more important than ever. NODE makes it a point to highlight that “creative people are making high quality things of all kinds and sharing their work freely with all of humanity.”
So I ask you, dear reader: What are you making for yourself?
Everyday items have become more expensive, especially for those of us participating in No Spend November. As the adage holds, constraints (even financial ones) foster creativity. Now is the best time to be creative, as those limitations have been naturally imposed. No time to post? Write. No time to write? Read. A lesson I have to remind myself is to always have a side project.
The labor of love put into this book is an impressive take on what could have been a typical listicle. What other editions of this could be made? A compilation of VFX, SFX, and software tutorials following a similar format? An edition featuring solely technology, furniture, or other niches?
The book concludes its introduction with “Ad Factorem Mundi” which translates to “To the makers of the world.” As the current creative space becomes inundated with content from large language models and machine learning, having a project showcasing only human creations is a breath of fresh air.
NotebookLM
https://notebooklm.google.com/
Funny enough, while a world of human-created work is a breath of fresh air, why not become a cyborg?
TikTok influencers and productivity hackers always start with the same hook: “Top 5 tools to help YOU get better grades,” or “THIS is how you use AI to become the next GENIUS.” And then proceed to show you a poorly made GPT wrapper that trains on your data and locks “features” behind massive paywalls. However, this is genuinely one of the most powerful tools I have heard no one talk about, and it’s completely free.
NotebookLM is essentially a research assistant that (privately) trains on the documents you provide it. It has the capabilities to answer questions with citations from the provided sources, pull all relevant information related to a topic, and – this is one of the coolest features – create a podcast based on the sources provided.
The podcast itself has passed the point of uncanny valley. Called Deep Dive, the two “hosts” have a conversational like tone with “umms,” “ahhs," and even interjecting each other occasionally. They summarize the sources, question each other, and even react when the subject matter being discussed is of a sensitive nature. It is a very entertaining way to catch up on what might supposedly be a dull research topic. Here’s a snippet from the result I got when I fed this post into the software:
NotebookLM’s ability to integrate dozens of documents and extract useful data from it has been an absolute game changer for my academic work. It’s as if you put Ctrl + F on steroids. The summary plus citation feature has created a workflow where I request all information on a topic from over a dozen documents, review all the citations, and then form an argument based on the findings. The process then becomes cyclical as I request even more relevant information for and against my argument.
I highly suggest you try it too! It’s free and private, so what do you have to lose?
Obsidian
https://obsidian.md/
Now on the opposite end of the spectrum, while having an AI-infiltrated database is nice, it is also good to have a separate, locally stored one for all your thoughts.
Recently, I’ve been on the hype train of Personal Knowledge Management (PKM). I’ve genuinely been frustrated that every time I read a book, I eventually forget the contents. I’ve even convinced myself that a book not remembered is time wasted, equivalent to watching YouTube while eating.
So, setting out for a solution, PKM is essentially a way to connect your ideas, readings, and anything else worth “capturing” into a single database. As this database grows, the beautiful thing is that you start to see connections between ideas that you didn’t notice before. And when you want to write about them, you aren’t just starting with a blank page—all the ideas and their connections are in your database, making it as simple as arranging them!
A graph view of literature notes I’ve taken on Malcolm Gladwell’s The Tipping Point
Now people have written extensively on this subject, with one of the foundational texts being How to Take Smart Notes for the Zettelkasten PKM system, so I won’t go as into depth. However, I do think it is important to note that I am treating this as a hobby, something that can come and go, and that I can hopefully bounce back to.
Now why Obsidian?
Every single source I’ve looked into for PKM recommended either Obsidian or Notion. The key features of these softwares being the ability to backlink to different pages and create organizational systems based on how they work for you.
And while I do love to extol the virtues of Notion, I hate that it is cloud based (slow), has too much AI integration, costs way too much money for some basic features, has 1000 block limits for collaborations, and many, many other personal gripes. Obsidian on the other hand, is free, locally hosted (fast), has optional AI integration, and saves all your work as text files on your computer, no cloud connection required.
Obsidian has been great to work with and learn overall, and the fact that it’s free is a huge bonus since there’s literally no cost to try it out. The software makes a lot more sense once you realize it’s just a candy-wrapper for text files; they make notes look pretty, and make what’s inside easy to navigate.
It was designed for Zettelkasten in mind, which is loosely how my notes are organized now. With that out of the way, here’s a brief on how I’ve organized my own personal knowledge database.
Fleeting Notes
These are day to day notes and any random or thought-provoking ideas I think would be useful to record for future use.
Literature Notes
These are notes made from media I’ve consumed, be it books or content, comprised of a summary and links to atomic notes based on concepts I wanted to capture. These typically act as a hub for all the ideas the media contains.
Permanent Notes
These are combinations of (referenced) fleeting and literature notes that create new and insightful thoughts that can be built upon. Connecting permanent notes can also build on each other here.
Project Notes
And lastly, project notes are permanent notes that are so good that they can be turned into actual media/output. These typically source from the previous three types of notes.
As a disclaimer, this system works for me, but use it as a framework for how your own brain works. The benefits of this system are that it uses a mix of folders and backlinks, which covers every different type of note I’d like to capture in the database. It also follows a flowchart-esque note-taking style, which is similar to how our neurons and synapses work. In fact, I was surprised that, with the first set of book notes I took, I unconsciously memorized the entire framework!
So please, give any of these a try—you might discover your next favorite hobby!