During the September Dutch PKM Obsidian meet-up the topic of discussion was journaling. An interesting thing that stood out was how a participant demonstrated their use of named block references in Obsidian.

In Obsidian any phrase surrounded by double brackets is a link to another note. Adding an circumflex (accent circonflexe, ^) behind such a link allows you to reference a specific paragraph inside a note. On occasion I’ve used those, though not often.
If you add the circumflex and select a paragraph, Obsidian will add a random alphanumeric code behind the selected paragraph in the original note, and to the end of your link. Removing or altering either will break the link.

What I hadn’t seen before was that you can add your own block references. At the meet-up someone did that using templates so he new the block references in specific types of notes, and could always refer to them elsewhere, in this case establishing links between day notes and week notes in a predictable manner. These block references can then be human readable, and re-used (as long they’re unique within a single note).

In the past days I found myself using them to references reading / literature notes from my own notes. Especially I noticed that I use the block reference to point to the part inside a paragraph I’m mostly referring to.

Below is an example from this week.
First a reference link in one of my notes, with the block reference ‘sortboxes’. Then the original annotation. The reference ‘sortboxes’ points exactly to my words in the annotation I am referencing.

It’s interesting that after learning this possibility a month ago, I now see myself doing that in a different manner than I saw it, yet as emergent behaviour, as a new earned structure. A useful thing perhaps to also adopt in Latticework, as during sensemaking it is common that new thoughts or associations latch on to steadily shorter phrases or even single words of annotated material rather than full paragraphs, as you progress in thinking things through.

Reading Bob Doto’s recent book on his note making and writing practices, he explained how he uses his Luhmann-style alphanumeric numbering of notes as a way to spot where a richer grouping is emerging as a possible starting point for his writing. It made me ask, how to spot similar patterns in my digital notes without that numbering system?

Alphanumeric numbering

The alphanumeric numbering basically works like this: When you start your notes collection, you number the notes from the very first one. Say you start with your first two notes on two different topics, A and B. For Topic A, the first note you give the number 1. Topic B’s first note 2. Then for each new note, you decide where to place it in the existing collection. If you think it’s connected to Topic A, it may become 1a. A few notes down the line on other topics you may make a note you place in 1b. Then some time later you have a note you want to place directly after 1a. but not after 1b, so you number it 1a1, etc. Key here is that the numbering system doesn’t give a premade structure where you need to slot a new note in an existing hole (unlike library numbering systems). The numbering system merely means you must choose a first place where you place a new note, intentionally making a first connection to an existing note and number it accordingly. For physical note making systems on index cards this is I think basically the only way to do it, if you don’t want to use a predefined structure (and you don’t because structure is emergent from working with your notes, a knowledge output, not an administrative tool), and do want a navigable and explorable system.

Alphanumeric numbering to detect growth in your system

At the other end of his PKM system, where Doto creates writings using the material he collected over time, the alphanumeric system helps him in finding potential things to write about. Topics where there are lots of notes, accumulated over some period of time, will show up as denser parts of his alphanumeric system. Say in Topic B’s number 2 branch above, a year later there are just 1 or 2 new notes. 2.1 and 2.2. That is a signal Topic B wasn’t an interest that gained any depth that year. But say that note number 1a is now a grouping of a dozen notes, 1a1-1 and a further forking set below it, and 1a2 has some, and there’s 1a3 with no further notes attached. Clearly something happened there in the intervening time. Your attention attached a range of notes to that first starting point 1a, and perhaps it means you have something to write there to bring those notes together. It’s like a grape bunch on a vine. Vine 2 hasn’t grown any grapes let alone any bunches of them, but Vine 1a has. And there may be other grape bunches, bigger, smaller, elsewhere. You choose a bunch to make some wine, i.e. inspecting and reflecting on that grouping of notes and then writing.

On not having alphanumeric numbering in my system

My notes are not numbered that way, although they do contain a timestamp. They’re not numbered because I have a digital notes collection, in which it is easy to make links between notes. I add the time stamp both for unique titles (‘Some good summarising title 20241018125808’ is different from ‘Some good summarising title 20020424125820’ despite the same title text) and to glance from the title from which period in my activities something comes. My notes always have a link to another already existing note, like the alphanumeric system, I always intentionally choose a first connection. Without it, it is not really a navigable and explorable system. However, over time or at the time of first writing, I may add additional links from that note to others. It is not always visible which link was the first link, the equivalent of choosing the first position in the alphanumeric system.

On the output side this means I cannot easily spot where the density of my notes has grown to a budding grape bunch. I can see which notes are most heavily connected, using the Obsidian graph, but that’s equivalent to pointing a lot to a main branch, and the more I point to a single note the less meaningful it is, as it becomes more of a generic category essentially.

So what are my options to detect emerging dense spots in my notes?

The alphanumeric grape bunch is basically a group of one or more short or longer lineages originating from a single point somewhere in the total.
Those lineages are present in my notes too, but not easy to spot. Sometimes I make deliberate chains (Note B linking to more abstract concept A, and to more tangible example C, making an A-B-C train of thought), but not often. Lineages would be easier to spot if links in notes had metadata, like the time of linking. This would both show in a note the first link (the first place it was put in), and allow across notes the exploration of the sequence in which notes x, y and z got connected by looking at note creation data and incoming linkages. Links are information objects in their own right, and have different aspects like direction(s), character, intensity, a time dimension and a versioning history, none of which is captured in my system (nor in those of others I saw). Links can also grow into new notes. A link between A and B over time and through reflection deepening in meaning, necessitating its own note to express it with enough atomicity.

Might local graphs help?

The local graph of a note in my Obsidian tool can provide a bit of lineage, by looking at the vicinity of a single note limited to incoming links and set to a depth of 2 or higher. It’s not visually obvious though, it doesn’t jump out. In the following graph (incoming links, depth 2, with ‘Links as information object’ as the branching off point) I colored the different branches. Note that the title for each node/note has a timestamp showing how much time there was between one note and the following added to the lineage. Some notes have the same date, meaning they were written in the more or less the same sitting. Also note that some older notes link to some newer notes, indicating I edited the note to include a new link to a newer note)

What also emerges from this image is that several ‘lineages’ connect further ‘down’. Essentially they create a loop, a circle of notes. There are many more, and I think they are a sign of density (one that alphanumeric numbering doesn’t have), yet like lineages not easy to spot. Two examples are shown below. One circle based on a depth of 2, another with depth 3.

While this type of visualisation isn’t useless, it’s also not obviously useful in this case. Would there be other ways to search for things like “lines longer than 3 notes, with more than 1 branching off point with at least 2 notes depth”.

Do you have ways to spot emerging clusters outside of alphanumeric numbering and graphs in your notes? As a suggestion for your potential next writing?

How could I not buy these small notebooks? Made by my friend Peter from paper cut-offs from boxes he made and printed in Tuscany, they are made from Magnani 1404 paper. Magnani started making paper in Pescia in 1404 (they ceased operation in recent years, but another Magnani is still making paper, since 1481), right at the moment in time that the literate population of Tuscany started using paper notebooks to make everyday notes, and lots of them. Paper had become affordable and available enough roughly a century earlier, with Tuscany being at the heart of that, and Florentine merchants used their book keeping system and the paper notebooks needed for it to build a continent spanning trade network. After the Black Death personal note taking took off too, and from 1400 onwards it had become commonplace:

At the end of the Middle Ages, urban Tuscans seemed stricken with a writing fever, a desire to note down everything they saw.’ But they remained a peculiarly local phenomenon: there was something uniquely Florentine (or more accurately ‘Tuscan’ as examples also survive from Siena and Lucca) about them,…

Allen, Roland. The Notebook: A History of Thinking on Paper (p. 61).”

Around the turn of the year I gave The Notebook as a present to Peter thinking it would be something to his liking. My own notes have helped me learn and work for decades. E and I when we lived in Lucca for a month, passed through Pescia by train en route to Firenze.

Tuscany, paper from a company that was there from the start of everyday note taking, The Notebook, personal knowledge management, and friendship, all coming together in this piece of craftsmanship. How could I not buy them? So I did.

A useful tip from Nicole van der Hoeven that I adopted in the past days: using the title of a note also as a linked heading inside the note. Especially since the change in Obsidian that de-emphasizes the title of a note in the interface. My note titles are meaningful, Andy Matuschak style, and usually result from writing the note or from writing another note from which it branches off. (My titles also contain a timestamp ensuring they’re unique and providing the ability to place a note in time. Example: “Optimal unfamiliarity 20040107122600”) Having it as primary header in the note itself means I will more likely think about improving the title when I develop the note over time.

Personally, I put the filename as a heading, but I also put it as a link. When I rename the file, the link (which is also the heading), automatically updates.
Nicole van der Hoeven

Screenshot of what that looks like in practice:


Screenshot of a note title optimal unfamaliarity with its title as a header linking to the note itself

A personal knowledge management (pkm) and note making oriented rewrite by Dan Allosso of what was originally a guide for writing in the humanities by his father S.F. Allosso.

Allosso, being a historian, acknowledges the long history of methods that in the last 20 yrs or so were gathered under the pkm label. His advice on the why, what and how of making notes is more focused on their role in creating outputs than other texts about making notes (where output often is ignored or only addressed by hand waving).

At the very least that allows the notes maker to relax and to not obsess about doing ‘the system’ right to the point that it obscures what the system is actually for.

Short read, mostly well known territory but some useful takeaways still. Read as e-book.

Bookmarked Agency Made Me Do It by Mike Travers

This looks like an interesting site to explore and follow (though there is no feed). First in terms of the topic, agency. I’m very interested myself in the role of technology in agency, specifically networked agency which is located in the same spot where a lot of our everyday complexity lives. Second in terms of set-up. Mike Travers left his old blog behind to create this new site, generated from his Logseq notes, which is “more like an open notebook project. Parts of it are essay-like but other parts are collections of rough notes or pointers to content that doesn’t exist yet. The two parts are somewhat intertwingled”. I’m interested in that intertwingling to shape this space here differently in similar ways, although unlike Travers with existing content maintained. Something that shows the trees and the forest at the same time, as I said about it earlier.

Agency Made Me Do It, an evolving hypertext document which is trying to be some combination of personal wiki and replacement for my old blog. … I’ve been circling around the topic of agency for a few decades now. I wrote a dissertation on how metaphors of agency are baked into computers, programming languages, and the technical language engineers use to talk about them. … I’m using “agency” as kind of a magic word to open up the contested terrain where physical causality and the mental intersect. … We are all forced to be practitioners of agency, forced to construct ourselves as agents…

Mike Travers