Categorizing Knowledge in the Information Age
Writing is a great way to pressure your thinking: it’s hard to summarize something you need help understanding. By trying to explain an idea, you’ll try many framings, flesh out its edges, and see new connections — Andy Matuschak
Consuming information or even too much of it is no longer a problem in the age in which we live. The main issue is categorizing all the information and distilling what is important to us. The challenge of knowledge is not acquiring it. In our digital world, you can reach almost any understanding at any time. The challenge is knowing which knowledge is worth acquiring.
Our minds have recency bias. We favor the thoughts, solutions, and influences that come to us most recently, regardless of whether they are the best. We can only start working with our thoughts once we clear our minds of the complicated ones. A Second Brain, where we can store many ideas for the long haul, makes time our ally instead of our foe.
Writing is where we clash ideas, fledge out edges and find potential connections. Writing makes a train of thought visible. The process put pressure on the idea. Writing exposes gaps in understanding.
The key is keeping only writing what matters in a trusted place under your control and setting aside the rest. Collecting knowledge has instant advantages for our mental health and peace of mind. You boost your creativity by capturing, processing, reworking, and refining your ideas over time. Ideas improve by writing about them, not by thinking about them, as Writing is thinking, more tangible. Humans are the only species that create. Of all the species in the world, we’re the only ones to make art, cook food, and build technology. Creation makes us human, as we will do everything we can to improve how we create things — and the thinking that goes into the things we make.
