A couple of days ago I stumbled across a person on YouTube, Vicky Zhao, doing innovative work related to note taking, mental models, and frameworks. And by watching her videos the last couple of days, I’ve been introduced to two other people, Fei-Ling Tseng and Nick Milo, doing similarly innovative work on note taking as well.
What’s completely blowing my mind in discovering all of this work though is how 1) it relates to my previous desire to create a note taking system that is optimized for vertical development and 2) it uses a metaphorical approach that is somewhat similar to my “The Adventure of Your Life” metaphor.
For example, both Vicky Zhao and Few-Ling Tseng have created what’s called an Idea Compass that helps you to figure out how to connect and relate something of interest you’ve found to your existing knowledge and notes. What’s poignant and innovative about this approach is that it is navigational in nature, using four compass directions, but also more importantly, one of those compass directions is entitled “transformational” which is critical for understanding the paradoxical nature of vertical development.
And Nick Milo also has an amazing video talking about his Lean Forward Learning paradigm whereby he has created a Flight School using its principles that lets a person “choose their own adventure” and fly through their “PKM planet”, thus taking your “thinking to the next level.” This mirrors very closely with my idea of a note taking system for vertical development replicating your inner worldview, thus helping you to see the “edges” of your inner psychological “world” and how to adventurously explore beyond them, thus expanding your worldview.
Finally, this as a whole has made me reflect on my identity as well. And it reminded me of something I’ve stated before as the essence of my evolving identity being about “simplifying technology” within the first half of my life and now an interest in “clarifying identity” now building upon that within the second half of my life.
What it made me realize though is that the two can now be connected, integrating my identity as potentially being “creating simple technology that helps clarify your identity.” This sounds like an interesting potentiality that would probably be more accessible and understandable to the average person, if I had to describe my work to them.