Atomic Notes
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Leonardo da Vinci, whose notes were “a collection without order”;
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Leibniz, who created a haystack of notes (oh, and calculus);
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Aby Warburg, who suffered from Verknüpfungszwang - the compulsion to find connections; and
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Hermann Berger, a Swiss author who wrote a novel about a Zettelkssten (two actually) but didn’t publish it.
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Then there’s cultural theorist Walter Benjamin, who invented a whole new methodology for his Arcades Project, which he didn’t finish. Wikipedia. He’s certainly a candidate for unqualified posthumous ADHD diagnosis.
- Austin Kleon, interview on The Echoes Podcast, 10 June 2025.
Watch in awe as a fleeting thought becomes a lasting note
I describe in detail how I wrote a blog post and then repurposed it as a permanent note in my Zettelkasten collection. This is the opposite of my usual workflow, where I create publishable writing from my existing notes.
Hot takes on our future with AI
Here are eight ‘hot takes’ on the latest problems, questions and opportunities large language models are giving us. It was going to be just three, but the hot takes are coming thick and fast right now. These links are shared alongside my personal reflections on the impact and future of AI that does your writing for you while cosplaying as a human.
If there's more than one way of seeing, there's more than one way of organising
💬 “Our eyes are built for two perspectives. During the daytime we rely on our cone cells, which depend on lots of light and let us see details. At night the cone cells become useless and we depend on rod cells, which are much more sensitive. The rod cells in our eyes are connected together to detect stray light; as a result they don’t register fine details. If we want to see something in bright light, we focus the image on the center of our retina (the fovea), where the cone cells are tightly packed. To see something at night, we must look off to the side of it, because staring directly at it will focus the object on the useless cone cells in the fovea. The way we see in bright light differs from the way we see in shadows. Neither is the ‘‘right’’ way. We need both.” - Gary Klein (2009) Streetlights and Shadows. Searching for the Keys to Adaptive Decision-making. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
On reflection, more can be said along these lines. Another way of looking at this ‘double perspective’ of human vision is to note that it constantly depends on some kind of accommodation between our two eyes working simultaneously and in concert.
So although vision is actually several processes taking place at once, we insist on perceiving it as one unified process. We can’t help it. We’re made to synthesize. But that doesn’t mean it is one process.
The cat is characteristically ecstatic to see that the proofs of the new book have arrived. Not long now before it’s published!
Update: I did it. Shu Ha Ri: The Japanese Way of Learning, for Artists and Fighters is now available. I hope you enjoy it!
#amwriting #booklaunch #comingsoon #nonfiction
💬 On Notebooks and Thinking Better Thoughts
Once we’ve let our thoughts mature for a while, we’ll want to produce something for other people to look at, an artifact.
Exactly so.
As Alan Jacobs says, reading more books and reading books more - they’re not the same thing.
I designed a book in three and a half hours
A while ago, well, quite a long while ago, I designed a book in three and a half hours. Fun, yes, but it wasn’t very publishable.
Now, years later, I’ve finally got round to updating and redesigning the whole thing.
Yes, I’m still writing slowly but I’m excited to say it will soon be available for sale - so watch this space for more information.
I’m unqualified to diagnose the following writers with ADHD but I’ll do it anyway
Yes indeed: confidently diagnosing deceased note-making writers with ADHD, while in possession of no medical qualifications myself, is a temptation I simply cannot resist.
For example I have wondered about:
As I said, it’s interesting, but for now I’ll stop there.
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💬 “The things that make us different, in the right context are superpowers. You know, Saul Steinberg said the thing that we respond to in any work of art is the struggle of the artist against his or her limitations.”
This makes me feel like there’s an awful lot of wrong context lying about. I guess we all need to find a place where we can thrive, or else make it ourselves.
The original quote is from Kurt Vonnegut’s recollection of a conversation with Saul Steinberg.
#creativity #writerslife #deepthoughts #inspiration
💬 Most attempts at providing computerised tools for writers have thrown out the affordances that previous analogue systems offered, almost without noticing their loss. - writingslowly.com on Ted Nelson’s evolutionary list file.