org-mode as an exoself
source link: https://stormrider.io/org-exoself.html
Go to the source link to view the article. You can view the picture content, updated content and better typesetting reading experience. If the link is broken, please click the button below to view the snapshot at that time.
org-mode as an exoself
I'm a big fan of William Gibson
Two of my favorite titles are "Neuromancer" and "The Peripheral", both of which deal with having an exoself. In the first one, Case, a hacker, enters what amounts to the Matrix to do various things important to the plot. The second title involves people time traveling electronically, by occupying lifelike androids across time. In "The Peripheral", there's even a badly-disabled USMC veteran who is given his life back by occupying a peripheral in a distant timeline.
There are other literary examples, like Greg Egan's novel "Permutation City," which might be where the term was coined. And there's no shortage of comic-book TV-show adaptations that depend on the "exosuit" as a plot device, most notably the "Supergirl" franchise, where at least four different characters use complete or partial exosuits (exo-selves) to tackle situations they couldn't otherwise handle.
Not the borg, please
The idea of augmenting one's physical or mental abilities by adding biotechnology doesn't excite me. My wife has an insulin pump which is, for all intents and purposes, attached AI, and she fights with it regularly about asking for blood sugar calibrations in the middle of her night. If I have to have an organ augment to keep living, by all means; but while I do adore D&D type games like Shadowrun, I don't want to gratuitously add headware RAM to my repertoire.
No, what I'm talking about is offloading things from your brain to a reliable external network, meaning devices with more-or-less automatic backups to the cloud global village. In some ways, I held off on going whole-hog for org-mode until I could reliably back it up (without human intervention) and carry it around (in form morphologically identical to Emacs, if not Emacs exactly).
So what am I trying to achieve?
Socrates said, "Know thyself." Then again, he was executed for treason, so there's that.
Along those lines, though, I'm aware that I am a chaotic, neutral, creative, diabetic, network engineer. Why network engineering with that predisposition? Well, credit goes to my high-school math teacher, Mr. Harshbarger. He recognized that my problems with math had less to do with intelligence and more to do with learning orientation. In other words, he was a great teacher.
He pointed out to me that I was a right-brained, language person trying to do left-brained, numerical things. He let me know that I could do math very well if I just approached it from a different perspective. He gave me a math glossary, to keep, and told me to take it home and learn it. I did.
I became good at math, but in a very different way from my colleagues. They could derive mostly if they could remember the formulas. I could derive because I could work out the equations from an innate understanding of the concepts involved. For example, take the humble parabola. My math minded friends know it as "y = a(x-h)^2", but I know it as "a curve formed by a point moving so that its distance from a fixed point is always equal to its distance from a fixed line".
In other words, my math homies can write one equation for a parabola, under standard conditions. I can write hundreds of them, independent of how gnarly the coordinate systems become. This has served me well in shortwave listening, because it's easy for me to visualize antenna shapes and calculate wavelengths on the fly. On the other hand, I have to use a program to manage my checkbook, but that's just me being me.
The root problem
I score high on cognitive ability, i.e., the number of things I can hold in my head at any given time. Most people top out around 5+/-2. I top out at 25+/-4, depending on the day. You'd think that would be a blessing, but like a nature abhors a vacuum, 25 things abhor me trying to focus. All sorts of permutations rush in, and I can actually build movies in my head of things that never happened, and not when I'm dreaming. I have dozens of places I've built in my head that don't exist, as far as I know:
- A computer room / living space with a VT-100 terminal that connects emacs to an infinite super-mainframe right outside the door. The place has couches, a fridge that refills itself magically, a lounge room with a couch for sleeping and watching any TV show ever made, and the usual furnishings. You know, stained, faux-muted-green carpet squares, craggly-looking drop-ceiling tiles, 70's paneling -- the whole works.
- A bedroom with a reading nook that exists somewhere outside time.
- A street corner somewhere, where a man in a wool overcoat and fedora stands and looks off into the distance without talking to you.
I probably wouldn't make a bad indie filmmaker, but that's not where my interests seem to lie. There are many other threads that run simultaneously in my head. I call the phenomenon "the switchboard". It's like twenty telephone operators sitting side-by-side at their panels, directing calls. Lots of noise, lots of conversation, and I've had to train myself to focus on one at a time, like you listen to conversations at a cocktail party.
The point is this: It can be hard to wrangle all those two-dozen overlay thoughts into something that allows me to work normally, at least, without an exoself. Just trust me when I say that, even though I'm a fan of Gibson, I don't do drugs, because they make me far too normal.
My original exoself
Instead of drugs, before org-mode, I used journals and planners to keep the switchboard at bay. I've kept morning pages forever. Once I had a bad fight with my boss on a Friday afternoon. On Sunday morning, I skipped the sermon and hid in a closet and wrote an extra set of "morning pages" about it. By the time we ran into each other on Monday, all was well with both of us.
I also kept little post-it lists (like a 2"x6" lined sticky) to capture things that entered my head. The only problem was having enough desk space for a laptop, a planner, a sticky-page, and a phone. I would do anything necessary to keep my cognition running at full speed.
What's in my exoself?
Basically, to keep myself productive and on track, I need four things:
- an axle, to keep me in a stable orbit. Without a center of gravity, I will wander off, like a satellite put into space with too much thrust.
- a clothesline, to keep me on path. I may be able to orbit in a spherical plane, but my orbit will wobble and roll in ways that aren't useful.
- an engine choke, to keep me throttled up. Every time I get distracted or start letting something else get in the way of my desired task, I need something to kick up the fuel mix to stop the sputtering.
- a dryer vent, to keep me from daydreaming. If I have someplace to capture all the weird movie clips that I invent in my head, and put them aside until later, I can clear my head and stay on point.
These are in 70's terms, not modern-sounding techo-babble, because of when they were coined. But they work fine, and others still understand the references.
Key methods
I won't rehash org-mode, that's well covered elsewhere, but I will explain some of the nuances of how I use org-mode:
Habitual exoskeleton
I schedule things that wouldn't normally be scheduled, like my morning routine, often in great detail. That's because I'm not a morning person, so I'm pretty useless for 20-30m or so. In essence, I don't use a schedule like a clock, I use it more like an interval timer. Years ago, I timed everything I do to get ready in the morning, because two-hour commute:
7:00...... 1m TODO [#A] alarm :prep:lofi: 7:00...... 5m TODO [#A] check messages :prep:lofi: 7:05...... 1m TODO [#A] sit up :prep:lofi: 7:05...... 5m TODO [#A] make bed :chores:lofi: 7:05...... 1m TODO [#B] light on :prep:lofi: 7:07...... 2m TODO [#C] quiet callisthenics :prep:lofi: 7:10...... 1m TODO [#A] 2 bathroom :prep:lofi: 7:10...... 1m TODO [#B] raise front window :chores:lofi: 7:11...... 2m TODO [#A] brb :prep:lofi: 7:12...... 1m TODO [#A] flonase :prep:lofi: 7:12...... 2m TODO [#A] brush my teeth :prep:lofi: 7:16...... 30m TODO [#B] shower :prep:medfi: 7:30...... 5m TODO [#B] style my hair :prep:medfi: 7:33...... 1m TODO [#B] hot water on :prep:lofi: 7:34...... 5m TODO [#B] shave :prep:medfi: 7:39...... 1m TODO [#B] lip balm :prep:lofi: 7:39...... 5m TODO [#B] towel off my face :prep:lofi: 7:40...... 1m TODO [#A] deodorant :prep:lofi: 7:40...... 1m TODO [#A] body spray :prep:lofi: 7:41...... 2m TODO [#B] change cat's water :chores:medfi: 7:42...... 1m TODO [#A] 2 bedroom :prep:lofi: 7:42...... 2m TODO [#A] clear litterbox :chores:medfi: 7:43...... 1m TODO [#A] refresh cat's food :chores:hifi: 7:44...... 1m TODO [#A] underwear :prep:lofi:
I've never lost that timing, and having things scheduled lets me quickly alter my schedule by dropping things away until I know I have time to complete a certain amount of prep.
Cognizant deferral
Almost everything repetitive (except special events and obvious weekly & monthly things, like changing the litter box) repeats daily, like this:
***TODO [#C] quiet callisthenics :prep:lofi: SCHEDULED: <2022-02-23 Wed 07:07 +1d> :PROPERTIES: :LAST_REPEAT: [2022-02-22 Tue 17:19] :Effort: 2m :END: :LOGBOOK: - State "CANCELLED" from "TODO" [2022-02-22 Tue 17:19] \\ didn't want to do this today - State "DONE" from "TODO" [2022-02-21 Mon 11:05] - State "DONE" from "TODO" [2022-02-21 Mon 10:57] - State "DONE" from "TODO" [2022-02-21 Mon 10:56] - State "DONE" from "TODO" [2022-02-18 Fri 11:48] - State "CANCELLED" from "TODO" [2022-02-17 Thu 10:17] \\ conserving cognitive today - State "DONE" from "TODO" [2022-02-16 Wed 13:09] - State "DONE" from "TODO" [2022-02-15 Tue 07:46] - State "DONE" from "TODO" [2022-02-14 Mon 08:28] - State "DONE" from "TODO" [2022-02-13 Sun 09:18] - State "DONE" from "TODO" [2022-02-12 Sat 11:09] - State "DONE" from "TODO" [2022-02-12 Sat 10:44] - State "DONE" from "TODO" [2022-02-10 Thu 08:09] - State "DONE" from "TODO" [2022-02-09 Wed 08:27] - State "CANCELLED" from "TODO" [2022-02-08 Tue 08:54] \\ not today - State "CANCELLED" from "TODO" [2022-02-07 Mon 09:23] \\ not today, feeling groggy. - State "DONE" from "TODO" [2022-02-06 Sun 09:10] - State "DONE" from "TODO" [2022-02-03 Thu 08:18] - State "DONE" from "TODO" [2022-02-02 Wed 08:30] - State "DONE" from "TODO" [2022-02-01 Tue 09:10] - State "DONE" from "TODO" [2022-01-31 Mon 08:22] - State "DONE" from "TODO" [2022-01-30 Sun 09:09] - State "DONE" from "TODO" [2022-01-29 Sat 13:46] - State "DONE" from "TODO" [2022-01-26 Wed 10:58] - State "DONE" from "TODO" [2022-01-25 Tue 08:21] - State "DONE" from "TODO" [2022-01-24 Mon 08:05] - State "DONE" from "TODO" [2022-01-23 Sun 08:46] - State "DONE" from "TODO" [2022-01-22 Sat 09:37] - State "DONE" from "TODO" [2022-01-21 Fri 07:46] - State "DONE" from "TODO" [2022-01-20 Thu 10:38] - State "DONE" from "TODO" [2022-01-19 Wed 10:07] - State "DONE" from "TODO" [2022-01-19 Wed 10:04] - State "DONE" from "TODO" [2022-01-17 Mon 09:48] - State "DONE" from "TODO" [2022-01-17 Mon 09:44] - State "DONE" from "TODO" [2022-01-15 Sat 11:02] - State "DONE" from "TODO" [2022-01-13 Thu 08:09] :END:
You can see how often I skipped callisthenics, and why: sometimes I'm just groggy, sometimes I've got something creative in mind and don't want to let the mojo get away, and sometimes I just don't want to do it. In each case, this is a conscious decision. I see the item every day, and I can make a judgement in the moment about whether I actually need or want to do it today. For example, texting my oldest son: It pops up on my agenda every day, but whether I text him every day depends on what's going on, the last conversation we had, etc.
Ubiquitous capture
I've tried to set up the org-mode capture function to minimize the time it takes to capture something new. I can hit a couple of keystrokes, enter a task, schedule it, and have it stored in my daily agenda very quickly. This means I don't lose the flow of the task I'm working on at the moment, which really translates to using and emptying my short-term memory without letting the item percolate deeper. I've found this preserves the buffer that keeps a flow state going.
Auto-organized chaos
Once upon a time, I put everything into a perfect outline. Nah, I really didn't, I just tried; there is no perfect outline for life because, no matter what categories you choose, some things fit into more than one category, and some don't fit into any. Every once in a while, maybe every 2-3 years, I try to stop when I have a holiday and re-outline my org files. For the most part, tho, I just plop things down whereever I find a space, and let org-mode organize them for me.
More to say, maybe
There's probably a lot more to say about this, but this will give you some context.
Recommend
About Joyk
Aggregate valuable and interesting links.
Joyk means Joy of geeK