We learn so much everyday, but much of our knowledge goes to waste, inaccessible. When we research, perhaps only 5% of knowledge gained is relevant. The wasted 95% would still be useful to us if we put it in the right places in our mind. What if we could do just that?
Slipbox lets you build and grow a replica external mind. You build this external mind systematically by recognizing the links between ideas your mind already makes. Then you translate this data to slipbox. The external mind gives us capabilities we did not have before. As it continues to grow it gets exponentially more useful. You can converse with this mind to understand what you know and don't know on different subjects. You can peer into the mind to see what critical masses of knowledge are there. These critical masses often turn into publications, companies, and projects! As a bonus, growing an external mind improves the performance of the original mind.
Click the link below to start your own slipbox!
https://varunbhoopalam.github.io/slipbox/
People are capable of so much. People chasing their dreams often inspires me. This is why I want to help others, as thanks for the inspiration I've recieved in the past. I want to equip people with the tools to make their dreams a reality, empower people to solve problems that they face, and inspire them to action towards their own missions.
We will measure success of this project by counting the number of people this project can help with their big, intellectual endeavors.
This is a note storage system inspired by the Zettelkasten. It is an external mind storage that you can think inside of. It stores notes, links between notes, and sources for the notes. Slipbox makes using this system simple, convenient and fun while unlocking the benefits of using a Zettelkasten note storage system. Slipbox will also visualize the contents of your slipbox helping to find patterns that exist in the tree of notes that is a slipbox. Here is an example of what that might look like.
The project is designed for the desktop browser. During a session you can record notes, links between notes, and source summaries for the notes. The explore tab is designed to visualize what's inside of your slipbox. The notes and sources tabs are for text views of what is inside of your slipbox. After a session, a file called slipbox.json is produced. To continue with the slipbox, the same file should be loaded into the next session.
This note storage system gives a systematic approach to learning and knowledge storage. Using this system helps our own memory recall. It guides us into putting things into our own words and applying them to our previous knowledge, each of which make it easier to remember information. This structure pushes us towards the formation of complex ideas, linking simple ideas together, to create powerful ideas. This system is simple and encouraging. It illuminates where we have critical masses of knowledge and where we may not know as much.
- Authors and scholars can identify topics and arguments for their next publication. By adding to a slipbox you can see where you have critical masses of knowledge. These critical masses can turn into publications!
- Entrepreneurs and creators can identify opportunities for innovation. The practice of putting new knowledge into our own words to strengthen memory recall also highlights our Epistemic Dependence. This phenomenon shows our reliance on other's knowledge and highlights how little we actually understand about things in some cases. This practice can identify gaps in our understanding. This is a great thing! By questioning our assumptions, we can identify what we actually know and question what we do not. We can then link notes/concepts to the assumptions that we are questioning and start to build powerful, complex theories with solid bases. This is how innovation happens!
- Anyone who is curious about the world can map out the knowledge they have and explore areas for further discovery!" Areas of knowledge that are lacking in our external mind maps become a lot more obvious through use of the slipbox. This persona can take this insight and use it for inspiration on what to do or research next.
- https://takesmartnotes.com/ - I highly recommend How to Take Smart Notes by Sönke Ahrens. This is the source of this project's inspiration and you will learn a lot from it.
- https://fortelabs.co/blog/how-to-take-smart-notes/ - I believe I stumbled upon this article from HackerNews and it fascinated me. It is what led me to reading How to Take Smart Notes.
- Navigate to the project. Click here to open the app.
- Click start new slipbox
- Scroll down to the workspace and click create a note button. Add a note by filling in the content and source and then hitting the submit button that pops up.
- If you have a source associated to the note, click the create source button and fill out the form.
- Click the create question button and submit a question that you want to answer! This can be your entry point when referencing the slipbox for projects that you have going on.
- If your question and note are related, create a link between them by clicking the add link button on one of the notes or questions. If you dismissed them from the workspace, you can open them in the workspace by finding them on the graph in the explore tab or clicking on them in the notes tab.
- Save your work by clicking save in the top right corner. You'll use this file next time when you return to add new notes to the slipbox.
- Slipbox works with local files on a computer! If you're on a public or shared computer, email the file to yourself so you can pick up where you left off.
- Create backups of your slipbox file in cloud storage so you're able to recover work should the original file go missing. This also lets you use another computer to add to your note storage.
- Take notes any way convenient to you throughout the day.
- I use Google's keep note because it is available easily on desktop and phone and I always have my phone on me.
- Pick a time at the end of the day and spend 15 minutes or less transferring notes from your temporary notes to your slipbox. Then throw away your temporary notes! Trust me, it's a good feeling to not need them any longer.
- I aim for 9:30 every day.
- After saving the slipbox.json file to your local computer, back it up! Google drive is a common way to do this but there are many options!
- I personally use GitHub as it gives me a history as well. Click here to take a look, my slipbox is public!
When I first started using the slipbox system I was overwhelmed. It felt like something like this was too late for me to start using successfully. It felt like the only time to get started was when I first started learning things. In a sea of knowledge and information, it can be hard to find the right jumping off point.
This is a common feeling. If you're feeling this, know that I, and many others, felt this too. Here are my suggestions to not get overwhelmed.
- Focus on what you learned today
- Don't worry if you're not making links between your notes to start. Your notes when you get start can be sporadic!
- Don't force yourself to do something you don't want to or feel like doing. Do what you want! Read what you want! What you're curious about is your call.
At this time, the project is not set up for collaboration. Please reach out if you have something to discuss or want from this project. If there is interest, I would love to collaborate and perhaps bring on other contributors as a result.
Another option to contribute is to fill out issues with bugs, feature requests and the like.
Please feel free to directly reach out to me at bhoopalam.varun@gmail.com
This project was open sourced for multiple reasons. One is transparency. It is important that nothing is hidden about what is happening while the software is working. To this point, the project has been driven by what I would find convenient and useful in a note taking system. If it should get wider use from others, I believe it will start to move in different directions than I am able to anticipate. This is another reason for open sourcing the project. I want to make it open to more perspectives than my own should anyone else find this project useful.