The Great Note-Taking App Shitshow

Author

Chad Hall
June 30, 2024 • Estimated Reading Time: 11 minutes

Let's start with this image: your brain is a drunken octopus, desperately trying to juggle chainsaws while riding a unicycle with a flat tire. That's me, attempting to wrangle my thoughts into these goddamn apps. It sounds crazy...because it is. It's messier than a rat orgy in a peanut butter factory.

It's 2024, and I'm still a hot mess. Shocking! Analysis: I've got more "second brain" apps than actual brain cells. BUT I'm embracing my debilitating tech obsession in this newsletter. I know saying "people on X seem to like it," is a bit like saying "my mom thinks I'm cool," but people on X seem to like it. And I don't have many real life friends left who aren't dead, homeless, married (😉,) or too busy to answer text messages.

Some of you will pee in my trough and some of you will swipe me away for the comforting narcotic scarf of endless Instagram Reels about how to make better Instagram Reels. Whether it's good news or bad news, I'm having fun. So stick around, fellow noggin-wranglers.

Was this forwarded to you? RUN! — or make life easier for both of us by subscribing to these weekend detoxes of my sad little brain.

Drunk on Tech

Good god! I think I'm losing my mind...and finding pieces of it scattered throughout the internet.

Another week, another PKM gut-blizzard. How do I repeatedly get myself into these loops, spinning my brain on a wheel of over-analyzed bullshit??

So here's the deal: I have no idea what I'm doing. I have no safe harbor for my "second brain."

Reflect? Reflect is like that rare friend who kicks ass at listening but who can never find their car keys in their gigantic purse. Got a random thought while you're taking a dump? Boom, Reflect's got you covered. But try to find that later? Eh...Good luck navigating that chaos, homeboy. Maybe under the pizza box on the carpet?? "Siri, find my mind."

Obsidian? Issss...your type-A friend who color-codes their closet and library books. Everything's got a place, Marie Kondo and all that, but the next thing you know they're reorganizing what they just organized after they reorganized it last week. This time they've got a label maker.

Tana? That seems like the middle ground, right. You take the pill. Three weeks later you wake in Mexico with nothing but Adderall bottles, carburetor parts, and the bottom halves of Russian nesting dolls piled around you.

And don't even get me started on the AI stuff. Reflect's got the chat, Tana's got the chat, Obsidian can strap one on—Sure it's like having a pocket therapist, minus the judgmental looks about spending three hours debating the merits of different bullet point styles. But sometimes it feels like trying to cajole a three year old to follow the directions inside the Lego box. Not gonna happen.

But let's be honest here: this isn't just about apps. This isn't "normal" behavior. I'm on the autism spectrum. (Don't worry, I'll wait while you feign gasps of surprise.) Sometimes my brain just gets stuck in the rut of being a perfectionist asshole. But, it turns out, there's a reason I'm obsessed with finding the "perfect" system. It's not just me being a broken neurotic mess (though we shouldn't completely discount that).

My good buddy Claude 3.5 tells me I'm not a total nutcase. I'm just an autistic brain struggling in an an allistic (non-autistic) world.

So what the hell am I going to do about this mess? My brain's not going to change. So, I'm doing possibly the dumbest, most irresponsible thing I can do, it's called "using multiple apps." I'm bouncing from app-to-app, day-to-day, sometimes hour-to-hour...because I apparently hate myself.

My only hope is that, I'll settle into a pattern somewhere and get too comfortable to jump any further. Sometimes exhaustion is the only solution.

So, what's working?

I'm doing morning pages. Via voice. Because nothing says "I've got my shit together" like talking to myself alone in the office every morning—and night, because I'm doing "evening pages" before bed. It's odd at first, but I'm starting t enjoy the hell out if. The utility is still questionable, but I'll take stability wherever I find it.

And in a move that can only be described as digital self-flagellation, I'm manually importing my Readwise highlights. Why? Because I'm a masochist, obviously. I know it sounds like just another bad choice but I need to be in control of what goes into my apps. It's the only way to feel like everything is still in my hands, and in my head. Intention over automation.

I know this sounds insane. The perfect app doesn't exist. But my brain doesn't give a damn. It just wants to tinker.

My daily life looks terrifyingly like the life of an absent professor in a black-and-white movie. I probably need someone following me around putting stuff away where it belongs and making sure I eat...which is basically what we're all hoping AI will be. But, it not there yet. Not yet. Right now, AI is more like Sancho Panza to my Don Quixote. I'm ramrodding windmills and AI thinks it's just wonderful.

So, here's my plan for next week: Embrace the mess. Let my thoughts scatter across my desktop like a flock of squirrels with cocaine fuses in their little fuzzy fannies.

Who knows? Maybe I'll finally figure out a system that works. Or maybe I'll just keep chasing that digital dragon. Either way, a shit show. Stick around.

Send prayers, and Bitcoin.

Drunk on Ideas

❝

Robots like Allen, and Elmer and Elsie before it, seemed to Clark to represent a fundamentally different idea of the mind. Watching them fumble about, pursuing their simple missions, he recognized that cognition was not the dictates of a high-level central planner perched in a skull cockpit, directing the activities of the body below. Central planning was too cumbersome, too slow to respond to the body’s emergencies. Cognition was a network of partly independent tricks and strategies that had evolved one by one to address various bodily needs. Movement, even in A.I., was not just a lower, practical function that could be grafted, at a later stage, onto abstract reason. The line between action and thought was more blurry than it seemed. A creature didn’t think in order to move: it just moved, and by moving it discovered the world that then formed the content of its thoughts.

"The Mind-Expanding Ideas of Andy Clark" by Larissa MacFarquhar: Holy brainbenders, Batman! You know how sometimes you wonder if your toaster is secretly plotting your death? Well, I just had my neurons nuked by this. It's like a philosophical rollercoaster ride through the backwater funhouse of cognition! Clark's been busy rewiring our understanding of where the mind ends and the world begins. Turns out, your smartphone might be more "you" than you think! You should probably read this if you've ever argued with Siri and felt like you were talking to yourself.

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In a recent interview, the actor and director Justine Bateman said that network notes now request that shows be less engaging so that distracted audiences won’t lose track of the plot and turn them off.

"Hollywood's Slo-Mo Self-Sabotage" by Inkoo Kang: Hollywood's turning into a dumpster fire faster than I can say "reboot." Hollywood's gone full Wile E. Coyote, sawing off the branch it's sitting on. Streaming wars, AI fears, a geriatric star system, and execs are chasing nostalgia like it's the last donut at a Weight Watchers meeting. Read this if you want to understand why your favorite show's new season feels like it was written by a lobotomized goldfish with a TikTok addiction.

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Keynes argued that mature capitalist societies no longer grow quickly enough to maintain a high demand for labor without government intervention, a phenomenon that his disciple Alvin Hansen termed “secular stagnation.” Long before we produce enough structures, machines, and equipment to meet the needs of all humanity, Keynes said, the rate of return on investment in these fixed assets will fall below the level required to balance out the risks for private investors. In other words, long before we reach post-scarcity, the engine of capitalist prosperity will give way. The result is not a reduced work week for all but rather underemployment for many and overwork for the rest.

"Do We Need to Work?" by Aaron Benanav: Insert entropy-induced existential crisis. It turns out our hunter-gatherer ancestors were living like fat gods while we're grinding ourselves into dust. Benanav dives deep into anthropology, economics, and the universal laws of physics to ask why the hell we're still working 40+ hour weeks when we should be partying like it's 9999 BC. Read this if you want to question everything you thought you knew about human nature, economics, and why your great-great-great-great-great-great-grandparents knew Netflix and chill before Netflix mastered the art of the price-hike.

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Content is the commodification of creativity. It’s the piecemealing and packaging of art so that it can be delivered at regular intervals to satisfy the needs of the attention economy. In an era where media is forever abundant, content is what people create to show and remind others that they exist.

"Make a Classic, Not Content" by Lawrence Yeo: Lawrence just drop-kicked the content treadmill right in its algorithm-loving face. He's basically saying, "Stop churning out lukewarm brain farts on a schedule and make something that'll outlast your attention span!" Read this if you want to feel simultaneously inspired and personally triggered by your creative output. It's like a swift kick in the artistic cajones, but in a good way. Maybe.

Shots

The podcast is back...with video. I've managed to turn what should be a simple task—recording a goddamn podcast—into a Lovecraftian nightmare of technical fuckery. I'm sitting here, surrounded by cat hair and self-doubt, trying to explain why I'm rebranding everything as "Drunk on Ideas," and I'm ditching Descript because their UI changes gave me digital PTSD. We're talking AI assistants folding my metaphorical underwear, the width of Roman chariots, and the coming reality of AI's commenting on each other's photos like pre-teen girls on their first iPhones while the meatwad losers (humans) lay in bed rating their boogers. Watch this if you want a front-row seat to my mental gymnastics, a peek behind the content creator curtain, and a healthy dose of techno-whine.

Chaser

One for the Road

If we achieve artificial general intelligence through LLMs, will this prove that consciousness derives from language?

I feel better, how about you? Don’t forget to follow @drunkonideas on X.

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