Oh my, what a stressful time. Here are early mockups of different Linking Your Thinking book cover options. What do you think of these? I want your feedback.
What do you like?
What don't you like?
What else?
Again, I want your feedback. One-click to email me. I want your ideas for the cover. Let's brainstorm! What would you put on the cover? What should I put on the cover?
Connect Everything That Matters
I dictated this one out loud to capture the energy. Hopefully you feel it.
It’s funny because you don’t see all the stuff that’s happening behind the scenes and it might seem like a slow summer for Linking Your Thinking but it couldn’t be further from the truth.
Writing the Linking Your Thinking book is the ultimate forcing function and I love it for that. It’s crazy though. It’s so challenging. There are not just a few factors to consider for every chapter but like 20 and they all overlap into all the other chapters and into the entire business—covering everything that I want to say and have said over the past six years and for the next six years.
Just yesterday I realized I need to introduce the Daily Note earlier in the book. It’s that important for so many different people’s experience with their systems. Not too early of course(!), but now I know exactly where I want it.
And what about the topic of wandertivity? I’d be willing to bet that only 20% of you have ever heard me use that term and yet it is a pillar of everything we cover. Why am I waiting until halfway through the book to mention it? Nope, I’m going to figure out how to mention it in the very first chapter.
What does this process look like in practice? One part of it looks like a mixture of me and Obsidian working from the book MOC note, diving into related notes, and serendipitously remembering old concepts that just have to find a place in the book.
Another part is that this week, I finally printed out all the written chapters so far. Each chapter is stapled separately and I’m making marks in all sorts of different colors, whichever pen I have handy, moving things around, combining things, slashing out sections, and it’s all happening in such a fluid manner.
And I haven’t even mentioned all the other stuff:
conversations with illustrators and designers and publisher
considering feedback on "helpthisbook"
scheduling and running and synthesizing interviews with people who have done amazing things with their systems of linked notes
It all requires massive and consistent brain power. And right now I feel like it's the NBA playoffs, and I'm a player who has to manage my energy through multiple months of highs and lows. I'm eating extremely well. I'm sleeping. I'm exercising in some form or fashion every single day, even if it's just walking for two miles.
This particular book would possibly not be possible to make without the help of my ideaverse as the unshakable centerpiece of all of my thinking.
Now, future books I write, if I’m so lucky, won’t be as cognitively demanding as this one, but this one is the foundation for all that follows. It’s the ultimate synthesis of six years of concentrated ideational energy, forged in the fires of actually educating other people and, in the process, getting education by them as to what matters most.
Which leads me to the singular phrase that has become my core North Star for the book and the business.
Connect Everything That Matters.
“Connect Everything That Matters” isn’t just about connecting bits of information, but that is usually where it starts, because we feel overwhelmed by all the information surrounding us. We’re not going to be able to solve any downstream problems until we solve the fact that we’re drowning in the information right now.
So yeah, you need to solve for that first. First, you will benefit from getting your thoughts in order. And then that’s where something magical happens. Once your thoughts are in order, now, you have more time to think about the things that matter. Because, as it turns out, many of our informational problems are also emotional ones. And that, that’s when you feel it. That’s when you feel the transformation that comes from linking your thinking: linking information to ideas—linking the head to the heart—and well...connecting everything that matters.
Idea Exchange
AI companies continue to do themselves no favors... 404 Media uncovered a service that major AI companies are using to collect more human-generated training data to build their large language models. This service involves a company buying vast troves of old books, scanning them, and then destroying the books. This article from Futurism has more details.
I can understand the need for training data, but this process, especially the destruction of often rare copies of books, is heartbreaking and completely avoidable. The Internet Archive itself explained how they digitize books, the hard way, but in a completely non-destructive manner. These AI companies can and should do better.
Goesting
I'm always on the lookout for interesting words and concepts that get me to consider things from a new perspective. Jo Franco's latest streaming episode does just that, in a super entertaining way, with the Belgian word goesting.
Jo has been a guest presenter at LYT and has led us all in live journaling in the past. So much joy in that video.
“Comb the desert!” Comic-Con took place recently, and Esquire magazine has an incredible piece on the return of Rick Moranis to the big screen as the Spaceballs sequel builds momentum. The article has a surprising amount of heart in it, and any fan of Moranis's memorable filmography (or Mel Brooks for that matter) will enjoy it.
What does it mean to be "sovereign?"
Sometimes a new book comes along that has such a unique voice that I can't help but want to chew on the ideas inside. Such is the case with David Elikwu's book Sovereign. As I write the best book I can, I'm definitely vibing with the "Cringe" Crucible: Why greatness is inherently deviant, and why you must be willing to look foolish to achieve the extraordinary. Learn more about his book here.
Stay connected,
Nick
P.S... Obsidian's mobile app just got a sweet new update that makes adding stuff into Obsidian WAY simpler and better. I'll talk about it in the future. Read up on it here.
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