Yesterday I completed my first "Book on a Page" sketchnote for Storyworthy  by Matthew Dicks. This article will summarize the workflow I followed.  My approach borrows heavily from Tiago Forte's Progressive Summarization method and Doug Neil's wonderful video How to Sketchnote a Book .

Storyworthy  is a book by Matthew Dicks about the craft of telling stories. This post is an experiment created over the course of three days. My ultimate goal was to create a single-page sketch note summary of Storyworthy. To achieve this, I first wrote a summary of the book using Tiago Forte's  Progressive Summarization  approach. I then created three one-page sketches for each of the main sections in the book. I finally distilled the three one-pagers into a single summary sketch - you'll find the single-page overview at the very end. Introduction Stories are personal narratives of change that others can relate to, and are shared with the purpose of connecting to other people. The book covers three topics: Finding stories to share. Crafting these to be engaging and entertaining with a long-lasting impact. Telling them to family, friends, or larger audiences.

Imagine a database containing the full text of all the books and publications you have ever read, plus all your reading notes with links to the source paragraphs and your text highlights in the source. It also has everything you have ever written: your journal, all the articles, books, documents, and reports. Such a database would be a powerful source of knowledge. With persistence, it is possible to build this in Obsidian . But can Obsidian handle this volume of information? This post is about my attempt to understand Obsidian's performance limits. I will present my approach and findings.

Which are the longest paragraphs in your graph? Which pages did you edit or create last week? How many paragraphs of text do you have in your database in total? Which pages do you have under a given namesapece (e.g. meetings/)?

Why is it that even your most honest and committed attempts to change, often lead back to the status quo? Why are outcomes so frequently pale compared to the vivid color of the aspiration? How can you avert the grip of your immunity to change? Imagine what would be possible if, for a change, you could live up to your New Year's Resolutions?

I have perfected the process of importing ePub books into Roam. I was able to create an almost frictionless experience for reading a book in Roam. Put aside the issue with reading on a tablet screen instead of a kindle, this solution is much more comfortable and efficient for reading and note taking at the same time then the Kindle. I have also develop a solution to automatically maintain full traceability from my notes to the source text even though the ePub book sits in a different Roam graph compared to my literature notes. This post is a detailed how-to guide for setting yourself up to read books in Roam. Here is the link to the Python program you need for converting your ePub books: Colab Notebook Here is the link to the Book-base.json that will be required to achieve the full experience. This is how the end result looks Detailed how-to walkthrough This second video explains the full process from the beginning to the end in 27 minu...

In this post I will present my final solution for getting the Bible imported into Roam Research . I have finally found a way to drastically decrease the size of the imported Roam graph, but still have a reasonable solution for accessing multiple translations and cross references. I will share my thoughts on performance and potential next steps for making the Bible work even better in Roam. If you are interested in the topic, I have two other posts on the subject. Links are at the end. You can download the Roam .EDN archive for the Bible from here: ASV.edn For a real time demonstration of the full import process within 3 minutes check out this video . WARNING: by restoring the ASV.edn into your graph, all other data in your graph will be lost! The source code for the converter is here:  Roam.json Bible importer with BUTTON for verse numbers v1.ipynb Use this if the primary translation you'd like to use in Roam is ...

How much time, money, energy, etc. do you waste by solving the wrong problems ? What if you could get better at solving the right problems ? What's your Problem by Thomas Wedell-Wedellsborg is one of the best books I have read on the subject of solving problems. He asserts, that it is critical that we pay attention to how we frame problems. If we misframe problems, we may be at risk of coming up with a solution to the wrong problem (i.e. a wrong solution) and wasting tremendous amount of time, money and energy or even worst, creating additional problems that may be even tougher to solve later on. The way you frame a problem determines which solutions you come up with.  By shifting the way you see the problem - that is, by reframing it - you can sometimes find radically better solutions. A personal example  I remember when our son started kind...

The Checklist Manifesto by Atul Gawande Rating: 8/10 There are two reasons why people fail. Ignorance meaning we only have a partial understanding of the world and how it works, and ineptitude when the knowledge exists but we fail to apply it correctly. We have accumulated stupendous know-how and have accomplished extraordinary things. Nonetheless, that know-how is often unmanageable . Checklists are a strategy for overcoming failure by building on experience and taking advantage of the knowledge people have, but also making up for our inadequacies . The problem of extreme complexity Three different kinds of problems exist in the world: Simple problems like baking a cake from a mix. Complicated problems such as sending a rocket to the moon, which can sometimes be broken down into a series of simple problems and where unanticipated difficulties are frequent. Finally, complex problems like raising a child for which a process...

  Principles by Ray Dalio Rating:  10/10 Reading this book was a transformational experience. The book summarizes decades of distilled down wisdom from one of the world’s most successful business leaders. Ray started investing when he was 12 years old in the 1960s. At the time he invested his hard earned money delivering newspapers, mowing lawns, shoveling snow off driveways, washing dishes in a restaurant and caddying. He later founded Bridgewater Associates in 1975. The principles covered in the book are the basis for running Bridgewater and his life. This post is just a snapshot of my key takeaways from the book. In the future, I plan to write a longer summary, and to start an evergreen note with my set of principles. Memorable quotes Life is like a game where you seek to overcome the obstacles that stand in the way of achieving your goals. You get better at this game through practice. The game consists of a series of choices that have consequences. You...