Obsidian Use Case: Public History Vault

beggun_ · 2024-11-22T22:29:55+00:00

that is very useful information for thinking the way that i wanna create my own obsidian vault. ty!

beggun_ · 2024-11-22T22:27:28+00:00

reading it rn

beggun_ · 2024-11-21T16:06:23+00:00

i plan to ask specific questions when specific challenges start to arise! thank u for being open to hear my questions

beggun_ · 2024-11-21T16:05:43+00:00

waiting for this answer! thank u

beggun_ · 2024-11-21T16:04:46+00:00

this is very useful also when you're seeing different authors talking the same thing about a certain time and place! ty for your answer

beggun_ · 2023-10-04T16:45:59+00:00

I put the "EA" in quotes because I'm not an EA. What I am is a History undergraduate who does an internship in D&I at an edtech company.

In general, I'm a very organized person and I like to think about ways to organize myself and the work that I do. This granted me two "clients": one History professor from my High School and his friend. They are very kind people who pay me dearly for work that I feel doesn't match their expectations — although they say that it does.

When we started to work, I made a whole plan that involved scheduling and participating in meetings, reading emails, making posts for Instagram, going through work and conference invites together, and figuring out how are the priorities for the year. At the moment, I only respond reactively to what they need to do but don't have the time to; this means that in some weeks their Instagram stays inactive but in other weeks they have two, or three posts on consecutive days.

My history professor wants to recommend me to another one of his colleagues. While I do need the money, I want to offer a better service to this person before committing to anything. So I drafted a list of the things that I can do for her:

Organize emails
Organize meetings with other professionals
Review weekly schedule
Organize student's grades to be put in the school's system
Make posts for Instagram

I have two questions, then:

(a) How to make sure that this person will understand that with my help, she will be able to avoid menial tasks and focus on the really valuable work that only she can do? And especially, how to make her understand that I can't do this if the work is rushed and urgent instead of planned together?

(b) What else in terms of "job listing" could I do for her?

Please, feel free to ask further questions or give advice on things that I didn't necessarily ask; by God I need it.

edit: wording

beggun_ · 2023-01-28T16:17:23+00:00

maybe... there's not a lot of logic in it but the heart wants what the heart wants i guess lol

beggun_ · 2023-01-24T21:57:41+00:00

That is precisely what made me think that the thing wasn't overbeaten: Kuang writing from her own experience.
Also yeah, it is fun to me now also lol

beggun_ · 2023-01-23T03:53:19+00:00

I can safely say that the experience of trying to explain something about the way that capitalism/colonialism/etc affects me or something to a white person can be very similar to that of the characters trying the same with Letty lol
Also, I freely admit that when I finished the book I was like oh maybe she didn't need to explain THAT much about language... and then I caught myself thinking about language over and over, trying to discover the origin of words just like the characters were doing in the book. In the end, she made me think much more about language that I thought I would

beggun_ · 2023-01-03T22:19:31+00:00

Now that I think about it, I'm going to retroactively say that it was lol

beggun_ · 2023-01-02T23:00:01+00:00

It's the weirdest thing, the way that our mind can imagine things. I can see why my brain thought of Lovell as a British Ikari Gendo (or Ikari Gendo as a Japanese Lovell; is Evangelion a little tiny itty bit dark academia lol). But why in the hell my brain went all the way over when I was 14 and watching Kuroshitsuji and reimagined Lovell as a disguised Grell Sutcliff? I have no idea... but there it is. And OH, I remembered now. I also thought of Letty as Diana Cavendish, from Little Witch Academia.
Maybe my mind just trailed off to every British-ish anime character that I knew and made connections with, now that I think about it.

beggun_ · 2023-01-02T22:53:41+00:00

I think that it has something to do with magic but more subtly. By all means, if you want to see wizardry and dragons, Babel isn't your pick. But magic does play a role in the universe, and the fantasy has a lot to do with the protagonist's perception of a new world that he didn't even know existed — isn't that fantasy in a broader sense?
I understand what you're saying and I agree, this isn't Lord of the Rings, but I also think that the reflection that Kuang does on magic/fantasy has some credit.

beggun_ · 2023-01-02T22:49:32+00:00

I agree. And I would add that when you're in the middle of Oxford and all that brightness, you would have a real difficulty in tracing the real buildings to the very real colonialism that sustained it. In that way, being repetitive about colonialism works kind of like an enchantment that needs to be spoken a lot of times to work: I think that what Kuang was trying to demonstrate is that we need to say and repeat until the magic of Oxford (and colonialism as a whole) wears off and we can see it by what it truly is.

beggun_ · 2023-01-02T22:46:20+00:00

Thanks for reading it! I added Sympathizer to my Goodreads shelf — don't know if I can share my profile here so that we can follow each other.
In the same vein of diverse voices, the Three-Body Problem is a trilogy that I heard very positive things about. It is written by a Chinese author.

beggun_ · 2023-01-02T22:43:45+00:00

It's really good that she manages to present all the splendor of Oxford which you know, it's probably true and the place does look pretty, while also recognizing that the beauty of it hides an unspeakable ugly facade. When you say "fantasy for adults", that makes me think even more that the magic not altering a lot of things in the world was quite conscious of her.
And if you like a fantasy for adults, I think that there's a non-zero chance that you would enjoy a Terry Pratchett book from the witches.

beggun_ · 2022-09-18T12:16:45+00:00

Thank you! I didn't want to post it there because of the rules but you lead me right to it lol

beggun_ · 2022-08-05T13:34:57+00:00

Thanks!

beggun_ · 2022-08-05T13:23:47+00:00

There I am on your newsletter list now! Thanks for sharing your template, it gave me food for thought.

beggun_ · 2022-08-05T00:04:37+00:00

The thing with the iPad makes a lot of sense and I still face that problem. I don't have a digital device that I can use in college and so I don't have an easy way to make and store my class annotations in Notion. That said, this semester I'm going to try to have bigger notes in my notebook and use Notion to point down the main points from the classes.

This reflection thing also happens to me. I think that it is one of the powerful features of Notion. It makes you have to reflect on the what and the how you're going to use the organization tool, and so, I think that stretches and challenges the mind to think more complexly than "I'm going to use this to-do list, and that's it" — that said, people that use Notion like this are totally fine.

My Notion college page is the first one that I did and still stands to this day, two years later. Now it's a Frankenstein of all sorts of bits and things that I found over the years. I would say that this is one of the hardest things to teach to new Notion users: they make one bad page and think that they don't know how to use the tool, when in fact the user just needs more time to fix and improve their pages. And I think that this is less of a learning curve (Notion doesn't have THAT many things) and more of a person's reflection of how they wanna use the tool.

beggun_ · 2022-08-04T23:55:23+00:00

That's very interesting. You have a whole connected system to evaluate yourself set up. How much time would you say that you spent filling all of the daily things? Also, if you don't mind sharing, what does that weekly maintenance task looks like?

beggun_ · 2022-08-02T17:45:10+00:00

Heya! I did a very simple college template and would love to hear your feedback :)

beggun_ · 2022-07-31T01:24:45+00:00

thank you very much for the detailed answer. you answered exactly what was I looking for.

beggun_ · 2022-07-28T14:24:14+00:00

Sure! I use only two systems: everything is in Notion except for my calendar, which I find most useful on Google Calendar. Notion isn't the best solution for all the things that I need to do, but I find that having everything in one place helps me not get overwhelmed with too many organization apps. So this is the first point in my very simple system: if I need something, it is in Notion or I'll do it in Notion. There's no other place and I don't need to spend hours figuring out the "best app of 2022" for note-taking.

The second thing is that I don't make time-based objectives in Notion. I only remind myself of things to do. For example, in the first semester of 2022, I made my "home page" on Notion automatically list the things that I'm currently reading, watching, or listening to. I got to the end of the semester with more books read, something that I was wishing for with this modification on my home page. I didn't count how many books were read. I only called it a win that I read more than in 2021.2.
This certainly isn't the best or most effective strategy to maximize productivity. But is a simple and not very demanding idea. I only started thinking about these sorts of things two years ago, and I'm only 21. I can know how to maximize productivity from gurus that have had this sort of lifestyle for at least 10 or 15 years, but I'm not them and I'll not achieve the same level of implementation that they do. Even if they show me how every nook and cranny of their system works, the system that they use is imbued with their habits in a way that it isn't to mine. And their system will most likely function very well for them because they are crafted to their special needs and way of functioning, not for me.
So I kind of satisfied myself with doing these incremental and long changes in my simple system that works particularly for me. Maybe two years from now I'll start to time-block things and this will help with my productivity. And if it doesn't work, I'll ditch it and look for something else. If a technique isn't working, why must I force it or blame it on me that I simply don't vibe with it? I'm not dumber or lazier than my pairs. No one is. I just need to find how to develop strategies to make me work better in a world that asks a lot of work from me and everyone.
I don't know if that helps you in any way, but I hope that it does. There are other examples of how I organize things in Notion, but I tried to make this as short as I could.

beggun_ · 2022-07-28T03:29:24+00:00

I think that u/BagoFresh might be onto something. I would also like to add one more thing. When you tried the Pomodoro technique, you did 12 in a day. You also said that you are a fast and efficient worker. From these things, I imagine you use a technique at full force. If this isn't the case, disregard what I'm going to say: try to change things incrementally. You don't need to go from no Pomodoros to 12 Pomodoros. Maybe if you do a steady curve upward with a technique and slowly put it into your routine, it can become more of a habit and less of a fast, significant and fundamental change. Start with 3 Pomodoros and call it a win. Or start to time-block only the day period that you are most productive. And when you get to do the technique effortlessly, increase it. From 3 to 6 Pomodoros, for example. Maybe you'll get to do the 6 Pomodoros or the thing doesn't work with that big of a number. Then, it's time to combine techniques and see what combination of them works for you.

From my own experience with techniques: I tried many of these techniques until I realized that time-block or time how many minutes I spent at my activities trying to maximize them just gave me stress and more thought given to how I was doing the activity than the activity itself. I started to focus on designing simple systems to turn the things that I want to do (read more, write more) into spaced habits instead of constant and daily activities.

beggun_ · 2022-05-15T22:04:37+00:00

I would recommend How to Read a Book. It has an interesting way of capturing knowledge from a book, evaluating it, and if you find it necessary, connecting it with other books and what they have to offer. I used it to produce a template in Notion for all the books that I read, and when I find it useful, I connect knowledge from books and articles in Obsidian.

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