Nat Eliason Is Living in the Matrix (Dan Shipper)

Dan Shipper’s Superorganizers profile of how Nat Eliason uses Roam.

Why it was kept

The excerpts centre on the problem Roam solves: ‘where do I put this?’ — you can’t predict when you’ll need a note, so you satisfice and it gets lost in a filing-cabinet app. Nat’s answer is a graph, not a cabinet. The capture also names Frank Luntz’s Words That Work, which Nat recommends.

As Kyle captured it

• Read Nat Eliason is Living in the Matrix by Dan Shipper Nat Eliason Roam Research
  • As you’re writing, a nagging feeling pops up: where do I put this? You want to put this golden nugget of information somewhere that you’ll find it again. You want to put it somewhere that it will be useful when you need it.
  • But the problem is: when? When will you need it? You can’t predict. You can’t predict, so you don’t know where to put it.
  • So you satisfice. You stick it somewhere and forget about it. You do that over and over again. Soon, your Evernote, Notion, and Apple Notes all become a black hole of unread and totally forgotten notes.
  • This solved a big problem I had with other note-taking apps I’ve tried. They typically work kind of like a filing cabinet, in that each note goes into one and exactly one place. And that usually meant that the notes I was taking would just kind of disappear into the ether.
  • Words that Work by Frank Luntz. It’s phenomenal. It makes you see political speech very very differently, and it’s a useful book for thinking about your own word choice.