140 lines
7.1 KiB
Markdown
140 lines
7.1 KiB
Markdown
---
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title: "ADHD & Notetaking: an autistic perspective"
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date: 2021-08-07
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...
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If you are living with ADHD, diagnosed or not, the following things
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might sound familiar: *"I forgot to write that down"*, *"I forgot to do
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that"*, *"I don't remember that"*.
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If you ask neurotypical people what they do to resolve that, they will
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probably give you answers ranging from "Oh I just have it all in my
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head" to "Just use a todo list / GTD system / bullet journal", both
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equally unhelpful to most neurodiverse folks I know.
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Reading [this article](https://xeiaso.net/blog/gtd-on-paper-2021-06-13){target="_blank"} by Xe inspired me to tackle
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this
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problem for myself. (I highly encourage you to read the linked post
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along with the rest of their blog)
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Now, back to the topic at hand. As mentioned, there are many common
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strategies for managing tasks and notes, many of which simply do not
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work for me, but let's go through the why and try to find something that
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works from there.
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### Journals, paper and other physical ways of notetaking
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The most immediate problem with this one is something many ADHD folks
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will know very well - keeping track of the physical thing. Many times
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have I lost track of notebooks, journals, diaries or anything related,
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often times not finding them again to this day. For something I have to
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rely on (physical extension of my brain, my memories, my thoughts),
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that's bad. It's hard to forget your head, after all - even though a
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certain figure of speech might suggest otherwise.
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Another issue, that links more into the *autistic perspective* part of
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the title, is the thing that many people like about paper - its
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append-only nature. I have very specific ideas about how I want things
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structured - and those ideas and needs vary with time and with the
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contents of the page. You just can't (easily and realistically) re-write
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the entire page every time those change, which makes paper inconvenient
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at best and irritating at worst.
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But there are also some wonderful things about paper, some even come as
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a direct consequence of the problems I just described. You can just
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start writing, there are no creative restrictions on what you can and
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can't write, draw or otherwise do with the page, there is no fixed set
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of design choices, style guidelines and whatnot. The append-only nature
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also forces you to stop worrying about mistakes, and ideally should let
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you be in full control of writing out thoughts.
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To summarize: Paper is problematic because of the physical and
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append-only nature, but can also great because of the freedom and
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implicit restrictions it brings onto the table. What I then set out to
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do is translating those concepts into the digital world, as closely
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adhering to those concepts (and other things my brain likes that I
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didn't cover in this post) as possible.
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### Markdown and the digital world
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Once you dabble with digital notetaking for more than a few minutes,
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there's no way not to stumble upon Markdown. And there's good reason for
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that, being an easy to understand, simple and human-readable (in
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contrast to programmer-readable) markup language.
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Those things also bring caveats with them, however. Simplicity
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inherently means limitation, and that's also true here. There isn't that
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much most Markdown renderers can do. Even worse, there is fragmentation
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in the Markdown space, with plain Markdown, GitHub-flavored Markdown
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(GFM) and MultiMarkdown as examples, not to speak of the variety of ways
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different renderers for the same specification actually interpret
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things.
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Where does that leave us, then? I think Markdown is great, just not the
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full story we need here. It's a great starting point, and that's why my
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personal solution builds upon Markdown. So what is it that I currently
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(and thus far successfully, i.e. there when I need it, how I need it, as
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I want it) use?
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It's a combination of [Obsidian](https://obsidian.md){target="_blank"} (a fancy
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Markdown editor, self-proclaimed "second brain"), some plugins, a custom
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theme, and most importantly, *not using the Markdown __renderer__*. You
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might wonder how that works, isn't markdown supposed to be rendered? To
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which I say - yes, but we can do better. The one thing you are losing
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with that click of a button is control. Suddenly you have the version of
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what you wrote in front of you that the renderer decided on, not how you
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wanted it to look and feel. Which defeats the entire purpose of this
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project, to get something that offers creative freedom close to physical
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paper, without being convoluted to use.
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### Putting it all together
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So how does my setup look like exactly? Like
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[this](/files/blog/adhd-and-notes.png){target="_blank"}. Let me
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explain what you are looking at here. On the left there is a tree view
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of the directory structure that is currently open in Obsidian.
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From top to bottom: *Events* are things like conferences and similar,
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*Journal* is where the daily notes go, *Knowledge* is a categorized map
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of information and trivia that might be useful again in the future,
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*Meta* is stuff relevant for debugging Obsidian itself, *Notes* are
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uncategorized but titled notes, *People* is for keeping track of people
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I know (for the non-ADHD people reading this, yes, this is necessary, I
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regularly forget basic things about people very close to me), *Places*
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is the same thing but for Places like restaurants and stuff (important
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to keep track of what I eat and where to get it and stuff), *Projects*
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is pretty self-explanatory, *Vault* is the "system folder" where all the
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templates and attachments go, and *Zettelkasten* is for untitled notes.
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I have a shortcut configured that will create one of those untitled
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notes so I can just type out a thought and figure out what it's about
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later.
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The file that's open is the daily journal template. This is used to
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automatically generate the daily journal entry when I click on a date in
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the calendar applet you can see on the top right. I then type out basic
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info about the day (where I was when I woke up, when I woke up) and move
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over incomplete TODOs from yesterday's daily note. You will also notice
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the text editor is, well, in edit mode, with a nice monospace font. This
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allows me to customize the spacing of individual elements in the
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documents however I want (just like paper), which would all get lost
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when rendering to HTML.
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### Summary and conclusion
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This setup allows me to write freely, structure everything the same way
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my brain is structured, keep track of what I've been doing, keep track
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of things that still need to be done, and much more. Have I forgotten
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about it? Yes - two times over the past month. In comparison to previous
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methods, this is great! It's also fairly easy to reconstruct the past
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day or two, so I think I'm doing okay.
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I won't pretend that this system will work for everyone, but I do hope
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that you will find some useful information in this writeup. If you have
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any questions (or want me to help you with Markdown, Obsidian or any
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other part of this setup), feel free to contact me. (Links for that are
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on the [main site](/#contact))
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I hope this post was interesting for you, being the first time I've ever
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written one like it. If you have any comments on the blog or my writing
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style or just this post in general, please contact me as well. In any
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case, thanks for reading and have a wonderful day!
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