Cultivating Digital Gardens, Mycoprotein, and Constructive Curiosity

Howdy world,

Here is your monthly dose of?The Curious Connector, a quick list of what I'm exploring and enjoying.

????Digital Gardening (aka Mind Gardening)

When Ryan Salsman reached out saying he had something cool to tell me about, I thought "neat Ryan has experienced AGI!"

So I was a bit confused when he clarified we'd be discussing 'note taking and productivity'. With all the other important/urgent areas of rapid change right now, improving my note-taking ability was not even on my radar. And like many aging 'internet natives', I have a messy history with note taking apps / systems. Long story short, I was skeptical.

My skepticism quickly cycled to curiosity and enthusiasm as Ryan explained how this app he was using (Obsidian) was yielding some neat benefits:

• improving how he thought about and related disparate concepts through the use of bidirectional links
• frictionless note creation by just typing open brackets: [[Note Name Here]]
• more fluid writing and publishing - by writing incrementally with densely linked notes, one can more easily cultivate a 'digital garden' so that publishing a new article isn't a huge lift, but more of an ongoing process of noticing, noting, curating, and refining

It's been just over 6 weeks since that conversation and I am loving Obsidian and this new note-taking approach (aka Digital Gardening or Mind Gardening)! It neatly hits the intersection of several of my core values (curiosity, integration, honest feedback loops) and has fit smoothly into several ongoing rituals that I have (publishing this newsletter, reviewing patterns/principles in my life on a monthly basis)

I'm an unabashed dabbler in tools/techniques, so we'll see if this love affair is still burning bright in a few months. For now, if you're curious to learn more I recommend this endearing overview of Digital Gardens, or dive straight into this more in-depth video about knowledge graphs for personal knowledge management.

Thanks again Ryan for starting me down this path by putting Obsidian and https://andymatuschak.org/ on my radar.

??Mrs Davis: the Nun on a crusade against AI

If you're looking for a show that combines nuns, AI, comedy, drama, and a quest for the holy grail, look no further than Mrs. Davis. The show follows Sister Simone, a former magician who joins a convent to fight against Mrs. Davis, a powerful AI that appears to be orchestrating some new world order.

[mild spoilers in next line] Along the way, she teams up with her ex-boyfriend Wiley, a kind of nepotistic/idealistic hacker who also opposes Mrs. Davis, as well as Jesus who becomes her lover...!

I found this show fun to watch and surprisingly thought provoking regarding the relationship between AI, totalizing narratives, belief systems, and how wildly unique yet interconnected each of our subjective experiences are. Maybe increasingly so...?

??MoSCoW Prioritization

With all the great note-taking systems, TV shows, and other things vying for our attention it can be hard to know what to prioritize. And recently at work I've been digging through some long lists of requirements which has renewed my appreciation for MoSCoW prioritization. MoSCoW is an acronym (commonly used in project/product management efforts to categorize/prioritize lists of requirements) that stands for:

• Must have - critical requirements
• Should have - important but not critical
• Could have - desirable but not necessary
• Won't have (this time) - least critical, lowest-payoff items

My brief love letter to it here is because it is a useful multi-tool that can be easily used in informal as well as formal scoping discussions. On an individual level I've also found it a helpful concept to keep in mind as I work on rewiring some all-or-nothing mental habits. Lately when I notice myself falling into black-or-white thinking, or just defaulting to Must/Should, I try to notice if the topic I'm focused on could be reclassified as a Could or Won't.

??Fake chicken made from myco-protein

Did you know the 'roots'* of mushrooms (mycelium) can be made into tasty, high-protein fake meat? They sure can!

Full-disclosure: I've been pro-mushrooms for years. The typical pitch is: they can help restore/strengthen ecosystems, and provide a range of medicinal benefits, and not just the magic ones ??. So given my bias, take my recommendation with a grain of salt.

That said, I really enjoy eating Quorn (confusing branding, I know) mycoprotein and knowing that they're produced using 90% less land and water than animal proteins. So next time you're looking to (a) eat better, (b) virtue signal, and/or (c) assuage your guilt for the irreparable damage that our food choices are inflicting on other people and the plant ??, try some mycoprotein!

*"Mycelium is a root-like structure of a fungus consisting of a mass of branching, thread-like hyphae. Fungal colonies composed of mycelium are found in and on soil and many other substrates" (Wikipedia)

??Curiosity: a multi-edged sword

As you may have guessed from the title of this esteemed publication, I'm a fan of curiosity. That being said, it's not always...socially acceptable. Especially with 'management types'.

This HBR article helpfully elaborates:

that curious employees were often seen by their leaders as insubordinate and, in turn, less likable. However, curious employees who were politically skilled were not seen this way. They distinguished between constructive curiosity, which involved seeking information, knowledge, or learning by asking many provocative questions that don’t have easy answers, and unconstructive curiosity, which involved seeking information, knowledge, or learning by asking too many questions and questions with easy answers.

Thanks to Ryan Wold, Ph.D. for sharing this article, maybe someday I can be politically skilled enough to be likable to management ??.

And my fellow pattern mappers may enjoy the strong correlation between folks with "Ryan as their first name" and "folks who share things with me that I reshare with you". ??

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Thanks for reading! Comment to let me know what resonates with you.

Tom ??

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