I really don't like this David Allen quote which is often seen in these spaces. It's usually used by people who haven't spent any time training their memory.

I'll give BD the benefit of the doubt that the entirety of this PKM paragraph is sidelining the "PKM scene" altogether.

David Allen Tours his Workspace

David Allen showing his workspace setup (2024)

09:30 David Allen: Work as anything that isn't done yet (broad definition of work)

04:00 Allen compares GTD to F1, here. Funnily enough, the most productive people are the ones that get most into GTD. Similarly, the fastest people, in F1, want to get even faster, "by reducing drag in the system".

Interestingly, DRS can thus be used in other contexts, like productivity. "How can you open your flap, and reduce drag, like F1 cars do?"

Ready for anything : 52 productivity principles for work and life

56:00 Allen going on an adventure (inner and outer exploration)

• see note on discovering oneself, getting lost, trying many things

12:00 Allen talks about the science of flow, but doesn't coin the term explicitly, he only refers to it as being in the zone. This makes sense: gtd makes you know your commitments, and helps you to focus on one thing at a time, undistracted, which gets you into flow.

The video shows the productivity books which Sheldon used to help design his system including 99u's Manage Your Day-To-Day, Unsubscribe by Jocelyn K. Glei, The One Thing by Gary Keller, Getting Things Done by David Allen, Deep Work by Cal Newport, and Atomic Habits by James Clear.

Reference?

https://lu.ma/az338ptc

Joey Cofone: Are there laws to creativity?

Joey Cofone, author of the upcoming book The Laws of Creativity, is selling the idea of "float" (in comparison to Mihaly Csikzentmihaly's "flow"), which is ostensibly similar to Barbara Oakley's diffuse thinking framework, Nassim Nicholas Taleb's flâneur framing, and a dose of the Zeigarnik effect.

I'm concerned that this book will be broadly prescriptive without any founding on any of the extant research, literature, or science of the past. I'll think more highly of it if it were to quote/reference something like Merton and Barber's The Travels and Adventures of Serendipity: A Study in Sociological Semantics and the Sociology of Science.

Following on the above:

David Allen (of GTD fame) indicates that one should close all open loops to free up working memory, but leaving some open for active thought, follow up, and potential future insight creation can be a useful pattern too. (2022-09-09 9:05 AM)

link to: - https://hypothes.is/a/mVBBYgvIEe22ej8FOn5Cqg

David Allen has apparently not acquainted himself with any of the arts of memory.

The Zeigarnik effect is the idea that open or pending tasks tend to occupy our short-term memory until they are done or our brain is otherwise convinced that they're "finished". This is why note taking can be valuable. By writing down small things, we can free up our short-term or working memories to focus or work on other potentially more important tasks. It is named for Soviet psychologist Bluma Zeigarnik.

The Zeigarnik effect is some of the value behind David Allen's "Getting Things Done" system. Writing down to do lists tricks our mind into freeing up space from things we need to take care of. If they're really important, we've got a list and can then take care of them. Meanwhile our working memories are freed up for other tasks.