One point for having many unread books is to show the extent of ignorance and develop intellectual humility.

As Confucius already said: "True knowledge is to know the extent of one's ignorance."

For an intellectual, the library is not there to simply collect books, but rather to serve as a tool for research.

( ~1:40) Syntopical Reading is about making one's own mind up.

This method is interesting, I like the aesthetics of such commonplace books. However, in terms of functionality, it is nearly fully replaced with the Antinet Zettelkasten method. Perhaps I could use some of this to improve my journals though? In addition, this does inspire me to create progressive summarization pages of my ideas and concepts, contained in Sage Scientia, in Notion or Obsidian.

A method such as this, or Zettelkasten, can help create theoretical expertship... It might not be the MOST EFFICIENT, but it is highly effective.

A Fred-box could be very useful. This contains cards with useful snippets of thought, very small usually, that don't need a particular ordering or connection of thought but are worth it to be reminded of every now and then, a shuffle if it were.

If need be used in connective thought as well, the content could be copied over into an Antinet entry as well.

"Journaling is an opportunity to think the thoughts that we're not allowed to say out loud."

When it comes to thinking, the Zettelkasten solves an important issue which is the problem of scope, which is impossible at the current moment in mindmapping software such as Concepts.

Mainly, Zettelkasten allows you gain a birds-eye holistic view of a topic, branch, or line of thought, while allowing you to at the same time also gain a microscopic view of an "atomic" idea within that thought-stream, therefore creating virtually infinite zoom-in and zoom-out capability. This is very, very, beneficial to the process of deep thinking and intellectual work.

Think of branches not as collections, but rather as conversations

When a branch starts to build, or prove itself, then ask the question (before indexing): "What is the conversation that is building here?"

Also related to Sönke Ahrens' maxim of seeking Disconfirming Information to counter Confirmation Bias. By thinking of branches as conversations instead of collectives, you are also more inclined to put disconfirming information within the branch.

The author, Rediscovering Analog, reads a book at least twice, usually. He first reads it mainly for pleasure, just to enjoy it and to see what's in it. During the second time, if applicable, he goes through the book using intellectual (or learning) systems and methodologies to extract value from the book.

The first pass, which the author terms Scouting, is thus namely for enjoyment, but keeping in mind what might be valuable or interesting that will be valuable in the future, basically an unguided open ear. He has a list of scouted books in each section of the Zettelkasten that might be relevant to the section. What he does is have a stack of physical cards there with just the name of the book and the author, without anything else. Then when author proceeds to extract value from the book, he takes the card out and puts it in the respective book. Afterwards throwing this particular card into the trash. It's a form of the Anti-Library.

( Personally, I would include an appropriate reading cost and a level on Adler's hierarchy of books. In addition, I would make sure that my process of orientation, in the Inquiry-Based Learning framework, has been completed before I put it as a book within the Anti-Library. )

This may not be the most efficient for the purpose of acquiring value, but efficiency is not all there is. Enjoyment is a big part of intellectual work as well, as Antonin Sertillanges argues in his book The Intellectual Life: Its spirit, methods, conditions, as well as Mihaly Csikszentmihaliy in his book Flow.

One thing that I got from this video, implicitly, is that one shouldn't be restrained by (implicit) rules they set for themselves.

For example, I used to be enslaved by my love for data, which hindered me from learning efficiently by reading non-linearly... If I read non-linearly, I couldn't track my pages. So I had to let go of that to make progress. (10X mindset).

In the same way, don't be enslaved by tools, methods, and principles... Unless they have clear reasoning behind them, and even then you can break the "rules".

(14:20-19:00) Dopamine Prediction Error is explained by Andrew Huberman in the following way: When we anticipate something exciting dopamine levels rise and rise, but when we fail it drops below baseline, decreasing motivation and drive immensely, sometimes even causing us to get sad. However, when we succeed, dopamine rises even higher, increasing our drive and motivation significantly... This is the idea that successes build upon each other, and why celebrating the "marginal gains" is a very powerful tool to build momentum and actually make progress. Surprise increases this effect even more: big dopamine hit, when you don't anticipate it.

Social Media algorithms make heavy use of this principle, therefore enslaving its user, in particular infinite scrolling platforms such as TikTok... Your dopamine levels rise as you're looking for that one thing you like, but it drops because you don't always have that one golden nugget. Then it rises once in a while when you find it. This contrast creates an illusion of enjoyment and traps the user in an infinite search of great content, especially when it's shortform. It makes you waste time so effectively. This is related to getting the success mindset of preferring delayed gratification over instant gratification.

It would be useful to reflect and introspect on your dopaminic baseline, and see what actually increases and decreases your dopamine, in addition to whether or not these things help to achieve your ambitions. As a high dopaminic baseline (which means your dopamine circuit is getting used to high hits from things as playing games, watching shortform content, watching porn) decreases your ability to focus for long amounts of time (attention span), and by extent your ability to learn and eventually reach success. Studying and learning can actually be fun, if your dopamine levels are managed properly, meaning you don't often engage in very high-dopamine emitting activities. You want your brain to be used to the low amounts of dopamine that studying gives. A framework to help with this reflection would be Kolb's.

A short-term dopamine reset is to not use the tool or device for about half an hour to an hour (or do NSDR). However, this is not a long-term solution.

Huberman states that doing these 4 things consistently and regularly, as a habit, might seem to take time, therefore decreasing performance. BUT, in reality they increase performance, as these things improve your health, focus, and awareness significantly.

Therefore they are so-called Performance Enablers

The 4 (behavioral) keypoints for great physical and mental as well as cognitive health:

One) (2:00-4:05) View sunlight early in the day. The light needs to reach the eyes--increasing alertness, mood, and focus, through certain receptors. Also increases sleep quality at night, according to Huberman. Ideally five to ten minutes on a clear day, and ten to twenty minutes on an overcast day. No sunglasses, and certainly not through windows and windshields. If no sun is out yet, use artificial bright light. Do this daily.

Two) (4:05-6:10) Do physical exercise each and every day. Doesn't have to be super intense. Huberman recommends zone two cardiovascular exercise. Walking very fast, running, cycling, rowing, swimming are examples. He says to get at least between 150 and 200 minutes of this exercise per week. Some resistance training as well for longevity and wellbeing, increases metabolism as well. Do this at least every other day, according to Huberman. Huberman alternates each day between cardiovascular exercise and resistance training.

Three) (6:20-9:10) People should have access to a rapid de-stress protocol or tools. This should be able to do quickly and instantly, without friction. You can just do one breath for destress. ( Deep long breath through nose, one quick breath in nose to completely fill the longs, and then breathe out through mouth long.)

Four) (9:12-14:00) To have a deliberate rewiring nervous system protocol to use. A thing that can be done is NSDR (Non-Sleep Deep Rest protocol), this is specifically to increase energy.

Ideally the NSDR should be done after each learning session as well to imitate deep sleep (REM) and therefore accelerate neuroplasticity and thus rewire the nervous system; increasing the strength of connections between neurons and therefore increase retention significantly.

NSDR is also a process of autonomity and control, it allows one to find that they are in control of their body and brain. It makes one realize that external factors don't necessarily have influence. According to Huberman, NSDR even replenishes dopamine when it is depleted, making it also suitable for increasing motivation.

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According to Henderson, there are three steps to keeping a commonplace book:

1) Read (Consume)

"Commonplace books begin with observation."

2) Capture (Write) Always also capture the source.

3) Reflect Write own thoughts about the material. Synthesize, think.

I'd personally use a digital commonplace book (hypothes.is), like Chris Aldrich explains, as my capture method and my Antinet Zettelkasten as my reflect methodology. This way the commonplace book fosters what Luhmann would call the thought rumination process.

A commonplace book, according to Jared Henderson, is a way to not collect own thoughts (though sometimes it is) but rather to collect thoughts by others that you deem interesting.

For the intellectual worker, an Antinet can be used to keep track of such questions and the thought-lines corresponding to these questions.

Asking questions is how we learn. Do not avoid it for the sake of not looking stupid. That is stupid. Inquiry-Based Learning.

As Confucius said: "The one who asks a question is a fool for a minute, the one who doesn't ask is a fool for life."

Don't share under different contexts, otherwise show what the author meant. Also, don't share without understanding... Suggestion by Mortimer Adler as well.

Interesting method of finding example sentences in words.

Intellectual work requires "surfaces" to work against, almost as an exact analogy to substrates in chemistry which help to catalyze reactions. The surfaces may include: - articles, books, or other writing against which one can think and write - colleagues, friends, family, other thinkers, or even imaginary characters (as suggested by C. Wright Mills) - one's past self as instantiated by their (imperfect) memory or by their notes about excerpted ideas or their own thoughts

Are there any other surfaces we're missing?

Seems that the author is saying that as long as we are choosing to work, we will pick that over other things.

An experiment that was done by Bexton, Heron, and Scott where they paid college students (around 20$) to do nothing, showed that at first those students were content for a period of time, but that the longer they did nothing the less happy they became. Then they would start asking for some sort of stimulation (music, talking to others etc.). These students found this very fatiguing, and some actually left the experiment giving up the 20$ a day! I think this shows that we as humans need interaction of some sort, we need some sort of stimulation to keep our brains active and happy, give it something to focus on.