Optimizing knowledge absorption

The Do-It Newsletter #34 - A practical application of the KEE system

Apr 30, 2023

Hello everyone,

Researching is often a messy process. You rapidly bounce across information and encounter new insights on various topics. On the one hand, you don’t want to obstruct your momentum with rigid note-taking since you’ll likely kill the creative process. But, complete immersion without keeping a record of what you looked into will undoubtedly lead to information loss.

So, what’s a suitable strategy to use? Enter: the KEE Productivity System.

I previously published a Medium article on The KEE System (alongside a free Notion implementation). For this newsletter, I thought I’d share a practical breakdown of how I’m using it to process the research insights for the 5 Acts Book.

A practical example of how I use the KEE system for research and writing

1. Capturing Insights

I use 3 methods to capture information into my central Notion database.

Quick capture using an Apple shortcut. This is the fastest way to document a thought. It’s one click away from all my devices, and I use it to capture quick insights. For instance, when I’m on the go, listening to audiobooks, or talking to a friend. This is a simple video I followed to set it up.
Using the Instant Notion iOS App. When consuming information and expecting to encounter some insights, I tend to add more text and context to a note. For that, I prefer to use the Instant Notion App. I do this when reading before bed or listening to an audiobook on the train.
Using the Notion Native App. When I’m focused on capturing information, I tend to step it up to the Notion mobile app since I can better format and organize the text. This usually is when I timeboxed an hour to dive into an interesting article/chapter I had saved for later.

2. Organizing the insights

Often I have a bunch of type 1 notes (most of which get discarded) and varying amounts of type 2 and 3 notes. I try to organize and group the notes into contained topics so they make sense to process together. After that, I link them to the appropriate section in my knowledge database.

For example, The note Insights on computation from the Fabric of Reality gets linked to Chapter 2 - What can influence reality?

Usually, this is manageable during the hour a week I process notes, but occasionally a note is so big that I need to dig into it another time. In that case, I’ll assign it to the The 5 Acts Writing engine (workflow) and pick it up as a task later.

3. Digesting the insights

When I plan my quarterly objectives, I include a rough roadmap for when I’ll work on each part of the book. Next week I’ll be attempting to complete chapter 6.5. The first thing I’ll do is open the knowledge section of that item and go through all of the insights I have linked to it. I absorb these insights by moving them to my Google Doc working document and inserting them at logical parts of the chapter. Once an insight has been absorbed, I’ll change the status to absorbed.

Interesting finds of the past weeks:

🤍 Appreciated:

Stack Next: “The mindful browser”

I’ve been using Stack browser to centralize all my communication for a while now. Recently, the folks of Stack released a new version of the browser. I recommend checking it out, as it’s a very mindful and organized way of browsing, which probably suits some of your needs better.

🔗 Link to the app

🔊 Listened to:

What We Owe the Future by William MacAskill

What We Owe the Future makes a practical case for Longtermism: Focussing altruistic efforts not just on the well-being of existing people but on the potential amount of future generations. The book explores numerous topics with this line of reasoning in mind. The parts I disliked ascribed probabilities to ultimately unknowable assumptions (the common fallacy of using inductive reasoning to the creation of knowledge). But there were some great takeaways as well. I found it particularly interesting to read how value-change in society is not a certainty but requires a persistent and vocal group of proponents to realize even the most basic form of moral progress, such as abolishing slavery.

🔗 Link to the book

📖 Read:

The OODA Loop: How Fighter Pilots Make Fast and Accurate Decisions - Farnham Street blogpost

Observe, Orient, Decide, Act, and repeat. That’s the decision-making framework I came across this week. I found this incredibly interesting because it resembles the 5-Acts decision-making framework I’m creating.

🔗 Link to the blog post

🌊 Re-surfaced:

The Beginning of Infinity - David Deutsch

I’m glad to see the BOI gaining increasing recognization in the self-improvement realm. I agree with Naval Ravikant and Brett Hall that it is the most complete and comprehensive book to improve your worldview and decision-making. At least give the first 3 chapters a try!