anti-library

Process share for Diego:

Here’s a screenshot of my thinking space, the Markdown editor Ulysses. I’m currently working on a piece about our “generation ship” house and NATiVE’s part in making it: “Our Generation Ship: Electrify all the things, Automate all the things, Backup all the things”

Screenshot of Ulysses showing my library, sheets in my inbox, the current sheet, and the dashboard.

You can see other pieces I’m currently working on in that screenshot: “Accommodations in Neurodiverse Relationships”, “The Mass Transformation of Other People’s Risk Into Profit”, “Samefooding the Apocalypse”, “Crip Wisdom in the Age of Coronavirus”. Whatever’s on my mind ends up in Ulysses. Some of those thoughts are iterated into blog posts that I publish to my WordPress blogs directly from Ulysses.

Start building an anti-library of your interests. My ebook collection is pretty vast and full of highlights. I use Readwise to collect and surface those highlights. A commonplace book of quotes is a useful tool for knowledge, and ReadWise helps you mine, master, and create serendipity from your commonplace book.

ReadWise showing quotes from "A Dance With Dragons" and "Digital Sociologies"

ReadWise widgets showing quotes from "Loud Hands" and "Inclusive Education for Autistic Children"

“I remember once in college, the pride I felt about being able to write an entire research paper with stuff from my own anti-library.”

Help students build their anti-libraries.

Have you really read all these?: Anti-libraries and Knowledge

Someone walks into your house and sees your many books on your many bookshelves. Have you really read all these? they ask. This person does not understand knowledge. A good library is comprised in large part by books you haven’t read, making it something you can turn to when you don’t know something. He calls it: the Anti-Library.

I remember once in college, the pride I felt about being able to write an entire research paper with stuff from my own anti-library. We all have books and papers that we haven’t read yet. Instead of feeling guilty, you should see them as an opportunity: know they’re available to you if you ever need them.

Source: The 5-Step Research Method I Used For Tim Ferriss, Robert Greene, and Tucker Max