Tag: pkm

Categories
AI Blogs/Weblogs

How to Refresh Dated Blog Articles

Woman typing on laptop at wooden table in cafe with coffee and pastry
A woman working on her laptop at a sunny cafe table with coffee and pastry

This afternoon I used the following prompt to help me assess posts I’d written a few years ago for updating:

I have a personal blog at https://sjl.us
Please review my blog posts that are between two and five years old and give me a prioritized list of which ones you think I should update.

I was curious how well it would do at this task. Turns out I was pleasantly surprised. Here’s the result:

Here’s my prioritized list of your blog posts (published roughly April 2021–April 2024, i.e., 2–5 years old as of April 2026) that I recommend updating, ranked from highest to lowest priority.

I reviewed the site structure, monthly archives, and indexed posts via searches. Your blog has dozens of posts in this window (mostly personal essays, photography, history, productivity/PKM, and heavy AI experimentation from the 2022–early 2023 wave). I prioritized based on:

  • How much the topic has aged (AI/prompting/tech tools change fastest; photography, personal reflections, and history are more timeless).
  • Potential value of an update (adding 2026-era insights, new examples, current tool versions, or follow-up reflections makes the post fresher and more useful to readers).
  • Thematic clustering (your AI/PKM series from 2022–2023 forms a natural arc that would benefit from a cohesive refresh).

I focused on the highest-impact ones rather than every post. Many others (e.g., pure street photography, freeway essays, family stories like the Tracy obituary, or 2021 COVID-era reflections) are still strong as-is and don’t need updates unless you want to add new photos or minor notes.

Top Priority (Strongly recommend updating soon — these are the most dated but highest-potential)

  1. Multi-step prompting for Claude (August 11, 2023)
    https://sjl.us/2023/08/11/multi-step-prompting-for-claude/
    Why update? Early Claude-specific prompting techniques; the entire field (Claude 3/4 families, GPT-4o-class models, Grok, etc.) has advanced dramatically. Easy win: expand with 2026 best practices, new multi-step examples, and comparisons.
  2. My Current PKM Stack as of September 2023 (September 20, 2023)
    https://sjl.us/2023/09/20/my-current-pkm-stack/
    Why update? Details your Obsidian/Instapaper/Feedly/Drafts workflow at the time. Tools and plugins have evolved a lot; readers love current “state of my stack” posts. A 2026 version would be highly engaging.
  3. Using AI to Help Write (November 15, 2022)
    https://sjl.us/2022/11/15/using-ai-to-help-write/
    Why update? Pure GPT-3-era experimentation. Perfect opportunity to contrast 2022 capabilities with today’s multimodal models and show how your own AI-assisted writing process has matured.
  4. LLMs = Dream Machines (December 11, 2023)
    https://sjl.us/2023/12/11/llms-dream-machines/
    Why update? References to early hallucination discussions and Andrej Karpathy’s tweet feel historic now. Update with current “dream machine” examples and how you use LLMs in 2026.
  5. Crafting Effective Prompts for Your AI Assistant (Claude, ChatGPT, Bard, etc.) (September 9, 2023)
    https://sjl.us/2023/09/09/crafting-effective-prompts-for-your-ai-assistant-claude-chatgpt-bard-etc/
    Why update? Another core prompting/PKM-adjacent piece from the explosion period. Pair it with the multi-step post for a nice “2023 vs 2026 Prompting Guide” refresh.

High Priority (Worth updating — clear value-add)

  1. An AI Thanksgiving (November 22, 2022)
    https://sjl.us/2022/11/22/an-ai-thanksgiving/
    Why update? Fun GPT-3 + DALL·E experiment. Readers would love a 2026 “then and now” version with newer models/image generators.
  2. Hacking Creativity with AI (August 22, 2023)
    https://sjl.us/2023/08/22/hacking-creativity-with-ai/
    Why update? Early chatbot creativity techniques; the creative workflow space has exploded since then.
  3. On the Minimum Viable Environment (MVE) and Apple’s Vision Pro (July 1, 2023)
    https://sjl.us/2023/07/01/on-the-minimum-viable-environment-mve-and-apples-vision-pro/
    Why update? Pre-launch speculation. Vision Pro shipped in 2024 — you can now add real-world usage, ecosystem updates, and whether MVE thinking held up.
  4. Drafts – a tool for idea capture (April 16, 2022)
    https://sjl.us/2022/04/16/drafts-a-tool-for-idea-capture/
    Why update? The app was celebrating its 10th anniversary then; it’s now 14+ years old with major feature/UI changes. Your long-term usage makes this a great “then vs now” post.

Medium Priority (Nice-to-have updates if you have time)

  1. Reading Books in 2022 (May 11, 2022)
    https://sjl.us/2022/05/11/how-im-reading-books/
    Why consider? Kindle/app habits and highlighting workflows have evolved; easy to refresh with current tools and your 2026 reading volume.

Other notable 2023 AI-adjacent posts (e.g., NotebookLM deep-dive from Dec 2023, Explorations of PKM from Oct 2023) would slot in here if you want to do a broader “AI/PKM 2023 Retrospective” series.

Lower Priority / Probably Leave As-Is

  • Photography series (e.g., “Capturing the Art in Everyday Scenes,” Paris posts, “Redwood Circle,” etc.) → Timeless and visual; they hold up well.
  • History/personal essays (e.g., “Ode to a Queen,” “The World’s Most Beautiful Freeway,” “Remembering Blue Chip Stamps,” “Old Man Walking,” 2021 book recs, “Stuck in Neutral”) → Evergreen or emotionally resonant; updating could dilute their original voice unless you have new material.
  • Holiday/personal posts (e.g., Thanksgiving 2023, Merry Christmas 2021) → Fine as snapshots in time.

Quick recommendation on approach: Start with the top 5 (they form a nice cluster around AI prompting/PKM). Updating them together would create a strong “2023 AI Reflections – Revisited in 2026” section or category on the blog. Many of these posts already reference each other, so cross-linking updated versions would be powerful.

If you’d like me to pull full content from any specific post, draft sample update language, suggest new sections, or help with images/AI-assisted rewrites, just let me know! Your blog has a great reflective voice — these updates would keep it feeling current without losing that personal touch.

Categories
AI AI: Large Language Models Investing

The Ledger of Curiosity

We often romanticize the “back of the napkin” idea. It is the symbol of spontaneous genius—the startup mapped out in a coffee shop, the ticker symbol hurriedly scribbled during a dinner party. But we rarely talk about what happens to the napkin afterwards.

Usually, it gets thrown away. Or lost. Or stuffed into a drawer, becoming just another artifact of a fleeting thought that had momentum but no direction.

In the first two parts of this experiment, I used Gemini 3 Pro to solve the friction of entry (transcribing my messy handwriting) and the friction of analysis (stress-testing the ideas against 10-K realities). But there was one final gap: Permanence.

An analysis that lives and dies in a chat window is barely better than one that lives and dies in a notebook. It is still ephemeral. To truly build a “Second Brain” for investing, the data needs to leave the conversation and enter a system.

“The goal of technology should be to stop us from losing the work we’ve already done.”

I tweaked my workflow one last time. I asked the AI to not just judge the stocks, but to format its judgment into a raw CSV block.

With a simple copy-paste, my handwritten scribble wasn’t just digitized; it was database-ready. It went from a piece of paper to a row in Google Sheets with columns for “Market Cap,” “P/E Ratio,” and “Primary Risk.”

Suddenly, I wasn’t just looking at a list; I was building a ledger. I can now track these ideas over months. I can see if the “Red Flag” the AI identified actually played out. I can measure my own batting average.

The goal of technology shouldn’t just be to make us faster at doing work. It should be to stop us from losing the work we’ve already done. By turning ink into data, we stop treating our ideas as disposable. We give them the respect of memory.

Categories
Link-based note-making Linking Your Thinking Obsidian Personal Knowledge PKM Personal Knowledge Management

Forgotten Gems: Mining Your Second Brain

“One of the best uses for a Second Brain is to collect and save the scraps on the cutting-room floor in case they can be used elsewhere.” – Tiago Forte

Ever had a fleeting idea that later becomes a game-changer? Nick Milo’s Linking Your Thinking (LYT) workshop equips writers, students, and creative professionals with a powerful framework for capturing, developing, and ultimately communicating their ideas.

A core concept in LYT is the Ideaverse, a personal repository for all your captured ideas, thoughts, and insights. Whether it’s a scribbled note, a website URL, or an overheard conversation, the Ideaverse encourages you to collect these sparks of inspiration. Tiago Forte uses the term “Second Brain” for the same idea as the Ideaverse. Forte has taught a similar workshop for years and has also published a book on the subject.

The LYT framework, built on the Add-Relate-Communicate (ARC) approach, guides you through the process of nurturing those sparks. Adding involves capturing the initial idea in any format that works for you. Relating encourages you to explore connections, ask questions, and build upon the original idea. Finally, Communicating involves sharing your developed thought through writing, presentations, or simply internalizing it for future use. (Note: I have been using Obsidian as my tool of choice for my personal Ideaverse. I’ve found it second to no other applications when it comes to linking ideas and notes together, helping me to discover new insights in often surprising ways.)

The key lies in maintaining a balance. LYT helps you avoid the trap of over-collecting ideas. By establishing criteria for capture and prioritizing based on potential impact, you can focus your energy on the ideas most likely to bear fruit. How often have you had a brilliant idea or stumbled across an interesting tidbit, only for it to slip away into the ether, forgotten and lost? Our minds are fertile gardens, constantly sprouting seeds of inspiration and insight. But without a system to capture and cultivate those seeds, so many wither on the vine before they can fully blossom.

By cultivating a robust personal knowledge management system, we create a repository to gather up all those little scraps – the half-formed thoughts, the kernels of concepts, the raw materials of creativity. Much like a compost bin nourishes a garden, our Ideaverse provides a rich bed of inspiration where our intellectual and artistic seeds can germinate and grow.

What makes this approach so powerful is the emphasis on saving “the scraps on the cutting-room floor.” We’re all familiar with those fleeting moments of genius – the clever turn of phrase that comes to mind in the shower, the spontaneous creative spark while commuting, the “Aha!” revelation in the weekly meeting that peters out before we can fully explore it. Our Ideaverse becomes the catcher’s mitt for those vagabond thoughts, preventing them from drifting off into the ether of distraction.

And those scraps, when collected and cross-pollinated as we relate to them, have extraordinary emergent potential. A stray joke becomes the seed for a new creative project. An intriguing book quote plants the roots for an original philosophy. An overheard conversation germinates into a novel perspective to share with the world. Our Ideaverse is both archive and icebox, preserving the perishable flashes of brilliance to be leveraged and recombined in novel ways.

The creative process is so often portrayed as one of passionate inspiration and Eureka moments. But any prolific artist or thinker will tell you that their masterworks are built from a million little scraps – the unfinished thoughts, the faint impressions, the whispers of ideas that gradually coalesce into a cohesive whole. By giving those fleeting intellections a dedicated space to live and mingle, our Ideaverse transforms from a mere repository into a fertile idea nursery.

So embrace the scraps, the snippets, the clippings and fragments. Let your Ideaverse or your Second Brain be the garden bed where those discarded trimmings are collected and composted into the rich soil for your creative progeny to take root and thrive. Don’t leave those forgotten gems scattered on the cutting-room floor when they could be the seeds of your next breakthrough.

Note: see also my earlier post from last summer that I wrote after attending my first cohort of the Linking Your Thinking workshop.

Categories
Claude PKM Personal Knowledge Management

Amusement Park of My Mind

white and yellow roller coaster
Photo by Min An on Pexels.com

I recently wrote (“Astonishment“) about the metaphor of an amusement park for my PKM. This morning I was listening to a podcast on my morning walk in which the host was encouraging us to use AI to help extend our thinking in various ways.

When I got back from my morning walk, I asked Anthropic’s Claude to help me brainstorm some more on this amusement park idea. I really like some of these suggestions – which definitely to extend my thinking about the various nooks and crannies of my PKM system!

  • A funhouse with distorting mirrors that show exaggerated or distorted versions of my ideas and beliefs. Allows me to see things from new angles.
  • A merry-go-round where I can revisit my favorite ideas and insights over and over. A place of comfort and familiarity.
  • A haunted mansion filled with doubts, fears, and limiting beliefs that I need to face and overcome. Facing the ghosts helps me grow.
  • Food stalls and snack bars representing nourishing ideas and mental models. Brain food to feed my thinking.
  • An arcade or midway where I can play games with ideas, combining them in new ways to see what emerges. Allows combinatorial creativity.
  • A lazy river where I can relax and let my mind wander, making new connections. Effortless flow of insights.
  • A hall of mirrors where ideas build on each other, combining and recombining. Represents the compounding nature of knowledge.
  • A carousel with different animals representing different perspectives – a way to look at ideas from different viewpoints. Expanding my frames.
  • A safari ride to discover new lands of knowledge I haven’t explored yet. Pushing beyond my comfort zones.
  • A hedge maze representing the challenge of finding my way through complex ideas and systems. Navigating nuance and ambiguity.
  • A theater showing films of my memories and vivid imaginings. My dreams, fantasies, and reflections come alive.
  • A Ferris wheel giving a bird’s-eye view when I need perspective on things. Rising above for clarity.
  • Bumper cars allowing ideas to collide and bump into each other randomly. Sparking new insights through serendipity.
  • A petting zoo with metaphors and analogies I can interact with. Making the abstract more concrete.
  • A sky tram/gondola lift connecting different domains of knowledge. Seeing interconnectedness.
  • A fun slide for taking quick leaps between ideas. Intuition and rapid insights.
  • A carousel of cognitive biases I need to watch out for. Remaining aware of my blindspots.
  • A picnic area for intellectual nourishment and pausing to reflect. Healthy thinking habits.
  • A mirrored labyrinth of ever-deepening knowledge. Infinite recursion of ideas building on themselves.