Information Cultivation #1 — Principles

I powered through a PhD with a productivity “system” of random paper notebooks (sometimes just scraps of paper), poorly named .docx files, and constantly re-reading my old writing in order to find citations I needed.

This was bedlam. Like many people who finish a PhD, looking back, I have no idea how I actually managed to pull it off

Post-PhD, balancing writing, research, and language-learning with editing and educating roles, I pasted together a new system. Filtering out what did and didn’t work, I have crafted a small system I call information cultivation.

This is a post sharing the principles of informational cultivation — the practical steps of how I implement it will come in a later newsletter.

These are pragmatic, focused on inspiring concrete action — not grand philosophical statements about what information “is”. The point of information cultivation is to liquify productivity, turning it into a portable way of thinking which filters into how you use different tools, rather than a snazzy new replacement for your bullet journal or kanban board.

Principles

1. Information leads to more information.

   • Taking a note now leads to more notes later — this is good.

   • Taking an action now leads to more actions later — this is very good.

2. Information input > information output.

   • Not all input has to be written down, but you usually don’t know what shouldn’t be written until it’s too late.

   • The signal will reveal itself from the noise if the seed germinates.

3. Information happens in cycles.

   • Outputs happen best at particular times — within circadian, calendrical, seasonal, and other cycles.

   • Watch them, don’t fight them.

4. Information uses the default settings.

   • Information cultivation is the act of setting up your present self so that your future self is effective.

   • Changing your settings on the fly causes information ropeburn.