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Survival of the Skillest: Thriving in the Learning Jungle

Bala Ramadurai (his/him) - https://balaramadurai.net

Format: 20-min talk ; Q&A: BigBlueButton conference room
Etherpad: https://pad.emacsconf.org/2024-learning
Status: TO_CAPTION_QA

Talk

00:00.300 Introduction
01:35.350 What is a skill?
01:47.424 Why should you learn a new skill?
02:11.040 What skills should you learn?
02:35.974 What stops you from learning new skills?
03:16.274 Empty your teacup
04:40.424 Getting Things Done
06:33.724 Archive
07:33.290 Multiple steps
10:02.874 Multiple projects
10:37.874 What if the project stops before completion?
11:20.974 What if you successfully complete the project?
12:18.140 What if the project is ongoing and doesn't really end?
12:54.320 What if you forget to visit the TODO files?
16:02.740 Planning for the future
18:36.957 Summary
19:03.210 References
Duration: 19:39 minutes

Q&A

00:00.000
Listen to just the audio:
Duration: 24:41 minutes

Description

In today's fast-paced world, the need to learn new skills is more crucial than ever. The ability to adapt and evolve not only enhances your employability but also empowers you to navigate life's challenges more effectively. By acquiring new skills, you stay relevant, innovative, and capable of seizing opportunities that come your way.

The session will begin with an engaging discussion on the necessity of learning new skills, emphasizing that the ability to adapt and evolve is crucial. Using the metaphor of "emptying your teacup," you will explore the concept of approaching learning with an open mind, ready to absorb new knowledge and skills.

Next, you'll dive into actionable techniques for managing your tasks and projects efficiently. Bala will introduce the PARA method—Projects, Areas, Resources, and Archives—a structured approach to organizing your work and life. You will learn how to categorize your tasks, set clear goals, and maintain a balanced workflow.

Furthermore, the talk will highlight the importance of regular reviews. Weekly, quarterly, and yearly reviews will help you stay on track, reflect on your progress, and plan for the future. Through these reviews, you'll be encouraged to ask big life questions, such as your financial goals, the impact you've had on others, and your work-life balance.

Finally, you'll be introduced to the 9-windows framework, a powerful tool for future career planning. Join us and take the first step towards mastering the art and developing the mindset of skillful survival in the fast-paced ever changing learning jungle.

About the speaker:

Dr. Bala Ramadurai is an author, coach, consultant, podcaster and professor. He has authored a book on Design Thinking called Karmic Design Thinking (https://dt.balaramadurai.net). He has 3 patents to his credit and 10+ publications in international research journals. He co-founded TRIZ Innovation India (https://trizindia.org) and is an Adjunct Professor at Symbiosis Institute of Business Management (India), Universidad Panamericana (Mexico), Symbiosis Institute of Management Studies and National Programme on Technology Enhanced Learning (NPTEL). He is also a board member in the Board of Studies for Symbiosis International University.

In this talk, you'll discover the importance of continuous skill development and learn practical strategies to manage your personal and professional growth effectively using Emacs org-mode, Getting Things Done (David Allen's GTD), PARA (Tiego Forte's Projects-Areas-Resources-Archives) and system operator (or 9-windows). Bala will guide you through a transformative journey of self-improvement and productivity.

See also:

Discussion

Questions and answers

  • Q:What is TRIZ?
    • A: Russian methodology (documented in books)
    • Translates to "Theory of Inventive Problem Solving"
  • Q: Thank you for this talk, very interesting. One of the things that frustrates me about modern webdev is the rate of churn when it comes to useful knowledge. I think Emacs can help to counteract against this by building lasting tools where mastery can be built. Do you agree that learning similar but different things again and again is ultimately wasted bandwidth? What can we do as technologists to push back against this?
    • A: New things are always coming up, and we "have" to learn that new things. We also have to be aware that there are so many projects, hobbies, and Life™ waiting for you. It's not a balancing act, but if you pay attention and are present in the moment (fully present), then look back and connect. Something that appears to be a waste of time at first could potentially tie back to something else and be really helpful.
      • EX: Experimenting with CSS, and how it could be used to customize an org-mode export.
        • Then, a student mentioned that the slides were too bulky to be scrolled through.
        • ...But because I'd looked already at CSS, I could play with weasyprint to make the slides.
  • Q (reworded as a question): \<chum-cha> Why add an "Abandoned" project to the "Resources" folder instead of the "Archives" folder?
    • A: Many a time, when the projects are abandoned, given some time, some projects revive and you could restart. Also, these abandoned projects could serve as useful resources for some other related projects. I tend to move Archives to another filing system to conserve space at the end of the year.
  • Q: How would you avoid the blind spots in your personal review, e.g. problems you cannot see with yourself because of unconscious hinderances?
    • A: I feel that when you are reviewed by others, those blind spots become apparent. Otherwise, it can be tricky to get to know this in personal reviews alone, in my opinion
  • Q: What tool are you using to sync your todos and notes in multiple hosts?
    • A: The only other tool I use, apart from emacs on my computer is Google calendar. I use org-gcal to sync the events from Google Calendar. If I am on the move and away from my computer, I mark an event for monday morning, 09:30am with the task that I just thought about. In that event, I prefix it with TODO, so that when it shows up in my org agenda, it shows up as a TODO task and I am able to process it. Org-gcal syncs to my 0Inbox/TODO.org
  • Q:Emptying your teacup is something interesting you had in your talk. Sometimes my thinking is sluggish until i write down the thoughts that refuse to leave my head "generally in journaling or gtd". I am also pleasantly surprised about what comes out. You brought this up multiple times other reasons for this?
    • A: Emptying your teacup is just the start, in my opinion. When you finish processing all your thoughts is when the thought actually leaves your head for good. Since, there is no reason for your head to hold on to those thoughts. GTD suggests using a someday-maybe folder or file for parking thoughts that are not going to work out now, but you would like to keep to them look up later. I look at the someday/maybe once a quarter.
  • people can join BBB:  https://media.emacsconf.org/2024/current/bbb-learning.html

Notes

  • i want to learn new skills because it is annoying not being able to do something
  • I like learning because it feels good for me, like it grants some dopamine. And the more one learns, the more one is able to do.
  • By analogy, the email inbox is for receiving mail, not for holding it
  • Article on e-mail organization: https://pointieststick.com/2024/07/09/how-i-manage-my-kde-email/
    • Thunderbird enables automatic tagging.
  • For adding files to the agenda, I have an updated version of the System Crafters setup.
  • I plan to add an "Archive" file to my Roam set-up, I don't have one currently. Usually I just leave the finished task in the file. Not sure if it's effective.
  • perhaps "abandoned" means in PARA not definitive for all time, and could be useful in the future again. but that's just a guess, not being familiar enough with PARA.
    • Thanks! That makes sense and I think that's probably the correct answer. I guess my interpretation of the "Archive" folder is that it's there so that you can pull stuff out if you change your mind, whereas Resources is more for things that are "Active" and I wouldn't personally see an "Abandoned" project as active.
      • personally i would also pull out from any folder, may it be named "archives" or not :) but maybe archive implies in PARA for completed projects only - however, pls double check with the presenter Bala
  • I was doing some of these already but not in a formal way. This gives me a lot of structure to do it. Thank you so much. I like the "emptying the teacup" idea a lot.
  • I will probably add the regular reviews to my workflow. I also think it is the hardest concept in your talk, isn't it? 
  • Personally, I use Syncthing (https://syncthing.net/) to sync files.
    • I'm using Nextcloud for syncing files. It also has WebDAV interface which can be used by the Phone Apps.
      • I'd use NextCloud too, but I don't have a server set-up (a NAS, for example) at home. I'm waiting until I buy one to get into self-hosting.
  • Thanks, that was a great talk - I'll be watching it again :)

Transcript

[00:00:00.300] Introduction
Oh, wow! I'm gonna tell you about how I'm learning this new thing… Okay… Hey dude, I am recording, okay? So, I'll call you back yeah yeah I'm doing learning the new thing. Yeah yeah yeah later later later not right now later later later later. Sorry about that. Okay, as I was saying, I'm going to tell you all about how I'm learning this new thing. Ooh, Sacha Chua's Emacs newsletter is out. Maybe I should spend some time… Oh, wait a second. I have to learn this new thing. Haha. Okay, so I'm going to tell you how we can learn new skills in the middle of so many other wonderful things that you want to do and to speak to wonderful people that you have to speak to. My name is Bala Ramadurai and I'm going to be talking about the Survival of The Skillest, that's what I call it, okay? Survival of The Skillest. Thriving in the Learning Jungle. Here I'm going to give you some tips and techniques as to how you can learn skills, new skills. I'm going to give you a quote from a multi-talented teacher. He was the second president of my country, India. S. Radhakrishnan, he says, “When we think we know, we cease to learn.” That was his quote.
[00:01:35.350] What is a skill?
What is a skill? A skill is the knowledge and the ability that enables you to do something well. There's the knowledge first and the ability and you have to do it well.
[00:01:47.424] Why should you learn a new skill?
Right. So why should you learn a new skill? Now if you can pause this video, watching streaming part of the video, then come up with your own reasons. I'm going to give you my top three reasons that you might want to learn a new skill. Get ahead in your career. Look good or cool in your community or peer group or someone forced you to.
[00:02:11.040] What skills should you learn?
Now, what skills should you learn? Ok, there could be a whole list. Let me take a stab at some of the ones that I think could be cool: bungee jumping, teaching your pet to pick up the newspaper without tearing it to shreds. Perhaps with Python rearing, I meant coding, coding, you can do learning coding. So you could list your own skills that you have to learn, you want to learn.
[00:02:35.974] What stops you from learning new skills?
But what stops you from learning new skills? The most common reason that I've heard in the past is lack of time. “Oh Bala, I have to do so many things.” “I don't have the time to learn any new skills.” Lack of motivation could be another reason. Or you're just a rebel. Who is he or who is she to tell me what I should learn? I'm going to learn things like that. So then it stops you from learning a new skill. But there's even more fundamental reason for why we don't learn a new skill so easily. And this comes from the story of scholar in the teacup. I can pass on the link later to you. You can watch this, my own version of the story.
[00:03:16.274] Empty your teacup
The ultimate truth in this story or the moral in this story is that we are filled with preconceived ideas and the Zen master in the story says, it's like a full teacup. In order to learn new skills, you have to empty your teacup. Now, how do you empty your teacup? You just can't pour everything out of your head, right? So how do you really empty your teacup? So the way to empty your teacup, simplest way to do it is write down your thoughts. As simple as that. Just take a piece of paper and write it down. Or if you are on electronic means, use Emacs Org Mode and type out your thoughts, okay? There is a task for you right now. What you have to do is to create a folder in your documents folder called Inbox. Create one and create a new file called todo.org. If you are paper based, you can use a notebook or any other forms of the same file. In that, write down all your unfinished tasks personal and professional. Write down some things that have been worrying you, whatever worries you right now. just write it down, the whole thing, okay? Write down some tasks or actions that you are waiting for somebody else that could also be part of your list here. Great. Now that you have emptied your tea cup, I'm going to tell you the origin of these ideas.
[00:04:40.424] Getting Things Done
These come from “Getting Things Done” by David Allen. It's a great book. I've read it multiple times. Fantastic. And he says, your mind is for having ideas, not holding them. You have to hold on to this idea in your mind. Keep it in your mind. saying it's for having ideas, not holding them. Alright, perform one of four actions on your task list. Okay? The one that you just wrote down. You delete them, okay? As simple as that. Strikethrough the task, hit the delete or change the state to cancel, okay? Alright, If you don't want to delete it, you want to defer it, do it later. Add it to your calendar. Add a reminder to it if you want. Or in Emacs Org Mode use C-c C-s to schedule it to a different time that you feel you would be able to do that task. Or just delegate it to somebody else. Maybe you are not the best person to do it or you probably won't find time to do this. Send it to your colleague, student, assistant, maybe even your favorite LLM to do this. LLM being large language model. Or just do it, right? As they say, just do it. Set a timer for two minutes and do the task. Finish the task, right here right now. Nothing is stopping you. Finish it. Oh, great, I'm going to do this but set yourself two minutes because sometimes it may spill over to half an hour and you still haven't processed through your list. That's why the timer for two minutes. One tip I'm going to give you is: Don't skip any of the items from your list because it's tough work you've been trying to avoid it, don't do that. Be rigorous and finish it off, processing at least, okay? Now you can do the absolute same process on your email inbox. I know, I know some of you have 55,000 emails in your inbox. How am I going to process all of them?
[00:06:33.724] Archive
Well, Tiago Forte, whose method I'm going to be also talking about, says: Archive them all and pull out the top 100, okay? The last latest 100 and process that. That's a cool way to do it, okay? So you're not stuck to those 55,000, but just the top 100 of those. You can do the same, absolutely the same thing to any of your messaging apps as well: WhatsApp, Matrix, Slack, whatever you choose. Even to your physical inbox, you can do the absolute same things. You lift your items and see if you can need to process them, okay? What if the email or message or task is something that you might need in the future? Great! Archive them or move it to a place you may refer to later. So, you have plenty of storage in your cloud space, in your email space, in your computer space. Use that. Archive it. You can refer to it later. Not a worry. Don't want it right in front of you. That's the only thing here, right?
[00:07:33.290] Multiple steps
Now another question that pops in your head is: What if something that requires multiple steps, right? not all steps are created… not all tasks are created alike, There are multiple steps to a task. That's when a task becomes a project, ok? An example or few examples of those are finishing a course on say Coursera or NPTEL or Udemy, teaching a course if you are a teacher in your college or school. If you are organizing a conference such as the Emacs conference, it's a huge project, you will need to use… it's a project. Arranging a birthday party for your spouse, that's sweet, but it's still a project, you will have many tasks in it. So these are examples of projects. Here's how one can handle projects. Create a folder for each project. Create a text or word doc or title it as todo.txt or todo.docx or todo.org. I prefer .org and you can do it. And in that, write down the success criteria, the goal or the deadline of the project. Write down all the tasks that need to be done. You don't have to think about all of it, but whatever comes to your mind, just put it in there as some tasks that you need to get done inside this project. Now, identify the immediate action that needs to be done for the project to move forward. That's usually something that's stopping the project from progressing. So identify that and say: “That's the next thing I'm going to do.” An example of a project is right here. Goal of the project is to deliver a talk about my organization system, make it like a workshop with pauses for activities. You can see that this is the talk that I am delivering right now. And right now if you see recording the talk, okay? Of course, the next one I'm going to do after this is going to be sending the recorded talk, the file and the PDF for the talk. Now, if you want, you can add some sub steps and all that also into this. Of course, I'd like to thank the coordinators for their absolutely wonderful work that they're doing throughout this, okay? Now, tasks for you. You can take your time. And first of all, think of a project that you have to absolutely get done. Create a folder on your computer or phone with the name of the project. Create a todo.org. If you want to use a notebook, you can use a fresh leaf. Write down all the tasks associated with this project. That's going to be how you handle it, right?
[00:10:02.874] Multiple projects
Now, what if you have multiple projects? Not many of us have only one project. In fact, many of us have multiple projects. What do we do in that situation? Well, the answer is simple. Create a folder for each project. Add this Org file called todo into each of those folders and write down the task for all of these projects as well. Write down all of these tasks and mark one of them as next. There can be only one next action. It can't be multiple next actions. That's the immediate thing that has to be done to take this project forward, okay?
[00:10:37.874] What if the project stops before completion?
What if the project stops before completion? There are possibilities sometimes you lose interest, sometimes your collaborator loses interest. What do you do in those situations? Have a folder in your computer or phone for abandoned projects called resources. Oh, by the way, for your projects folder, create an overarching projects folder and inside that are all the project folders. I forgot to tell you that. Same way, on the same level, create a resources folder. That's for all your abandoned projects or even could be on your research material as well, which you are not currently working on. Move this particular project that's abandoned or stopped somewhere in between to that folder.
[00:11:20.974] What if you successfully complete the project?
Now, there's a possibility you might successfully complete. I hope all your projects end up being successful. But there are quite a few which will end up in this, quite a few which will end up abandoned as well. Now, I write an end report so that I can learn from this. What did I enjoy most in the project? What could have been better? What did I learn from this particular project? Now, you will need to move that folder to a folder called archives. This is the final resting place for the project, completed projects because if you come up with another project which sounds similar to the archives one, you can pick that out and create that as a template, use that as a template. Now, why would I have one folder per project when there's only one file sitting in it called todo.org? Well, most projects also have some project files and this folder can be a storehouse of all of that and you can access all of them at one shot. That's the advantage.
[00:12:18.140] What if the project is ongoing and doesn't really end?
What if the project is ongoing and doesn't really end? That doesn't seem to have a deadline or an ending point. That's called an Area. This is now an Area. Examples of Areas: gardening, paying bills, never stops, bills never don't stop, blogging. These are all some examples of Areas that really don't have a definite deadline. For Areas also, create a folder for each of them, right? You can create a parent folder called Areas and under them you can have those areas, okay, and have a todo [file] in each of those folders.
[00:12:54.320] What if you forget to visit the TODO files?
Now what if we forget to visit the todo files which in my case often happens? I forget to visit those todo files and see what the task net needs to be done. You can of course add all of this todo.org and into your org-agenda-files variable so that when you pull up your Org Agenda, all of them show up. That's a good idea. You need to have a weekly review with yourself. Weekly review is essentially a weekly appointment with yourself for you to stay in control of your life or career. To keep things on track. In the weekly review, you need to empty your teacup. That's the first and foremost, okay? Then process all your items in the TODO file. Process all your emails from the last week. Use the exact same structure of do, delete, defer, delegate. These are the four D's that you can use. Process all your messaging app messages from the last week. So last one whole week, whatever has come up, you need to process all of them, okay? In the weekly review, you also need to archive all your emails and messaging app messages that you have processed. You've already taken care of it. You don't need to have it right in front of you. You can move them all into archive. Most messaging apps and email systems have archives as part of their features. Look through the project TODO files to see if the next action is marked, okay? Now look through the project folder list to see if some of them need to be archived or moved to resources. Some may be abandoned, some may be done. You can move them successfully to all of where it needs to belong. Now task for you, you can pause this, of course, and do this. Set an appointment with yourself, sacrosanct time, only with yourself and title it weekly review. Start with half an hour, perhaps you can have it longer later on. As you need more time, you can have more time with yourself. And make it repeating every week. Now you can complain, I can hear you some of you complain “Oh, this is such a microscopic view of my life. What about the big picture?” Well, there is quarterly review, once every 13 weeks you can mark an appointment with yourself. Right after your weekly review to do your quarterly review, okay? And also every year, mark yourself-- it could be at the start or the end of an academic year or a calendar year-- mark yourself an appointment again with yourself called yearly review. And these contain some big life questions, okay? Now I'll give you some examples but feel free to modify it, have it as your own. How much money did I make? How much money did I save? How many people did I help? How many do I plan to help in the future? What projects did I enjoy? Look through your archives and resources. Which one are best avoided? I don't want to get on to this, okay? You can look through a personal and private… I'm sorry… personal and professional and see how much is there a balance between all of these. These are some questions you can answer.
[00:16:02.740] Planning for the future
Now that you know how to manage them now... So far we have looked at the now, how do you plan for the future? like really into the future? Well, I have a trick called nine windows for you. Nine windows are essentially, it's like a tic-tac-toe grid and the left column is your past, the middle column is your present and the right column is your future, okay? and the bottom row is your skill set, the middle row is what you do and the top row is whom do you work for or whom do you serve, right? So you are doing something for an organization so those could be in your top row. Let me give you an example from my own life. This I made about 10 years ago, okay? So the middle column is the what I did 10 years ago. So that is the now let's keep it as the now, okay? So five years before that, I used to work for General Electric (GE). I was a research scientist for them and the skills that I had was: I had a PhD which was used in this profession. I had writing skills, I had some teaching skills, and I love to interact and learn from my teammates. Then I joined Mindtree, which was the current job when I did this, software services company. I co-founded TRIZIndia also. These are two organizations that I served. And facilitator, that was the main profession that I was in. And the skills I had was: TRIZ [Theory of Inventive Problem Solving], interacting with people outside of my team, and I could align well with my organization. I knew exactly where they were going and how to align myself, my goals with that. Now, I said, five years later, I want to be an entrepreneur and an author. And I want to do this for, I want to really work with academia and corporate companies. That was my goal. So the skills I needed to have were: marketing, writing, sales, hiring, people management, all of that I needed to have. And I had to plan that so I used the PARA structure [projects, areas, resources, archives] to manage how I'm going to learn all of these skills and imbibe those and get better at it. So that's where I use this. Ok, your turn. You can pause this video and build your own nine windows to plan for the future.
[00:18:36.957] Summary
So in summary, you need to empty your teacup before engaging with the work in front of you. Use the PARA structure: projects, area, resources and archives. Create this folder structure and use reviews regularly, weekly, quarterly and yearly. Use the nine windows to your advantage for your future career planning and of course, apply PARA to your future plans to plan for those as well, ok?
[00:19:03.210] References
Now, these are the references I have used. heavily borrowed upon Tiago Fortes' PARA, David Allen's “Getting Things Done” and Tasshin's way to implement this in Emacs and Org Mode. These are some acknowledgments. I used some generative AI for this. And this is a question to you: What parts of this talk are you planning on implementing? Please write this in the Etherpad. Thank you so much. If you have any questions, let me know in the Etherpad as well. Good luck managing your tasks, emptying your teacup, and planning for the future.

Captioner: rodrigo

Q&A transcript (unedited)

I'm doing well. Thank you so much. I was supposed to chat and write down stuff in the etherpad, but you guys accommodated me very nicely, swiftly, efficiently, in spite of my quirky last minute requests. Yeah, but that's okay because, well, it's funny that you talk about accommodating you and doing all the things we need to do because, frankly, your talk is about getting things done and you've mentioned the book, obviously, but the philosophy of getting things done is ultimately what we've been applying with Emacs Conf so that when we have curveballs thrown at us, like you've done right now, we can accommodate them because we made sure that everything else was done. So we'll move to questions and I invite viewers to go to the pad, to the etherpad that is on IRC and also on the talk page and put your questions over there. But first I wanted to make sure, Bala, that if you had anything that you could not include in your presentation, just to give you some time to mention them now if you want. I think I mentioned most of what I wanted to convey. I wanted to keep it general with whichever format people are comfortable with, whether it's Org Mode, whether it's plain text, whether it is docx. In fact, I was speaking to one of my friends and he said, Hey, I use Google Sheets to note down everything, all the tasks that are coming. I said, suit yourself, whatever it is. So, in that way, this methodology or whatever, the way which we follow is quite flexible. The system is quite flexible in whichever way you want to use it. go ahead and use it. But start emptying your teacup. That will be my first and foremost. I have nothing else to add per se. Okay, cool. So we'll start with the first question and I'll be reading the questions to you. And just so we know, we have about eight minutes of Q&A until we need to move to the next talk. All right, so first question.
[00:02:03.554] Q: What is TRIZ?
What is TRIZ? Okay, this is a Russian methodology. It's pardon my, I mean poor Russian, but it translates to theory of inventive problem solving. So, that's what it translates to. What it is, is it is said that all the inventions problem solved so far in humanity. If you can categorize them, they fall into exactly 40 principles. That's one of the core tenets in theory of inventive problem solving. Also, that creative people have a process they follow. and in defining a problem and solving a problem. So, this is what I was trained in a company that I work for and I started using it and started applying it. So, creative process starts with defining a problem and solving a problem in a very systematic manner and you can be as creative as the creatives that we know about as the methodology talks about. So, that is what TRIZ is, Theory of Inventive Problem Solving. There is lot of open source literature like we have in Emacs. It is the same way with TRIZ, people share very generous and you can learn about it. what it can be useful for what in the core of our talk also is that many times we face conflicts, that is, I don't want to spend a lot of time, you know, figuring out a system like this. However, I want everything in one place, you know, how can that happen? So start little by little is one suggestion I have. Don't And this is also a contradiction we have, right? So, we need to spend a lot of time to set up things before we can start organizing our life. But there's not a lot of time because we haven't organized our life. So, we don't have that's a conundrum or a contradiction. That's what TRIZ methodology is about to identify that this is a contradiction and we have to resolve it not compromise. So, resolve it in a manner that gives you enough time to set up a system and enough time, free time to enjoy your life or focus on a project and be present when you're working with something. So, that's what the crux of the methodology is. Okay, splendid answer. Thank you. Moving on to the next one.
[00:04:34.360] Q: Do you agree that learning similar but different things again and again is ultimately wasted bandwidth? What can we do as technologists to push back against this?
Thank you for this talk. Very interesting. One of the things that frustrates me about modern web development is the rate of churn when it comes to useful knowledge. I think Emacs can help to counteract against this by building lasting tools where mastery can be built. Do you agree that learning similar but different things again and again is ultimately wasted bandwidth? What can we do as technologists to push back against this? Yeah, this is an interesting one because, I mean, I'm like everyone else where a new package shows up. I mentioned that in my talk also, the first introduction. Sajajo's newsletter is amazing. It has all these new things coming up and new developments coming up. Same thing with web dev, I guess, you have new things coming up. So you want to learn that new thing. However, you need to also be aware that there are so many other projects and hobbies or life that's also waiting for you. And it's not a balancing act, but if you if you pay attention and be present and give whatever is in front of you, it's full attention. Then look back and connect. That's an interesting way, because hindsight is 20 20. Use it to your advantage. So my I don't know, I don't want to push back against this because some of it is just amazing because it thinks that you think is a waste of time and it's a distraction right now. could potentially be. I'm not saying it will be because there are things that are truly a waste of time that could truly potentially tie back to something and be really helpful.
[00:06:17.251] org-mode export, CSS, WeasyPrint
I can give you an example from our Emacs part of my life. I was experimenting with CSS and Cascade style sheets and how I can customize it to use it in org mode export. For me at the time, it seemed like a waste of time. I was spending so much time. Then I parked it. I didn't do much about it later. But then one of my students said, "Your slides are too bulky for me to scroll through to get to exactly what I am looking for." I was using the reveal HTML and I used to pass on the link before. And the student sort of hinted at a handout. And now that's not easy with the RevealJS framework. It's rather tricky. At least I couldn't figure it out. but then it occurred to me that, hey, wait a second i've already looked at this CSS thing and maybe that'll help. It did help. I can drop in the name of the tool that I use now. It's called WeasyPrint uh let me use the uh i don't know if some... If you can look it up, W-E-A-S-Y print. That's what it's called. And that's mighty useful. That's really, really useful. You can customize it. You can change everything. I think I can even, I'll probably even share the code later on. It's really useful and I've been able to, so what seemed like a waste of time is actually something that became useful later on. But there are several other things I have truly wasted and it's not been useful because I couldn't connect the dots. So, perhaps the, let's say, wasteful of time so that you look at something and see how to connect back like the Zettelkasten that everybody talks about. I do not use it, but I like the idea that you look at it keeping in mind that you could probably connect to something later on. Perhaps, just try it out. OK, great, Bala. Sadly, we are a little short on time to answer all the questions that we have. I see three questions currently that can still be answered, and I don't think any of them would be answerable within just one minute. So what I suggest we do, Bala, feel free. Do you have access to the pad on your end? Yes, I do. I do. I have it here. Okay, cool. I'm putting the link on BBB just in case you need to review it. We're going to leave the room open. By the way, if anyone in the crowd wants to join so that they can ask the question directly with their voice to Bala, feel free to do so. The links are on the website. But Bala, if no one shows up, if you could just answer the three questions that we haven't covered yet, actually. Well, three questions because Sacha just put the link right there. That'd be lovely. And we'll make sure that the entire Q&A finds its place into the website afterwards. How does that sound for you? Yeah, sounds great. Thank you so much. I'll do make sure that I will have the answers there, but I'm going to wait here for some time so that somebody can join. Okay, sure. Any last word in 10 seconds for the public? Well, empty your teacup and enjoy your life. Splendid. Thank you so much, Bala, for coming again to EmacsConf this year, and hopefully we'll be seeing you next year with further talks to discuss. Yeah, thank you so much. All right, and right now we'll be moving to the next talk of the day in about five seconds. Thank you again, Bala, and see you later. Bye. All right, we are a fair. So, Bala, I'll need to move to make sure that everything is working for the next talk. So, do as we said, and everything will be fine. Okay. Okay, bye-bye, Bala. Bye. Bye, Leo. Okay. Hello everyone, do you want me to answer a question? I'll be happy to answer that. You want to discuss something? You want to share something? I'm here for that. Please let me know. I'll hang around for another 5 to 10 minutes. Please let me know if you have any questions or if you're the ones who ask those questions also, please let me know. Are you there? Hi, yes. Some tips I've found for getting things done with an image for this stuff is like for separations you have like your Zettelkasten, you're getting things done, and then beyond that you have like dailies and global. Daily Zettelkasten would be journaling. Okay, okay. And then, like, global or daily getting things done, I generally like doing it in a week. And then splitting the, like, core tasks, secondary tasks, unplanned tasks, because those are good categories. I like what you're doing. Sorry? Do you do things like that at all? Or are there separations like with Zettelkasten versus the Getting Things Done? That's very interesting, yes. Daily log and weekly log, that's really helpful. I've also been trying to do that but not being able to successfully do a daily log plus a weekly log. So I gave up on the daily log because it seemed to be like a lot of overhead for me, so I just switch to a weekly review where I would log what's going on and how it is. But it's also interesting to see how it connects back to something that we've already worked on, or we've already learned somewhere, which is essentially using the ZIP and custom method. I probably want to try that a bit later on also. That's a great suggestion, nice idea. Oh, so some of the reason for the separation would be with the daily log, like, for instance, the title for the journal would be, Audinet would be the day, and it starts blank. And then, so if you have a straight thought, if you know it can go straight to your Zettelkasten, it goes into your Zettelkasten. If you don't know where it goes, it goes into your journal. And then same thing for like the week, is like your weeks always start emptying, so like if you have your core tasks, like if it spells beyond three, it's probably not a core task. So it gives you the idea of like, did I actually do what I wanted to yesterday, rather than getting 20 things done that I don't really care about that much. Yes. True, true, true. Very true. Yeah. Nice, nice talk. Thank you so much for sharing that. I've been a, let's say a start and many times I've started on Zettelkasten, you know, with little notes. They have these fleeting notes and permanent notes. I've tried many of those, but somehow it's not sticky for me. I've not been able to get rid of that. Yeah, I've got multiple attempts of using these systems, becoming too big or complex, like I don't know where to put a new piece of information, so then I throw the whole system away. So, this is my favorite iteration that I've done so far. I'm sure it'll change with time. Okay, okay, okay, I see. Yeah, I...
[00:15:25.080] Daily log
I like the way the daily log works, that it has an embedded, you know, you just have a name stamp and then you embed something from another project. And when you go to the project page, the same thing shows up there in the log also. I wanted to take that feature and have that in my optimal setup. I'm not well versed enough to get that set up because I like that with that. Anything I enter in the daily log should show up in my project log also and vice versa. I want to execute on my project. I need that notes where I'm looking for. That's a key feature of that is with logseq you just have a button that says go to today. So you don't think about it and it always starts empty. It's that blank sheet that's always confirming you want the things that I used that before. One of the things I really wanted was, I want this, but I want it for Getting Things Done on my journal. I want two separate ones. Yeah, I like the, also I'm trying to see how to create pages quickly from within Org Mode. I know we can do the square bracket thing and enter and it should go into a new page. but it's not as seamless as in logseq or obsidian i'm trying to see how which way do i do that quickly so that you don't spend time on organizing once you have the bigger setup of the folder structures and the to do then it's easier to integrate it but if i'm starting from a business point of view it's rather tough for them to set it all up because the setup costs are very high in terms of system first and then start with this. Or like you said, you know we could also start with a blank sheet and then start filling it up and then see how to link up things or move it around so that it fits into your larger system or evolve a system as it goes. Don't start with the system in mind, but evolve it because it then fits into how you are rather than the you trying to adapt to the system.
[00:17:53.160] Capturing
So, Denote and org-roam, they'll have a feature, like the note, you have a command called, let's see, create or existing note, and org-roam has an equivalent to that, and what that, you need to consult with that, as you are browsing your notes, you see that, and so if you're making a new note, power generation or something like that you'll easily see if you have any notes that are in power generation or like let's say you have something in power and if you don't you just go down to where you're just you know you don't have anything selected or so it's your what's in your uh what your current so you're not pre-selecting something existing and voila now you have a file And then you have consult so you can preview them as you move up and down the list. And then you also got Emacs Org Capture to just pop up a template capture buffer that is blank that you can tell to go into something like a journal or a GTD inbox. And yeah, this allows you to just make it like a specific buffer to do that specific task. I think Protesilaos has a video about how to make that into just a pop-up window. Like for instance, you're in your browser, you pop it up, Uh, jot down your task, press enter, and it's gone. Hmm, okay. Okay,
[00:19:49.600] silos
okay, makes sense, makes sense. Yeah, for me, I wanted to try denote, but my folder structure, I found it very difficult to move it to a denote kind of a structure where the folder hierarchy is not as important because all nodes are treated the same. But for me, because I'm focusing on a project, I need only the project files show up. It was tricky for me to, because sometimes I share the folder with my colleagues and who are not on Emacs or more. So I can't show them all the files, all the notes. I just want that folder to be shared and ignore the todo.org that is there because it's not readable for them. So, I find it easier to share a folder level or a project level and that's why I stuck to this format which is a hierarchy of folders with the to-do inside those folders. That works very well for me, particularly keeping in mind that I need to share some folders sometimes with my colleagues. Whereas Denote with a flat structure or Roam with a flat structure, I find it very tricky to do that. With Denote, you can actually have, there's a feature called silos that will allow you to do both and I think you can make customized commands to go that work only in specific silos. I haven't messed around to it. too much with them. I don't think org run has anything like that though. Yes, I don't think they have that. But I remember seeing silos. Maybe I should give it another spin and see if that works. Because if it can solve my creating new node quickly from the denote part itself while I'm writing the nodes itself rather than go through the R capture. That will really help me in linking back and seeing how it maps to another project that I've already worked on from an archive and then bring it there. I think that's a good idea. I'll look at silos again. Also, with the silos, let's say you're going to use ripgrep on the directory, you could intentionally keep your Zettelkasten and your journal separated. in different folders, like, yeah. So that, like, if you direct them, or if you wanted to share folder by folder basis, yeah, you don't have to be the all-in or nothing approach. Yeah, that works. That works. Excellent. OK. Well, thank you so much for your time and for sharing what is really helpful for me. I hope the talk was useful for you. Yep. Thanks for sharing. Have fun with the rest of the Emacs camp. Okay. All right. Then see you then. Happy Emacs month to you too. Okay. Bye. Bye.

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