Use symbols as thinking tools.
As a native speaker is non-English, I am going to seriously start trying English writing.
So when you see something that doesn't work well, it may be my fault and I need to improve it slowly.
I used to be a tool enthusiast, and I will worry about which tool is the best.
Until some point, I realized a few things.
1/ The quality of the tool is ultimately up to you, not the popular view.
No tool can work for you until you devote a lot of time to it.
When you invest time in it, you will naturally have a taste in this field.
2/ There is no silver bullet. There are only threshold methods that will not be outdated, and there is no quick way.
When I was young, I believed in the information on the Internet, but nowadays, I tend to try it myself and then give my judgment.
I can give an example.
I use Emacs to manage passwords, pass-mode. You can clearly see that on GitHub, there are only about 150 stars.
This is definitely not a popular thing, but it is very good.
I used to be a user of 1password or Bitwarden. Neither tool good than pass-mode.
But these two password management tools are like standard answers.
I guess the Internet is self-reinforcing popular information.
The convenience of using popular things has nothing to do with real good or bad.
It's up to you to decide whether it's good or bad. You can use it and observe it before you can draw your own conclusions.
I think I have this kind of understanding, or experience, because I have tried a lot of investment work.
For most things, good or bad is not so important.
But for investment, good or bad will determine everything.
Then you will find that all the popular things you find can't go through, if it can be explained.
I can only think that most popular things are not good enough.
Tiktok is very popular, but I think it is a complete setback for most people's lives.
I think that all those that are trying popular note-taking tools now are using thinking tools as slogans.
They are just information tools.
There is no better thinking tool than reading and writing.
Read good things and write good things. In the process of writing, you will figure out something new.
If we limit our thinking tools, they are not in information, but in ideas.
In addition, what I want to say is that one picture is better than a thousand words, and the information density of good graphics is higher.
Symbols are more dense than graphic information.
For example, for ev.
EV = (W%*$W) – (L%*$L)
You can use one line to complete the whole description of the matter.
Briefness, this is very important for thinking. This is my experience.
When you express things in a more concise way, you can think about more complicated things.
Read the text, write the good text.
Read the image, draw some pictures casually.
Read the formula and try to think with symbols.
There are no silver bullets and no better thinking tools.
This approach can continue to be useful for 70 years.
For example, the current article can be represented by a few lines of symbols.
T ← (Q , Info)
Q ∩ I
Q ⍋ (text, img, sym)