Writing is something that’s extremely difficult to do well.

It is, after all, a form of telepathy. Transferring hazy ideas from your mind, onto an external medium, in a way that some other mind (that you have not, and may never meet), can digest, so that they end up with that same idea in their minds.

I stumbled across this video, and thought I’d share it with you, as well as highlight a few of the points and how they apply in Gingko.

Don’t Wait: Write

“Writing is how we work through ideas, not just share them…”

I thoroughly agree with this statement. If you’re doing research work, or any long and winding creative process, you should be writing daily. Even if it’s just for yourself.

During my PhD work, I often found that writing was a great way to keep the thread going day in and day out. I would keep a detailed log of what I was doing, and why, and towards the end of the day, tell myself what the next step would be.

This is similar to Ernest Hemingway’s advice, by the way:

You read what you have written and, as you always stop when you know what is going to happen next, you go on from there. You write until you come to a place where you still have your juice and know what will happen next and you stop and try to live through until the next day when you hit it again.

– Ernest Hemingway, 1958 interview with George Plimpton

Besides keeping a log & picking up the thread, writing in Gingko as you go is a way of maintaining perspective. You are not simply keeping the thread day in and day out, but if your journal is tree-structured, you can do the same for every week, month, and quarter. This keeps you from going down the blind alleys that litter any creative work.

In a nutshell, this constant perspective could very well save you years off a PhD (or novel, or any other ambitious writing project).

Identify your Key Idea

This, I believe, is the single biggest challenge in the way PhD’s are pursued (at least, from my experience and interviews). And a simple diagnostic is in the title.

Here is the title of my PhD in physics: “Flexible polyelectrolytes: like-charged attraction,
linear stability, and long-term structure”.

Quick: Can you tell me what question I’m answering? Well, neither can I. In the end, I wrote a “topic” thesis, where I “did studies” about some system, but came up with no concrete answers to any specific question. My paper is about flexible polyelectrolytes, but doesn’t firmly answer any one question posed about flexible polyelectrolytes.

Can you answer these about your own work?

1. What question does your research answer?
2. Or at least: What more refined questions does your research allow you/others to ask?

The talk presented above does make a good point: you won’t know at first what your single key idea is. But you must keep searching for it.

There’s an oft-repeated statement from journalism that applies: given a day to write a story, a good journalist would spend half a day crafting the right Title and Lede.

For you research, what’s your title? For your screenplay, what’s the logline? In Gingko, what is your root node?

That one sentence deserves more thought than any of the nitty gritty problems that your work presents you, but it often gets no thought until the end, when it’s likely too late (as it was for me).

Put your Readers First

In writing out the core findings of your research, it’s very tempting to go all out on the details. But don’t forget that for your readers, this is all new, and that you are likely suffering from the “Curse of Knowledge” (you can’t imagine what it’s like not to know what you already know).

I find that in this case, using Gingko’s card tree approach can really help. First, describe any given portion in concrete and intuitive terms, as if you were giving a presentation on it. And then, you can expand on that idea by adding 2 or 3 child cards with more detail. And so on until you’re satisfied.

You no longer have  a conflict between “dumbing down” your idea, and presenting all the details. you can do both.

There’s a great deal of good advice in this talk, especially when he touches on general principles of writing as opposed to going over specific structures and outlines. If you’re doing any serious writing, I recommend this video.

Just a few quick tips to share today.

And while they can save you a few minutes here and there, the real benefit of tips like this is that they’re little things that help you keep moving and stay in flow while you’re working. And anything that helps you stay in a state of flow for longer is worth learning.

1. To Search is to Jump

I use the search feature of Gingko constantly. Not only does it hide everything that doesn’t match your query, it also moves your focus to the first match. Which means that you can use search to quickly jump to a different part of the tree.

In shortcuts, here’s how it works:

1. Press /
2. Start typing a word that’s in the card you want to jump to.
3. Cycle through the terms (Ctrl+G / Ctrl+Shift+G) if necessary, or type more to restrict your result further.
4. Once the card you want to jump to is selected, hit Esc to clear the search query and stay on that card.

In words, it may seem long, but once you practice this a few times, it lets you jump from where you are to anywhere on the tree, very quickly. And that’s invaluable for staying in flow while writing.

2. Quickly insert image from DropBox

If you use DropBox to store your images or photos, and want a way to quickly add them to your tree, just copy the following script onto any card, and you’ll get a handy “Image from Dropbox” button in that card:

<script type="text/javascript" src="https://www.dropbox.com/static/api/2/dropins.js" id="dropboxjs" data-app-key="g8vslfgsfr3v7ty"></script>
<button onclick="getChooser()">Image from Dropbox</button>

<script>
getChooser = function(){
  Dropbox.choose({
    success: function(files) {
      alert("![]("+files[0].link.replace('dl=0','dl=1')+")");
    }
  });
}
</script>

Then click the button, select your image, “Ctrl+C” the alert that shows up, and paste it wherever you need it.

3. Add icons from Unicode characters

UPDATE: It has come to my attention that these icons don’t work consistently across browsers & operating systems. I know because I started using them for Gingko’s UI, and some people saw empty rectangles where there were supposed to be up/down arrows, etc.

What you can do instead is use Bootstrap’s Glyphicons, by including a <span class=”glyphicon glyphicon-inbox”></span>. It’s longer, but more reliable.

If you have a project management tree, it’s often very helpful to be able to add icons to visually distinguish the different categories. The simplest way I’ve found of doing this, is to use http://copypastecharacter.com.

Just visit the site, click the character you want, and paste it into your card.

I know there are better and prettier icon collections, but if the idea is to quickly put something in there, and move on, this has been my choice so far.

So that’s it for now.

Do you have any tips or tricks you use with Gingko to help you stay in flow?
Let us know in the comments!

There’s only a finite amount of time in the day, and when things feel out of control, our tendency is to fill the time with more action and busyness. But this exactly the wrong approach.

In order to maintain perspective, I do two things regularly, and it’s been immensely useful to me.

Thinking Thursdays

Every Thursday morning, I block off time to simply think. 

First, I do this starting 6am in the morning, when my wife and son are still sleeping. I close the door, lay out a yoga mat, put a clipboard with a pile of fresh paper and some pens next to it, set a timer for 90 minutes, and lie down to think. Continue reading Why I take a week off every 7th →

Just a quick post today, as I’m busy preparing for my PhD defense (on Monday!).

A few months ago, I started sharing a beta “public feedback” forum with a few Gingko users. I used UserVoice to allow users to submit ideas, and to vote on them.

In the end, I feel it was a mistake for this stage of Gingko’s life, and have since disabled it.
Here’s why I think it was a mistake, and what I learned from it.
Continue reading What I learned from my failed UserVoice experiment →

Today, a 3 minute blast from the past.

I believe that science needs to change, and that to do so, it needs a new medium to work within. 
I think Gingko is a step closer to this new medium, but the element we’re still sorely lacking is collaboration.

In any case, here’s a 3 minute talk I gave in 2012 (before Gingko), which summarizes some of these ideas.

I think we can all learn how to improve the way science works, just by observing how children explore their world.

The best part of my day is after breakfast, when I take my son out for a walk. My son and I get to spend quality time together, and my wife can have some quiet time to do her work (I’ve already done several hours myself during my 5:30am – 9am block).

Lately, instead of going to the park, with its slides and swings and plastic toy structures, we’ve been going across the street. To the massive, odd collection of concrete and ramps and hills and grass that is Montreal’s Olympic Stadium complex.

My son loves it! We get to climb up and down (and up and down and up and down) stairs, to swing on railings. To run up grass hills, and down ramps. To sit on the pavement and throw rocks down sewer openings.

It’s a large barren place, but there’s always the occasional tourist. And here’s the thing:

I know we get some very odd looks.

After all, I’m 30, my son is not even 2, and we’re climbing around at random like delinquent monkeys.

• “This isn’t a park!”
• “That’s not a designated play structure,”
• “What are you doing up there?”
• “Are you allowed to be on that side of the fence?”

There are no sharp boundaries

I find this kind of thinking very often, and its sad. We start labeling things very quickly.

• “That there is a park, but this here is an event area.”
• “This is a wooden triangle, not a super-spaceship-rocket-thing.”

And while it’s easy to look at a sign that says “Designated play area for 2-5 year olds, only.” and think it’s comical that things have to be so sharply delineated (what if my son is a week shy of 2 years?), we forget that the rest of our lives are full of labels and sharp boundaries.

• “I am a biologist, not a chemist.”
• “I am a writer, not a scientist.”

And what happens is that, instead of seeing the world as it is, with its infinite array of texture and complexity, we start to see the world as a series of abstractions.

And abstractions & categorizations can never capture the entire picture. We start to believe in the abstractions far too much, and no longer see the underlying complexity and unity… Continue reading Approaching Science as a Whole, with Childlike Wonder →

I find that it sometimes takes a while for new users to get used to Gingko.

I always say there’s no “right” way to use Gingko. But there is one point that might help you see your trees differently. And it might make the difference between getting stuck on an idea, and having it just flow onto the page.

First of all, think about the phrase “flow onto the page”. It implies that there is a stream of information that begins in your mind, and needs to pass through a very narrow channel (your typing fingers), to emerge on a Gingko tree.

Thinking of writing as information flow brings in a few analogies from the field of communication theory, which I find helps explain why a Gingko tree is not just an outline.

When arranging and organizing a tree, you shouldn’t be thinking in terms of categories (“Where should this go?”), but in terms of lossy compression and a sum of parts.

Lossy Compression

If you’re old enough, you might remember that back in the ancient World Wide Web (or Information Superhighway), you would sometimes watch an image download painfully slowly.

Continue reading Gingko is not (just) an outliner →

I’ve set myself a goal to write a blog post a week. But, since Gingko is used for so many different things, from academics and graduate students, to game designers and novelists, I find I’m often faced with the question, “I have so much to write about.. how do I choose?”

Analysis paralysis & the paradox of choice. It’s a situation I’m in constantly. And as creatives, I am sure you are too.

As CEO of Gingko, and the only non-coder in our two-man team, this can often become overwhelming.

I could be contacting the press, or thinking up ways of improving our retention, or writing better copy for our pricing page. A new pricing model? Should we start offering enterprise/team packages? If so, how would we start? Where can I start looking now, for the talent we’ll need later? What about one-off promotions? How much prep should I be doing for the upcoming Startup Festival? And on and on and on.

As a knowledge worker (which today includes almost everyone, by some definition), at any moment, of any given day, there are literally hundreds of possible things you could be doing. So how do you choose?

I don’t have the answer, but I did come to a basic understanding that has helped me feel less overwhelmed. And since any creative enterprise is a mind-game, feeling less overwhelmed is more than half the battle.

Forget the “To Do” list

A “To do” list is an overwhelming reminder of all the things you should be doing, but can’t (due to paralysis).

Sorting the list is painful, and it could include anything from important priorities to random ideas. GTD can help organize these, but in the end, you will just end up with different categories of “To Do” lists.

Instead, use “Must Do” and “Could Do”

Reframing your lists slightly can make a tremendous psychological difference. Here’s why.

The “Must Do” list is a list of promises (to yourself, to your partner, to anyone you respect). As with all promises, you shouldn’t make them unless you are sure you can deliver. And every item added to a “Must Do” list is deliberated on carefully, because adding too much to a “Must Do” list will lead to a complete breakdown of the system.

A “Could Do” list, on the other hand, is a list of all the possible paths you could take next (some of which may be mutually exclusive). There’s no fear of adding things to a “Could Do” list. And instead of approaching the list with dread, with a little practice you can learn to approach it with curiosity and excitement. (“Ooh, look at all the things I could be doing!”).

However, there is one more caveat: the “Could Do” list can (and should) become very large. So how do you prevent information overload, and actually choose from this list?

Brain-Sort/Cull cycles

Here at Gingko, when we come across a list that needs sorting, we don’t hesitate to use our internal brain-sort “app”[1].

What’s brain-sort? Quite simply, it’s a sorting algorithm (merge sort), but instead of using math or logic to compare and sort two alternatives, it presents them to you and lets you pick.

So:

1. You give this “app” a list.
2. You choose a question prompt (e.g. “Which is more important?” or “Which is more exciting?”).
3. You are then presented with two elements at a time from the list, and you choose which is most important/exciting/etc out of those two.
4. Repeat till your list is sorted.

The result is you relatively quickly have sorted the list by one criteria (“Impact”, say).

Now, you can simply cull the bottom third of the list, and sort by another criteria (“Desire to complete”).

Repeat as often as you like, until you get to a manageable list of tasks and actions that you could do, which are impactful, exciting, and any of the other variables you choose[2].

Just another technique

So I’m claiming that a “Must Do”/”Could Do” list is the solution to effectiveness and overwhelm?

No, but it is a technique that is useful to have in your toolbox. In some cases, it might make the difference between being stuck in analysis-paralysis, and taking action.

If you want to read more about “Must Do” tasks, and how you might keep track of them (either for one-offs, or for recurring actions), have a look at this Beeminder.com post.

For more on “Could Do” lists, I’d recommend you read “Get It Done: From procrastiantion to creative Genius in 15 minutes a day“. It’s a great read, with many useful actionable exercises to move you towards a more fulfilling creative life.

And as always, if you have anything to add, please comment below.

[1]: I put “app” in quotes, because it’s a 20 minute hacking job I put together a year or more ago. We are considering turning this into an actual app, or integrating this into Gingko.
[2]: Of course, what I actually want to do is sort the same full list repeatedly, by each variable, and then use a function of my choosing to give appropriate weights to each variable. But this is my OCPD taking over again… Culling the bottom x% leaves you with a much smaller list to sort for the next time around.