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💡 The Big Idea: Stop Collecting, Start Creating.

A few weeks ago, I got to interview one of my Internet heroes, Derek Sivers, for the Focused podcast.

It was an incredible conversation (one of my favorites!) that covered everything from personal agency to idea ownership to saying no.

We discussed a few of the big ideas from his new book, Useful Not True. But one comment he made in particular has been turning over and over in my brain since he said it:

No new inputs.

No New Instructions for the Computer

Derek Sivers is my kind of nerd.

He’s an advocate for plain text, doesn’t like Facebook, and is a huge fan of journaling.

He’s also a computer programmer with a unique perspective on information gathering. And he has a few things to teach us about personal knowledge management (PKM).

In our conversation, Derek shared a little bit of his thinking behind an essay in his newest book, titled No New Instructions for the Computer:

In other words, there comes a time when you need to put the phone down and do something with what you already have.

No new inputs.

Output is More Important Than Input

A common mistake people make is that they collect more and more information without doing anything with it.

I call this The Digital Magpie Trap.

Why?

While magpies are often considered to be very intelligent birds, they tend to collect shiny objects that have no relevance and stick them in their nests.

Aspiring sensemakers end up doing the same thing. They grab whatever shiny new object catches their attention and stick it in their note-taking app. They're constantly collecting things because they believe the answer is out there somewhere, and they just need to find it.

But at some point, we have to shift our thinking. The truth is, we likely already have everything we require - we just need to do something with it.

We need to stop collecting and start creating.

Create, Don’t Consume

We gather more information because we’re unsure. We don’t understand something, so we look outside for the answers.

However, a curious phenomenon occurs: the more information we consume, the less confident we become.

It's not about having information, it's about doing something with it.

The way we discover the clarity we’re after is through creating.

There’s a saying that goes, “Thoughts disentangle themselves through lips and pencil tips.”

I would add: “and also clicky keyboards.”

The act of writing helps us process our thoughts and enables us to discover what we truly know. When we create instead of consume, we’re forced to organize our existing knowledge into coherent patterns.

This is where the real magic happens.

So the next time you feel the urge to collect more information, stop. Close your browser tabs. Put away the books.

No new inputs. Do something! Start creating with what you already have.

😎 Something Cool: Fix Your Obsidian Tags with Linter

Obsidian version 1.9 brings some cool new features (like Bases), but it also broke a few things.

One of those is how multiple tags get rendered, as they can no longer be in a single line and must be added as a list.

What does that mean? It means this will no longer work:

And must instead look like this:

Changing this all by hand would be a major pain. Fortunately, it’s pretty easy with the help of the Linter plugin.

If you want to update all the tags in your Obsidian vault at once, here’s how to do it.

In the Linter settings, make sure the following options are configured correctly:

1. Set the General → YAML tags section style to “multi-line”
2. Toggle the YAML → Format YAML Array option on
3. (Optional) Toggle the General → Lint on save option on

After this, go to the Command Palette and run the Linter: Lint all files in vault command, and all your tags will be updated to the correct format.

Just be sure to make a backup of your vault first!

📚 Book Notes: Useful Not True by Derek Sivers

The inspiration for this newsletter came from Derek Sivers’ newest book, Useful Not True. It’s a series of essays compiled into a short book about the power of perspective.

If you could use some help reframing things to help you take more consistent action on the things that matter, this is a good one.

And if you want to download my mind map book notes, click here.

— Mike