Build YOUR Life Operating System (BYLOS)
BYLOS is the website describing the instantiation of an environment to aid integrating my values with my actions - my Life Operating System. My LOS has developed incrementally over the last couple of years and is currently called VACAR and implemented in Obsidian.md . BYLOS is a work-in-progress describing VACAR , discussing the concepts, the tool Obsidian and provides an example of the pairing.
My journey is being captured by blog entries and musings. My goal is to offer a view into the trials and tribulations of wrestling with belief systems, thought processes, methods and tools. It is meant to suggest that experiencing difficulties while developing a system and tool for your own use is not uncommon and to provide one example of working through the (a) process to get there.
The blog provides specific information I’m presenting to keep you informed of my specific changes. My musings provide a longer form capture of my questions, my wrestling with the questions and general philosophy on life - observing it, managing it and sometimes just surviving it.
The previous version, FAKRA, was superseded in late 2023. As one of my goals is to expose changes to my LOS, I have forked the original site which can be accessed HERE.
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2022-07-25_Why am I doing this website
I was introduced to the contemporary thinkers in the areas of productivity, knowledge management and principled living after I started trying to implement P.A.R.A. using Evernote during the summer of 2021 and switched to Obsidian.md during the fall of 2021 as an Evernote replacement. I have some history with these topics, so P.A.R.A. resonated with me for information storage and retrieval. It did not address task/to-do management or Knowledge Synthesis_f so I struggled for a few months until the Building a Second Brain Summit in March 2022. August Bradley and Nick Milo started my recognition that Obsidian.md could actually provide bridges between these critical areas.
As I started on this phase of my journey and realized that much of what I was doing was in flux (but gelling if not setting yet)., I wanted to capture the process of development (for me) and provide an example of customizing these ideas (for you).
It is ok to try things that end up not being in the final cut and to even share the efforts in public
I plan on explaining what I’m doing or have done, some of what I’m thinking and the inspiration for my thinking.
Please reach out to me with comments and ideas at bruce@bylos.net.
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Latest Update for the site- 2024-07-28
I committed to a challenge starting 7/22 to post an entry each day in the LYT community as a part of my Writing Original Works course. I decided to fulfill that commitment with posts to this site. Hopefully it provides enough of a “forcing function” to habitualize keeping the site updated with my progress.
Latest Blog Post(s)
2024-07-27_Managing MOCs Update
Taking the Writing Original Works workshop allowed me to ask questions and get feedback on Maps of Content which has substantially changed my understanding and therefore use of MOCs. 2022-05-08_Method for managing MOCs indicates my thinking at that time. 2024-07-24_Value Planning is the first post indicating my new understanding. Here goes an attempt to make my understanding more explicit. From a WOW Chat on 21-May-2024, in response to the question: “How would you describe a map of content?” I replied: “A dynamic workspace resulting in an index to critical resources for the idea”
I am now starting a MOC for any idea I start to develop.
Idea
MOC
MOC template
Which is quite similar to my ideas template
With Related and References extracted with:
I have found that as the idea develops, I move earlier OBE (overcome by events) work lower in the note, such as the references to a “Reference Section”, WIPs to an “Interim Products” sections and I add a TOC with the Automatic Table Of Contents plug-in to provide an index at the top of my note so that I can jump to sections, as the MOC can get large.
I am also working on corralling my MOCs into supporting my Values, so I can use references to the MOCs in my Daily Note log so I will eventually be able to assess how often I am focused on building out each of my Value areas.
In addition, I am working under the thought that I have primary, secondary and (maybe) tertiary MOCs because the MOCs spawn actual Activities (todos, efforts and projects(tasks)).
I’m sure I’ll be back to this topic in the future (of course it would have to be the future or I wouldn’t be getting back to it 🙂)
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2024-07-25_Note Taking-Making while Reading
I’ve been using Progressive Summarization per ForteLabs with some technical reading and found it useful, but not searchable. Here’s my plan for my current read.
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- Read, highlighting and taking summary sentences on paper (front of the book is too limited)
- When I’m done reading the whole book, I’ll enter to Obsidian cross-referencing my entries and adding thoughts gained from the total read
- I’ll review and re-summarize with my conclusions
2024-07-24_Value Planning
I’m working on a new (to me) process to drive my values into my activities. I have four broad value categories, generally working up Malow’s pyramid:
- Existence: physiological & safety
- Tribe: belonging and love, esteem
- Professional: esteem, cognitive
- Spirit: aesthetic, self-actualization, transcendence I plan on reviewing my categories on an annual basis to generate a list of goals for the year. On a monthly basis I will generate a list of activities I want to complete to reach the yearly goals and weekly set a deliverable. Standard Project Planning but with a long-term, open-ended deliverable.
Of course, right now, I’m trying to do it all while figuring it out.
I’ve generated some views to help perform this.
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- Values Planning (yearly): This is a transition view for reviewing my 102 MOCs.
- Value Execution (monthly): I don’t have a prototype yet
- weekly-note_tmpl: I use this for planning and summarizing my week. “Six Most” was a method for prioritizing which is being superseded by the my value driven planning.
- _daily-note_tmpl: This note has gotten a bit sprawling. Active Roadmaps and In-process Conversations will become a links to dataview pages. Review will end up in my Weekly Note. The prompts at the bottom are deleted daily after use so the final note is much less cluttered anyway.
2024-07-23_Managing my self-imposed over-flowing plate
I’ve finally realized that I am not wanting for ideas, but a way to prioritize the ones I have. For much of my life, I have had natural forcing functions to rely on to keep moving, but in retirement I vacillate between having tons to do but not really having to do enough to actually fill my time. This makes me feel slothfui. I instituted a “what I touched today” dataview in my daily note, so I know I do stuff. Now I have to find a way to keep moving forward. That will take a review of my values and a way of applying them. As I am committed to these short blog posts, you’ll get to see what the first 13 days are like.
Link to original>[!atom]- What I touched today > `>```dataview `>LIST `>FROM -"~Calendar" `>WHERE file.mday=date(this.file.name) `>```
2024-07-22_Setting up Workbenches
I have started setting up “workbenches” in my Obsidian vault using ‘Workspaces’ and the ‘Workspaces Plus’ plugin so I can easily switch between activities and pick up where I left off. I’m learning to switch workspaces with the Alt-return to save them and NOT with the Ctrl-return which deletes them. I keep my “workspace-topic” MOC pinned to help navigate and leave myself breadcrumbs for when I return.
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2024-07-21_But I get up again
“I get knocked-down, but I get up again”. Another pass at getting consistent, this time using the forcing function of the LYT-Gong Notemaking Challange. Fifteen consecutive days of (at least) 5 minutes writing and 1 minute posting. This is a pre-post to acknowledge the last (so far) failure to get a rhythm to my posting and put myself back on notice.
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