BYLOS is the instantiation of my Life Operating System (FAKRAVACAR) using Obsidian.md. It is a work-in-progress describing FAKRAVACAR , discussing the concepts, the tool Obsidian and provides an example of the pairing.
This journey is being captured by blog entries and musings leading to VACAR. The blog provides specific information I’m presenting to keep you informed of progress. My musings capture my questions, my wrestling with the questions and general philosophy on life - observing it, managing it and sometimes just surviving it.
Site Update
Since my December post, I’ve switched my static site generator to Quartz which has allowed me to apply a “Let’s Encrypt” certificate and also simplified my workflow. This will hopefully decrease the friction between my learning and my posting.
The biggest change, as can be seen from the Intro is that my underlying structure has changed. A gap between what I am doing and the terminology I’ve used led me to VACAR. A deeper dive into Nick MIlo’s Linking Your Thinking/Ideaverse and Tiago Forte’s Building a Second Brain and P.A.R.A. has modified some of my processes. The philosophy underlying my Life Operating System is unchanged.
It will take me some time to fix terminology and links on the site while retaining the history of my process so you can see how I got here. In a few weeks I’ll ask you to let me know when you find thing that I’ve missed. Thanks for your patience.
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 say “contemporary” because 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/todo management or Knowledge Synthesis so I struggled for a few months until Tiago Forte’s conference on 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).
Please reach out to me with comments and ideas at bruce@bylos.net. I will be setting up a discussion forum somewhere and will provide a link when it is available.
As this is a work in progress, I find that I am adding/changing things sometimes before I capture them here. It makes for a slippery slope but might provide some insight to others (and keep me focused).
A recent addition that I’m experimenting with is my “What I touched Today” and “What I touched THIS WEEK” queries. At the end of the day, I can quickly see what I’d worked with, and decide if any of it needs to be filed, scheduled or discarded (“Now that I do know it I shall do my best to forget it.” - Sherlock Holmes, A Study in Scarlet).
I am continually surprised at the number if items I’ve touched.
This works in Daily Notes titled: YYYY-MM-DD
What I touched today
LISTWHERE file.mday=date(this.file.name)
>[!note]+ What I touched today> >```dataview>LIST>WHERE file.mday=date(this.file.name)>```
This works in Weekly Notes titled: YYYY-”w”WW_MMM
What I touched this week
Table split(split(this.file.name,"-w")[1],"_")[0] AS "week"FROM -"~Calendar"WHERE string(file.mday.year) = split(this.file.name, "-w")[0] AND string(file.mday.weekyear) = split(split(this.file.name,"-w")[1],"_")[0]
>[!note]+ What I touched this week> >```dataview>Table split(split(this.file.name,"-w")[1],"_")[0] AS "week">FROM -"~Calendar">WHERE string(file.mday.year) = split(this.file.name, "-w")[0] AND string(file.mday.weekyear) = split(split(this.file.name,"-w")[1],"_")[0]>```
Rounding out the “Activities” with To Dos may be the final step in capturing my responsibilities so they are not lost and can be prioritized.
I captured this idea back on Nov-18, so I’ve had a month to think about it. I published a description of my TO DOs on 2023-12-04_To Dos (some more) and starting to sort out priorities. With a month of their use, I can say that I now have an easy way to quickly capture the little things that need to be done so they are not all “what was that thing I realized I need to fix this morning” (but of course have now forgotten). They are captured in a way they can be ranked beside tasks and efforts. I also have no problem converter a To Do into an Effort or Task, which means even if it starts as a simple capture, I can formalize it into planned deliverables if needed. One less thing to beat myself up over (no worries, there are more).