A change in mindset made me drop a lot of my tools

Posted by Dellu
Apr 17, 2022 at 05:47 AM

Thank you for the nice words dear Sarah & steve-rogers.

I am sharing my experience here because some people might find a motivation to get down to the actual production: rather collecting endless notes and information with no clear end result in the sight.

I absolutely dislike the Zellel culture now floating all over the Internet now days. I find it extremely dysfunctional for technical subjects including Linguistics. If you look carefully, all the proponents are using for lighter subjects such as Sociology and the like.—-if you are reading a light book where the points are very spare, Zetteling will work. But for dense subjects, you are going to end up zetteling every line of the book: which defeats its purpose.

And, I think the lure towards it is misguided; and going to misguide a lot of folks.

- waste a lot of time, accumulate a lof of notes and .—finally get no results and trash them all—it is very immature way of life; constant experimentation with no clear end goal.

I think thinking hard on ” what is my the ultimate purpose” is the most important thing before being lured into any flashy and fashionable tool/gadget.

Asking this question hard made me to close my door to a number of new stuffs; not just the software, but on hard wares as well.

- I have now decided to use my old 2011 macbook pro for the next 10 or so years. (note that I have upgraded the Ram and SSD). Why?
Because the new fast computer is not going to write the essay for me. The configuration I have now is more than sufficient to generate great results. What I need is a better brain, not a better computer. If some of the reversed authors used type writers to produce works that stand generations, why can^t I use this old mac for the next 10 or so years?
(so far as it is working fine, there is no real need to change it).

One of the reasons why I want to keep the old mac is because it will not allow me to upgrade software as well. I will be deliberately and happy stuck on MacOS 10.13.

- I am not going to upgrade software. The newer software are harder and heaver for the old hardware; with little or no practical functions for the end user (for me).
- Freeze everything I have right now: Bookends, Devonthink, Foxtrot, Keep it; everything—because they are really perfect in the state they are right now.
- I have uninstalled Chrome, and replaced it with Seamonkey: it is much better for the hardware: never makes the CPU run crazy—can open most websites with no problem. I can run it all day with no impact on memory or CPU.
- Texstudio is also fixed as well on version 2.12: I cannot even upgrade it. It is amazingly perfect piece of software already. why do I need to upgrade it anyways?

And, focus on what matters the most: the end result.