The inspiration behind the Timeline System
A brief history of the pitfalls and struggles that ended up leading me to create the Timeline System. And how Evernote helped me twice.
Years ago, when I worked for big corporations, I quickly realized how much of a problem it was not to have a good system for organizing information and keeping up with activities.
After trying many existing options, it became clear to me that they often felt rigid and unnatural, forcing users to adapt to the system rather than the other way around.
The closest I got to something that would work in a more intentional way was Agile, which I studied for many years. I ended up adapting some of its core concepts to Kanban boards, which I still use to help companies. But it is far from ideal for managing life. Anyway, this learning experience led me to Kaizen, which also heavily influenced the way I see mindful work.
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Because it was the first time I asked AI to create an image for a post, I didn’t know if I could simply use it. So I asked for permission 😊. By the way, I always say please and thank you when I talk to Gemini.
(…) Thank you. Can I use this image in my article?
— Yes, you can definitely use the image in your article. As an AI language model, I don’t have ownership rights over the images I generate. They are intended for your personal use. Please note that if you are using the image in a commercial context, you might want to consider adding a credit line like “Image generated by Gemini AI.” This can help clarify the image’s origin.
— Would you like me to help you with anything else?
— No. Thank you.
It’s not a commercial post, but I wanted to give credit to Gemini. That’s why you see “Image generated by Gemini AI” below the picture.
The problem with Evernote’s AI, is Evernote.
Navigating Evernote’s AI Journey: Balancing Privacy and Functionality.
Although Evernote has gradually evolved into a more collaborative space, it has been a place for personal note-taking since its inception. Furthermore, the company has consistently emphasized its privacy-first approach throughout the years.
If we compare that to how AI normally works, I believe it is a bit difficult to create an environment that will make both pro and against AI users happy and comfortable with the app experience.
An immersive AI experience like we see on Voicenotes would mean giving the Large Language Model access to all the notes and everything in our Evernote. Some people would never accept something like this, but that is precisely how to create an outstanding experience of fully interacting with our notes and all the memories and knowledge we have saved over the years.
This is the perfect device for an immersive and mindful music experience.
Why can’t companies simply leave perfect tech alone? Okay, we all know why, but well-built things are so special.
Every so often, a piece of equipment reaches a point where I believe new versions should not be released anymore, and it should be sold that way forever. I’m not talking about perfection; there’s no such thing. But there are these rare cases where moving forward would only disrupt a delicate and elegant balance. That’s how I see so many things that came and went, like the iPod in its 5.5 model.
The so-called 5.5 generation, also known as iPod video, which came after the 5, is a terrible device for watching movies. Not so much because of the small screen as because of the even smaller battery. But it was an okay device for keeping family pictures back then, and it was such a great music player.
Even its imperfections were among its best features. I recall being so impressed by the animations and other fancy elements on the more modern iPod Classic interface, but little did I know that all that was a detour. The 5.5 arranges our music collection using a very basic interface, which is all one needs to find the perfect tune, click, and listen.
An almost hidden setting on Mastodon Lists brought joy to my feed again.
Tired of your Mastodon timeline being overrun with noise from big accounts? I’m using a simple trick to reclaim my feed and focus on the conversations that matter most.
When I started using Mastodon, all the conversation going on made me feel like I was going back to the old days on Twitter. I found it so enjoyable that it eventually became my primary social media platform, and it remains so to this day. However, at some point, all those remarkable conversations disappeared.
It took me a while to understand what was happening, but I eventually figured it out. As news and tech groups started joining Mastodon and other ActivityPub platforms, I naturally began following the ones I cared about. But because they post so often, regular people’s thoughts and conversations are constantly drowned out.
I tried so many strategies, for example, unfollowing some news and tech accounts, but that didn’t make the others more prominent. As usual, the solution was right in front of me all the time. Using the Lists feature on its own wouldn’t work, but there is a configuration I missed all this time. There’s a way to hide from the timeline everything that is in a list.
The solution I came up with was creating the News and Tech lists, adding the respective accounts to each one, and setting both to ‘Hide the posts there from home’, aka the main feed. I’m loving this. The conversations are back to my feed, and I can always go to a list to check the sea of posts there.
If you would like to try it, here’s how you do it:
I was jogging as if nothing had happened, and suddenly I saw this big tree blocking the path I usually take.
We’ve been getting “Severe Weather” and “Coastal Event” warnings for a few days, and today we woke up to severe winds. Then, about noon, the weather started to return to the norm, and I could even run at the end of the day. Things were not so normal, though. There were branches and scattered materials everywhere.
Porto went from wildfires to storms and strong winds in the span of a few weeks. It seems to me that Mother Nature is pretty unhappy with us humans.
First, explain what it is, then make it look nice.
Picasso once said, Inspiration exists, but it has to find you working. In other words, one must be doing it — putting itself into the zone — to finally find the solution.
This is evident in Picasso’s museum in Málaga, Claude Monet’s house and garden in Giverny, or Van Gogh’s museum in Amsterdam, where you can see these master’s art in a chronological order, starting from the beginning of their careers.
It’s been a while since I’ve published anything on my blog, but this doesn’t mean I’m not writing. On the contrary, I’ve been incessantly working on my book. But that, on the other hand, doesn’t imply that I’ve made a lot of progress. In reality, it was only today, after starting the third draft, that I was finally happy with the book format.
In addition to Picasso’s mantra, what helped me find my way was a strategy I use when I can’t figure out a solution. What frequently helps is to first explain what it is, then make it look nice. Ironically, that doesn’t seem like it applies to understanding art. Anyway, when I restarted the book for the third time, I did it from the middle, explaining what the Containers of Information are. It was then that I gradually began noticing that parts of it connected to many things I had already written in the two previous drafts, which I started repurposing.
Based on the videos I watched, the Orion AR glasses appear to be a huge step in the right direction. However, when I look at the entire kit, I cannot help but think that Apple is still in a much better position.
All the data processing being done by that little brick can probably be handled by an iPhone. As for the wristband, guess what? There’s an Apple Watch that, by the way, already knows a thing or two about gestures. Additionally, I’m pretty sure Apple is gathering a lot of data from its own AR headset users. But, the most important element is the well-known walled garden.
If Apple feels threatened by a future commercial version of Meta’s product, I bet they will release a kit similar to the one I described above.