tags:: #a/concept #output/concept Productivity on/note-taking

A remarkably simple way of organizing everything in your life.

All productivity systems try to categorize things as a primary organizing method. Threadbeat, instead, follows the natural flow of your life and adds the necessary structure around it so you can stay focused.

This is a primarily a practical low-friction model—it's extremely easy to use and requires the least amount of "time spent organizing" as possible. It's a Slow-Burn System that builds up in complexity over time.

The Basics

Threadbeat organizes your life using two connected lists:

• Thread. A topic, project, initiative... any kind of grouping of events or information being built up.
• Beat. Like a heartbeat, something on the thread. A piece of information. a time log, a task, a link to somewhere else.

The key point is to use threads to help us keep disconnected information about the same "thing" together. Conversations, call notes, tasks, internal notes, files,... the reality is that they are all in different apps but logically they belong together. That's the main purpose: each of these Beats ends up within the Thread and that's how we easily collect it.

Timeline Primacy

How do we humans, primarily, tell the difference between two things, moments,...anything?

Well, time.

No two moments are the same. Not a single moment "returns" later.
More recent things are more on top of our minds.
Our next actions depend on our previous actions.

So while we have threads connecting beats together, primarily our life consists of a sequence of beats.

Thinking about it this way, we see how "everything is the same:"

• Our diary. Make a Beat because that's what you're doing right now and write in the Beat.
• Tasks. Make a Beat because now you're working on it (and maybe you make notes about it).
• Learning. Make a Beat to write down what you're learning.
• Time tracking. Already present since your Beats are linked to a moment in time already.

This is amazing because everything you have done in the past (and you can plan in the future as well) will end up in your calendar. Automatically.

Two Dimensions: The Stream and the Garden

The Garden and the Stream - A Technopastoral

Threadbeat is stream-primary so it's seamless to start using in the infinite forward flow of time.

But is sucks for reference, for finding and organizing information.

As a Thread grows, it contains more and more information ("information buildup") and if we want to access this later, we have to summarize it.

• We can create "tagged Beats" specifically for this, signifying they summarize what's been on the Thread until that Beat.
• We can build a concept-first and relation-first "garden" where we do spend time organizing it, caring for it.

Project Management

How do I manage projects with this?

• Task log is there
• Day planning is easy
• Keeping track of all the to-do's when I don't know exactly when I will do them is more difficult
• I might need to put all the resources in line, depending on how often I need to refer to them. Some AI tool might be able to do this for me too.
• Reminds me of the Kappa model (or Bitcoin): you can know everything about the current state if you know the entire history. So this model keeps a running summary of everything, computed.
  • this might actually be something that's fully automated with our AI tools now. Add a Summary Beat after every Beat that builds up (or re-calculate based on all the notes from the past).
  • I mean the only reason we used to have task management and project management tools is basically this—to have a summary of what's happening anywhere. But if you have communication and thought logs it's redundant information. It's just a different view of what's already there.
• The other way would be tagging inline, kinda like what Tana affords. Obsidian can do it too but it can't track properties—so I wouldn't be able to tag when things are done.