Sitting in the library, trying to study, I am too anxious to concentrate on my study materials. After realizing that I am having difficulty focusing, I decided to pause my current work and explore the root cause of this anxiety.
Analysis & Nested anxieties
Many things can cause anxiety. For example, when the thought of "reviewing multiple chapters of two courses in one day" flashes through my mind, I can't help but feel anxious because past experiences have taught me that this kind of expectation is usually unrealistic. Or when I pursue efficiency, I become restless when doing necessary tasks such as taking notes and searching for information.
The anxiety I feel when taking notes is actually because I haven't defined the boundaries between myself and the tools. I easily become overly dependent on tools, which interrupts the coherence of my thinking. I have always believed that this problem can be solved by increasing my sense of purpose, but in practice, I am not sure how to sustainably improve my sense of purpose, and it is also difficult for me to figure out how to use the tools effectively.
The most important question regarding the use of tools is how to use note-taking to improve work efficiency. I have a general direction regarding this question, but the details need to be explored through practice. For example, I want to take notes only after fully forming an idea, but this approach requires me to deal with the anxiety that arises from feeling "inefficient" when taking notes.
Similar strategies include organizing notes after completing a stage of review. However, this poses new challenges to my time management - how to allocate time between learning new knowledge and reviewing old knowledge? How to complete both tasks within limited time? At the same time, I have to face the anxiety of "worrying about taking too many notes".
In reality, the fundamental reason why I frequently take notes is a lack of trust in my working memory. My working memory is weak, and if I don't write things down, I quickly forget what I thought of before. Therefore, I become distracted trying to maintain previous knowledge, which leads me to start multitasking and prevents me from fully engaging in thinking about the next problem. This pain makes me realize that I must take notes.
Ideally, my workflow would be to recall and take notes only after fully understanding a problem. However, in reality, I need to confront the anxiety of "worrying about forgetting" while also accepting the fact that my recalled notes may not be complete...
Looking back, I have too many points of anxiety when taking notes: worrying about having too many notes while also worrying about the quality of the notes, worrying about forgetting too quickly, and worrying about inefficiency. Under the premise that I believe a complex system is more effective than learning directly from a blank mind, my only way forward is to address these anxieties one by one.
Solution & Zettlekasten
Similar anxieties can actually be resolved through methods like Zettlekasten. Before using the Zettlekasten system, I had anxiety stemming from concerns about my notes: where should I put what I write? Is the structure appropriate? Are the logical levels between subheadings appropriate? How can I reuse these notes? Will they be difficult to understand when I read them later?
Zettlekasten helped me solve this problem. I only need to write a note that is logically self-contained, and the task of organizing and refining is left to my future self. At the same time, logically self-contained notes can easily be uploaded to xlog as my output in this world. This system reduces anxiety while increasing my sense of accomplishment. It can be said that it is the best method I have tried recently.
In theory, Zettlekasten can also address the concern of excessive note-taking mentioned earlier. With this system, I only need to record the current framework of my thoughts. As for polishing, adding formulas, and organizing the structure, these tasks can be left to my future self during review. In the process of reviewing GKI and Robotics, I hope this system can help me effortlessly capture various small ideas and insights that arise during the review.
To summarize, I have realized that the core reason for these anxieties is my perfectionism. The biggest help Zettlekasten has provided for my mindset is making me realize that the current imperfect results are not a problem, and future work can continue based on these temporarily imperfect foundations.
Alright, now I feel like I can continue studying.