Luke Miller

Every day, 2700 books are published in the United States alone. That's more than most people will read in a lifetime. And it doesn't even include the thousands of blog posts, online essays, and scientific papers that are also being published on a daily basis. Whatever else we can say about the modern age, we are not lacking for new information. This explosion of new books is a one symptom of our obsession with the “next big thing”. Perhaps because of our success in the fields of technology, s...

I probably read 80% of my books on Marvin these days. I actually prefer reading physical books, but my workflow for processing and paraphrasing book notes is greatly expedited when I can send the digital highlights directly to Evernote or Roam Research. When I do read a physical book, I still highlight, underline, etc., but I try to keep my annotations simple and consistent. A while ago, I took a screenshot of a list of shortcodes for annotating physical books, because I thought they were rea...

I use Roam Research for many things: daily journaling, project/task management, and CRM (just to name a few). But my primary use for Roam is knowledge management. After 3 months, 1,500+ pages, and 300+ permanent notes, I created a guide on how I use Roam as personal knowledge base and digital Zettelkasten. Check Out the Guide Here ...

"While science has nothing of value to say on the great and aching questions of life, death, love, and meaning, what the religious traditions of mankind have said forms a coherent body of thought. The yearnings of the human soul are not in vain. There is a system of belief adequate to the complexity of experience. There is recompense for suffering. A principle beyond selfishness is at work in the cosmos. All will be well. I do not know whether any of this is true. I am certain that the scientif...

Niklas Luhmann was a 20th century sociologist, who developed an innovative and revolutionary system for taking, filing, and combining notes from his research and writing. This is a short introduction to his Zettelkasten system. After collecting notes for many years, he realized that these notes were not accessible or useful for his thinking and writing. They were buried in the margins of the original texts and lost on random slips of paper scattered around his office. So Luhmann created a knowl...

Roam Research Graph View Introduction A few years ago, I started searching for a tool to help me create a personal knowledge base. I tried using Evernote, TiddlyWiki, Joplin, Notion, DEVONthink, and others. Nothing worked. The process was just too time-intensive for all of them, and there was no intuitive way to resurface and reuse those notes. I kept taking reading notes and saving them to Evernote, but I eventually gave up on the search for an app that I could use to create a personal know...

A few weeks ago, I saw this on twitter: Reading many books is the most socially accepted vanity metric for adults.I give zero kudos for reading 100 books a year.I give you massive kudos for learning efficiently and making interesting things.— Julian Shapiro (@Julian) September 24, 2020 I've seen this take (or something like it) more than once in the past few months, and it seems like a very odd mix of pragmatism and anti-intellecualism. My initial response on Twitter was a bit scatter-shot, ...

On this day in 1881, Pelham Grenville Wodehouse was born. As a child, he struggled to say his name (he later called it a "frightful label"). All he could manage was "Plum" (his version of Pelham), which was what his friends called him. His fans and readers know him as P.G. Wodehouse. This is a short tribute and introduction to his work. He once said, “I never want to see anyone, and I never want to go anywhere or do anything. I just want to write.” It appears he got his wish. In 90 years, he...