My connected Obsidian notes (source: author)

LIFE HACKS FOR RESILIENT ENTREPRENEURS

How to Organize Digital Information Like Your Brain

Solving today’s large problems requires connecting seemingly unconnected dots

Today’s large problems are all interconnected to many subjects, and sometimes even depend on a single person’s mindset (hello Mr. Putin).

You always meet people twice or three times, but most often in totally different contexts.

Information comes from a wide range of sources, some of them suitable for one topic, others for another topic.

Yet we still treat information in a folder structure. Both literally, by sticking a piece of information in a single digital folder, like in the good old paper folder days. But more gravely, in our mental model: This person is associated with that company. This subject is only relevant to that investment. To solve this problem, I need technologies A, B, and C.

Wrong. Everything is connected. But maybe you don’t know yet, or you simply don’t see the connections yet. With the flood of information around, I can’t blame you for not seeing all the connections. Nobody can. But some freely available software technology can help you.

As usual, I am not proposing to save the world with this article. But I am trying to showcase the usage of personal notes using a tool that supports connecting the dots. There are many tools out there such as Roam Research, Bear, or Obsidian — I am using Obsidian.

But rather than talking about the tool, let’s talk about how I organized information in a brain-like structure, and why I think it is relevant to solving today’s largest problems.

The Macrostructure

First of all, I defined what I call a macrostructure to organize my thoughts and information. It’s important to keep this structure very flat, otherwise, you will very soon start losing yourself in folder-like structures.

For me, I defined the following macrostructure to which I link every piece of information:

• Input — whenever I am having a meeting or reading an article that is relevant to me, I am filing the relevant information for eventual…