Our brains are like power-hungry computers, and focusing our mental resources on a specific task requires a significant metabolic boost.
Paying attention involves a complex interplay of neurotransmitters, chemical messengers that facilitate communication between brain cells. When we focus, blood flow to the brain regions involved in that task increases significantly. This surge in blood flow delivers more oxygen and glucose, the brain's primary fuel source, to keep those neurons firing.
It is for this reason that people cannot maintain attention and focus for a long time. Can Personal Knowledge Management Systems (PKMs) help in this respect?
Examples of long-term attention include following our streams of thought, writing a long essay and thesis writing, and thinking creatively and problem solving.
The duration of long-term attention could be days or months (with interruptions). Long-term attention periods could be interrupted by sleep, relaxation, socializing and other activities. During such interruptions, usually attention and the thinking keep going subconsciously.
Common tools include Mind-mapping, Folgezettel and Whiteboard or Canvas Visualization
Folgezettel keeps us focused on our most captivating ideas, lets us trace their development within our minds, and helps us craft them into initial written notes. Remembering these notes are meant to evolve later can combat perfectionism and encourage more fluid progress. This is also what happens in other writing projects such as thesis writing.
In “Folgezettel as streams of thought and a tool for creativity”, I have written about the modern methods of implementations for Folgezettel:
Using Luhmann's numbering system.
Using links. However links are also used for so many other things. Semantic relations, references, cross references, tags, etc. We need to differentiate which are the links for Folgezettel perhaps using different colors and labels
Using structure notes, notes that are in the second layer and contain indices to notes of the first layer
Using MOCs (Maps of Contents). This is equivalent to structure notes above.
Structure notes were suggested by Sascha as a meta layer of notes above the content nodes. They are like index notes, containing links to other notes, but can have content of its own. It is a further development of Luhmann’s hubs
I don’t know who first coined the term “Maps of Content” or MOC, I heard it first from Nick Milo, see the LYT Kit and the video “Why use MOCs?”.
He said “An M—O—C is a cluster of information that maps "things" in context with other "things", which is a very general description. However, he followed this with many use cases of MOCs, so the meaning of MOCs can be implied from the examples. His home page contains many examples of MOCs: Thinking, People, Sources, Concepts, Health, Finance MOCs. An index note could be considered a MOC, but usually it is not, because we want MOC to have content of its own besides the links to other notes.
Although primarily designed to organize knowledge through layered structures, Meta-Notes (structure notes and MOCs for short), they can unexpectedly morph into handy attention mechanisms, helping us zero in on essential concepts.
Meta-Notes focus on a few selected notes which contains concepts we are trying to link, or elements of a puzzle we are trying to solve, or just a guided tour to a specific topic in a labyrinth of knowledge.
A Meta-Note can function even better if it can be visualized as in Mind-mapping or in general Whiteboards. An Evidence board is such an example.
Read related articles about Externalizing thinking and about how diagrams can be compelling.
At present Mind-mapping and Canvases are available in some but not all PKM apps. E.g. Scrintal has Mind-mapping, and Obsidian has introduced Canvas plugin to help visualize notes and their relations.
Milanote is a relatively new app for brainstorming ideas using a shared online whiteboard
These are just a few examples of visualization tools available in PKMs.
The key point is that Visual Meta-Notes highlight key ideas, concepts, and connections. This grabs your attention and helps you focus on what matters most. They extend our biological short-term attention with long-term attention tools.
In ideation, the purpose of Visual Meta-Notes is to focus on a few selected items, and weave a narrative connecting those items, forming a hypothesis in the process of Abduction