Those who know me know that I'm very into systems and process. This makes me very organised, and capable of orchestrating large and complex projects without dropping balls. I think it's one of my greatest comparative advantages.
I recently found myself on a camping trip where I had decided to not take any devices. I found it pretty jarring to not have read or write access to my digital ecosystem of second brains. This got me thinking about how and why I ended up so dependent on them in the first place. Here is the best explanation I've yet come up with, and some thoughts about whether this is good.
I think much of this is a direct consequence of some natural character traits of mine.
- I am by default forgetful. My 'storage' is limited.
- I can't hold much in my head. My 'working memory' is limited.
Thus, if I don't have externalised systems for keeping track of everything I'm working on and need to do, I will:
- Drop balls somewhat randomly. I probably additionally view dropping balls to be more catastrophic than most.
- Be constantly distracted by the long list of future things I am meant to be doing. I will be stressed I am forgetting important things, or devote clock cycles to not-the-current-task, consuming precious and limited cognitive bandwidth.
There's a positive feedback loop here. Because I really need systems like my to-do list, I've become very good at building, maintaining and iterating on systems of this form over time. I think this is a useful skill for various types of work.
But there's also a negative feedback loop. Because I externalise so much of my thinking and memory to external systems, I actively get away with having poor memory. During my maths degree, I was pretty good at memorising random pieces of 'bookwork' — proofs of theorems needed for tripos examinations. But since graduating, I've never actively trained the skill of having good memory. So I think I'm actively degrading here over time.
I think this is probably costly. There are various types of work that benefit from both having good memory and high cognitive bandwidth. A salient example: lots of novel ideas come from holding multiple pieces of information simultaneously in working memory and seeing connections between them. To the extent that I have poor and worsening memory and cognitive bandwidth, this might lead to me being less creative in the long term.
Maybe I will do something about this.