Digital gardening 01
Making space for curiosity and wonderment made my life better... crazy
I found something a few months ago that made me excited about learning and being alive again. These nuggets are invaluable in the year of our lord 2025, so I'm excited to share my nerdy little personal practice here with you: digital gardening.
The idea of a "second brain" is commonplace in the PKM (personal knowledge management) space, but might be new to you. I feel kind of gross for even knowing what PKM means. “Knowledge management” conjures visions of bros in wearable tech discussing the best way to optimize their protein intake over, I don't know, bulletproof coffee. Digital gardening, though? That's more my speed.
A digital garden is a flexible online space in which to store, curate, expand, and connect ideas. I love digital gardening as a way to nurture my curiosity and compound different areas of learning, resulting in deeper understanding, as well as a body of work that just kind of…happens.
Put simply, the process goes like this:
Read a book
Take notes from book (in "source material" section)
Develop thoughts around notes; walk ideas out (in "rough notes" section)
Write essays, books, gain infinite knowledge, knowledge is power, honourary PhD, etc. (in "permanent notes" section)
I initially set up shop in Obsidian after watching this extremely in-depth video by Odysseas. I have since switched to Anytype after reading Lula's newsletter in April. Here is a glimpse at how I set up my digital garden:
Aside: I also use the PARA method in Anytype. Everything fits into one of the following categories: Projects, Areas, Resources, and Archive. I’m a passive user of this method and haven’t gone too deep into Tiago Forte’s work, but definitely find value in the PARA buckets.
You can see my Zettelkasten/second brain/digital garden up at the top. The Zettelkasten (meaning slip box) Method was developed by Niklas Luhmann, a prolific writer, theorist, scholar, and sociologist with a trusty slip box of notes by his side. Luhmann's system is interesting and inspiring. I wouldn't call his story aspirational— he was clearly a freaky workaholic— but he left behind a helpful legacy.
Digital gardening as a system of research, knowledge management, and curiosity development has been really rewarding so far. I'm allergic to the idea of hoarding notes and screenshots in dusty never-to-be-seen-again folders, and equally repulsed by "personal optimization" and productivity techniques, so the metaphor of gardening is just the ticket.
Next week, I will build on the idea of a digital garden as it pertains to being a musician, and how public digital gardening and website curation are essential pieces of a future beyond social media.
Do you have a digital garden? Do you use Anytype or Obsidian, or Notion, or something else I’ve never heard of? Reply to this email and tell me about your favourite systems :)