It’s not evident to me that keeping such a philosophical framework in mind would help us avoid spending time on the wrong thing. I fail to see the discriminatory value inn it, and without a strong discriminatory function I don’t see how it helps to see things more clearly.
Perhaps you mean that we need to personally ask the question: “Does this contribute to finding out what a good life is or help me live it ?” when we are putting notes into our systems ? If so, isn’t it too broad as a heuristic to be useful ? Please correct me if I am wrong.
If, for example, I am someone who currently is lacking a direction in life, and I set to find out what truly excites me, then collecting notes on things of (admittedly fleeting) interests is a good thing, since experimentation helps to see what fits and what doesn’t, which primarily contributes towards finding what I don’t want to do.
On an unrelated note, I usually have very particular problems that I would like solve. Since they’re hard problems, I need to collect information to gain more perspectives and opportunities for insights. The role of such central questions seems be valuable in that it helps filtering what information may be conducive to answering the question, or not.
I suppose, one way or another, the fundamental reason I am using Obsidian and trying out knowledge management systems is that I want to live a good life. But, as I said, my problem with it is that I fail to see how it practically helps !
Just some thoughts on it, you raised an interesting point so I’d like to know more.