What A Seedbox Is and Why It Has Been Valuable to Me

[Reggie]

The coffee example messed with my head, but well done thinking through a workflow that works for you!

I’m off to have a coffee and think about it…

[lizardmenfromspace]

That is an interesting choice. I also filter but instead a different steps. I filter when first making a note (I don’t copy all the text of a book into my note) and when I retrieve notes for use (some notes in a sequence aren’t relevant to what I’m writing about).

What you are describing almost makes it sound like your seedbox is a zettelkasten, which supports the creation of a wiki (your permanent note collection). Main difference being is I don’t think you create chains of linked notes (e.g. 1a - 1b - 1c - etc…) on a topic within the seedbox itself? Also do you interlink notes within the seedbox?

[realactualprice]

You may well be correct, and I actually would like to examine the process in that light further: a zettelkasten which is supporting the creation of a wiki sounds very accurate to me.

That said, I do link within the seedbox. Quite liberally, really. But I do not create chains of links, like one would expect from a “true” zettelkasten. From within the seebox, I link both inside and outside the seedbox.

This has had some surprising effects, which I have actually found pretty valuable. The result is that I can pull out a significant idea that has proven to be valuable, and that may have many links in it, even though certain supporting portions remain back in the seedbox. This might happen, for instance, with an idea that is practically valuable today, but that is supported by a number of ideas I don’t entirely understand, or haven’t been able to verify, etc…

I am including a visual from my Index note, which is pretty valuable, showing a link that is still within my seedbox. This means that whenever I view the index, I have cause to reconsider that supporting note. That reminder, for me, is often a sort of forcing-function that moves me from reading to reasoning.

[Wet]

This is very interesting.

For me the recurring conflict during my final PKM design process revolves around the difficulty to implement a wiki like structure combined with the vitality of a zettelkasten.

Until now I planned to do most of the processing in Notion inside my media vault, transferring the results as evergreen notes into Obsidian.

As I see it, the approach you both are discussing here provides an additional layer and opportunity for a more dynamic processing and chaining notes inside the seedbox without breaking the unlinked mentions function for the system outside of it.

I do like the Idea of a zettelkasten inside a zettelkasten a lot and I think that’s pretty much exactly how I will implement it.

The metaphor and the terminology of a “seedbox” is really nice as well.
Guess I will adopt that.

Thanks!

[Mike]

@realactualprice, this is brilliant and creative. I feel like I found another real gem in the Obsidian forums.

Also, the coffee illustration really explained the process and workflow and bought your concept together for me. Well done!

I have found times when I want or need evergreen notes. Times when a wiki approach would be better suited. There are times when I really want to use UID’s and a zettelkasten approach, and others when I prefer not to have UID’s. With so many choices, I often experience option paralysis, unsure how best to proceed.

Your seedbox ideas may have opened the possibility of somehow mixing these together in the same vault for me.

I love how you used what is already available and thought about it differently.

You can always tell when you come across a great idea when it just makes sense, and all the pieces fit together and appear to be obvious with a name that perfectly matches the concept.

Thank you for sharing. Please continue to share as you develop and expand your ideas or develop new ones.

I look forward to seeing more posts and comments from you.

Bravo!

[Daveb08]

For me, the value of this Community is really on display with this thread. I came on board with Obsidian a few months before the OP started this thread. Since then I’ve been building my understanding of “Whatever” (I really don’t like to be pigeonholed by the word Zettelkasten. I think Obsidian is SO much more). With the entries of @Wet and @Mike, the thread came to my attention. Thanks to all for their ideas. I’ll be digesting this for a while.

[alvaroybanez]

I’m on the exact use case as you but Notion seems to be going in a completely different direction from what a good PKM system looks like.

Don’t you feel there is a lo of friction between capturing, reading, and then processing the note in Obsidian? That is where I’m most troubled because Notion doesn’t favor writing that much.

Notion is great for more static approaches to PKM (wikis, FAQ, etc…), but is slow compared to Obsidian, and backlinking is a pain in the ass. Unless a good workflow comes from both API’s I’m inclined to start favoring Obsidian, although my Notion system is much more robust.

[Wet]

Yes, for the PKM use case Obsidian has definitely several major advantages.
I use Notion mainly as “Life Operating System”, essentially as task manager and for different databases. That’s where it really shines.
It also comes with the opportunity to automatically import highlights from articles, kindle books etc. via Readwise.

My workflow is usually structured like this:
I read a book and mark whole paragraphs which I find important or interesting.
These paragraphs are then automatically imported into my “Media” database in Notion.
I then further process the content inside of Notion by marking the text more precisely and writing the information down in my own words.
These writings are then transferred to Obsidian for further processing.

My main problem with Notion as PKM is that, as you already mentioned, it’s rather slow and the linking / backlinking is not comparable to Obsidian.
I don’t have an issue to use them side by side. Both have things they’re exceptionally good in, which the other one is missing. The single manual step to transfer the notes from Notion to Obsidian causes rather little friction and keeps the PKM quite clean, which I think is pretty important.
But yea, if you’re not looking for a Task / Project management tool, there’s really no point in considering Notion over Obsidian.

If you haven’t yet, check out August Bradley’s Youtube channel. It’s the best Notion content around.

[alvaroybanez]

Yeah, I’ve followed August for a long time. I implemented his system to a T, but it is very convoluted, just because Notion has no API yet. My measurements, health KPI’s, etc… come from my Withings scale, my Apple Watch, and so forth.

Having to manually input all of them, all the time is very tiring. The same happens with habit-tracking. TickTick for example is miles ahead in that area. I do not see why I have to keep maintaining a system that is sub-optimal and might get a revamp in the next couple of weeks. I have taken a break from Notion until the API is released.

The one thing that matters for LifeOS is having a process, which I already have. Let’s hope the API is released, as promised by Cristina Cordova last week.

[Tekumel]

Thank you for this Price.

Am realizing that I’m more of a functional operations person and this approach will work well .

The idea of using tags-as-status (from Carriolan?) for an entry is new to me but powerful too, and I see you carry that forward with #discard or some other tag to indicate a short lived entry.

Thank you for sharing Seedbox: I will include it in my first Obsidian setup.

P.S. On the comparison of Seedbox vs “Inbox”, I view Seedbox as a germinating or original idea/concept as opposed to Inbox which I view as “stuff I don’t have time to handle but need to enter” bucket.

P.P.S. On the topic of “entry” I think a demonstration or video of How to use browser plugins to create an Obsidian entry would be useful. Me? I’m a tech but many others aren’t and might need a little hand holding on how to get that function working.

All the best,
Doug

[bahnedk]

I can see a potential in seedboxing for running a DnD rpg campaign, you often get random ideas that either is not relevant until sometime in the future or needs more detail to work etc… I am not familiar with drafts, it appears its a apple product only? Having a google doc folder where you create new docs for all new ideas maybe?

[Phoenix12]

How does this differ from the concept of Fleeting Notes? Not being critical just wondering as I am still getting my Obsidian workflow established and getting used to the Ahrens’ approach of taking notes.

[lizardmenfromspace]

@Phoenix12 it is like adding a step between fleeting notes and permanent notes. Fleeting notes are only meant to exist for a couple days, which is the time you need to turn them into permanent notes.

Seedbox is like having fleeting notes that have a bit more content on them and you are keeping until you have enough content to turn them into a good permanent note.

For example often times my fleeting notes is just a notepad with each line having a few words and page number. This is pretty much useless and creates confusion if I don’t process the notes within a week. But if I turn each of those lines into their own paragraph with note title (e.g. seedbox note), than it makes sense a month later. Further down the line, when I better understand the concept, I may add to the note or rewrite some of it before it becomes a permanent note that is one to three paragraphs long.

[realactualprice]

@lizardmenfromspace is correct, @Phoenix12! In reality, it probably depends on how you’re personally taking fleeting notes. A fleeting note could be the same as seedbox note, but for me they rarely are.

The short answer is: seedbox notes are not intended to be fleeting (even though they sometimes are).

For me, a fleeting note is often just capturing a thought. I am doing so as quickly as possible, which means usually at the lowest fidelity possible. Often, it isn’t even at a high enough fidelity to recapture the original thought! But that’s okay… it’s a fleeting note. I just chuck it if it’s not useful / coherent later.

The only reason I don’t personally capture everything into the seedbox is what Lizard said: often, the fleeting notes just don’t require extended capture. Their context, itself, was fleeting. It creates more overhead when I go through the seedbox once or twice a week to look through the ideas. When I do that, I want to see ideas that have the possibility of growing into better ideas, not every single passing thought I’ve ever recorded.

That said, I’m sure there’s more ways to do it!

[Phoenix12]

Thanks for the replies. This helps me enormously as I sort out my ideal personal workflow. They clear the picture up for me considerably. If I were to apply that approach to my case the fleeting notes would go into an area of my inbox that I have reserved already for such ideas/quotes/insights. When the inbox is reviewed each note would either be rejected or transferred to ‘seedbox’ with a brief outline as to why it was felt relevant to hold onto along with one or more meaningful tags. I guess a regular review (monthly) of the seedbox would then be a useful addition to the process.

[realactualprice]

I have written a follow-up about the Seedbox after a year of use here: 2021 Seedbox Update

[therden]

@realactualprice

In the settings, set “new link format” to “absolute path”.

Hello. I enjoyed this article and the follow-up.

Would you be willing to explain your “absolute path” preference for new links?

[realactualprice]

Sure! That preference is entirely to be able to see that a link is in the Seedbox, when viewed elsewhere. The path will be something like _seedbox/Note Name, when viewed in the editor, so I’ll know that the note is Seedbox-level, even if I am referencing it from an Evergreen note, or journal note, or whatever other kind of note I may have.

That has the effect of:

• Reminding me that the note is in the Seedbox, which can often be a good trigger for me to review it and/or escalate it.
• Remind me that the content of the link is suspect. Because I tend to name notes in “evergreen style” (e.g. [[I tend to name notes in evergreen style]]), they are often assertions. It’s useful to me to know that the assertion I’m linking to should have an extra measure of skepticism applied to it.

Hope that helps!

[lucklepper]

This was an excellent summary with wonderful analogy. This ties in well with the Digital Gardening concept.

I took the idea and your methodology to modify it further. This is still being tested and I have not captured enough data (from self feedback) whether this is any better or an unnecessary complication.

I introduced the preliminary folder (within /Seedbox) /1) Germination
(Keeping with theme felt this introduce stage where unfiltered ideas could be housed, but once they obtained a link, utility to relevance they would then be moved to /2) Planting - they could still retain the ‘#Useful’

I also added an addition folder for community to experiment with: /4) Pergola Alignment. Once the idea has grown, understanding where it sits in line with your personal or business strategy and other ideas help it formulate a structure. Like bricks to a building.
1) The use of the Pergola is to create structure for multiple ideas to weave in concordance e.g. Bacon, that has been smoked and Eggs, that have been poached
2) Each frame of the hypothetical Pergola would then create a walkway or direction for the user to experience and be guided e.g. Automation of the Smoked Sandwich to meeting ‘Business Strategy of Wealth through smoking food’

These are crude examples. You will all no doubt create something better with more relevant context.

Would love your thoughts, feedback and comments.
Graciously,
Benjamin

[realactualprice]

I really like the verbiage of “Pergola Alignment” as a concept. Putting knowledge creation on rails through systemic patterns that lead to insight is a really cool concept.

If you haven’t yet, take a look at the update I did for this year, as I took a similar route to you in terms of adding sub-folders: 2021 Seedbox Update.

It would be interesting to see more concrete examples of how you’re using the “bricks” and “pergola” ideas in practice. I am going to experiment with my understanding of the metaphor as well, and see what happens. I hope you’ll report your findings!