Hyperfocusing too close to the sun?
For the past month or so, I've been working a lot on a Zettelkasten using Obsidian for work writing. And more recently, for personal writing, too. It's been super helpful for me to jot down my thoughts in a more organized and structured way.
For those of you unfamiliar with it, the Zettelkasten method is a way of taking notes and linking them to other notes to build a network of knowledge. To learn more, I highly recommended Bob Doto's blog (here on Bearblog!) and also his book.
It has been exciting because I finally feel like I have a system for writing. I resonated with Bob when he said that writing for a project felt like building up sand castles of knowledge, only to knock them down at the completion of the project. Well, with this Zettelkasten system, it builds sandcastles, but then keeps expanding on them in future projects. I love it.
With all that being said, I can also feely myself doing The Thing™. That ADHD special interest thing. You know, spending hours working on the thing, watching hours worth of videos explaining the thing, reading boooks about the thing, reading forums about peoples' use of the thing....
All of this is great, but I don't want to lose interest and motivation in this system because I burnt myself from hyperfocusing too much.
It's really frustrating and annoying to catch myself in this pattern. It feels like a prophecy of failure has been bestowed upon me and I know the fun will come to an end. But maybe it doesn't have to? Maybe I can just be chill and slow my roll with this special interest. Zettelkasten? What Zettelkasten?
Check back in with me in a month. (and pray I'm still using it!)