open loops
Open loops. That's what David Allen calls the agreements that you made with yourself, every single one of them, big or little, that are incomplete—anything pulling your attention that doesn't belong where it is.
David Allen advises identifying those open loops and capturing all of them, then clarifying what exactly they mean to you and making a decision on how to handle them. This should be done consistently, not just in one sitting or one moment of your life. It should be a regular process of clarifying and capturing your open loops and managing them. Otherwise, you will suffer from the consequences of not handling them well. If you leave the open loops open and do not close them, they will continue to run in your mind. Your subconscious will be affected, and you won't feel any relief because there are many things still not being handled due to neglect.
Even if you have handled some of them at one time, new things come in every single day, every moment of your life. The concept of open loops relates to captured notes and fleeting notes—the unprocessed captured notes and fleeting notes in the Zettelkasten system. If those fleeting notes are not handled, perhaps turned into permanent notes or discarded, they will linger in your mind. They won't graduate into your consciousness and will remain stagnant, needing cleaning every single time.
These notes and the things that need your attention must be handled. I find it fascinating that the Zettelkasten method is somehow related to the Getting Things Done methodology. Getting Things Done is connected to the book "How to Take Smart Notes" by Sönke Ahrens, and I think I need to reread that book as well. It has a great application in my life, and I am already applying its principles.
Now, the conceptual part of those principles needs to be processed, but I am glad that I am already doing the application part. It's like the difference between pure mathematics and applied mathematics in some way. I already have some sort of operation on how to apply what I have learned. However, I am going back to what I have learned to process those concepts and upgrade the way I apply them. I need to relearn them with appropriate notes and artifacts on what I have learned.
This way, I can keep being reminded of the principles while applying them in my life. I would love to have a life that combines the principles of the Zettelkasten method, the Getting Things Done method, and the Bullet Journal method—taking notes, the tools, the processes, the tasks. Everything I need to handle in my life can be managed by those three methods. They are incredibly powerful. So, I may need to reread the Bullet Journal Method by Ryder Carroll as well.
Inspired by Getting Things Done by David Allen