Field Notes

The difficulty of getting here prevented people from coming on a velleity, and the eternal presence of these people—like starlings peering down hungrily at a picnic—reminded everyone who was lucky enough to have a job that others were waiting to take their place.

The Diamond Age

Velleity: A wish or inclination not strong enough to lead to action.

Isn’t that a pity? Wanting something but not enough to act.

Learning this word reminded me to live a life of intentional choices and not uneducated wishes.

As a child, I feared writing essays. Even at 30, I still woke up panicked from dreaming about essay exams.

Because my family spoke Chinese and Singlish at home, my English was weak. Reading my friends' essays made me feel worse. They used complicated sentences I could barely understand. For many years, I thought I was just not good enough.

But gradually I learned that the problem is how working adults write. Teachers, academics, and business people write complicated sentences to sound smart. So, we assume we should write in the same way. William Zinsser gave an example in Writing to Learn:

Consider these two sentences from a book by a famous sociologist. I didn't choose them as exceptions; the whole book is in this style.

The third major component of modeling phenomena involves the utilization of symbolic representations of modeled patterns in the form of imaginal and verbal contents to guide overt performances. It is assumed that reinstatement of representational schemes provides a basis for self-instruction on how component responses must be combined and sequenced to produce new patterns of behavior.

Younger me would have thought this is great writing—mostly because I don't understand it. But it's the opposite: If people can't understand your writing, it is bad writing.

Zinsser gave another two examples:

1. The ongoing reconfiguration positions Barbara offsite to hopefully identify growth and profitability potentials beyond what is currently being realized.
2. Barbara will try to find out why we ain't doing better.

I write like the second sentence (with a little more polish). And I used to feel bad about it. But Zinsser wrote, "Number two is a little uneducated but a lot more helpful."

Eventually, I realized my limited English could be an advantage. Haruki Murakami developed his unique writing style when he tried writing in English. His limited vocabulary forced him to write simple, short sentences. That led him to discover he didn't have to try to impress people with difficult words.

I now embrace writing in simple English, even as my English has improved. I don't write to look wise. I write to share my experiences and ideas with others. So, I write in a way most people can understand.

If you want to persuade others or spread your ideas, write simply.

A few nights ago, after my kids went to bed, I sat down to read Cal Newport's newsletter. In it, he linked to his latest YouTube video on organizing his life. Wanting to organize my life better as a hands-on dad and founder, I clicked on the link to check it out.

Then, I dropped into an abyss.

Instead of looking at Cal Newport's video, my eyes landed on YouTube's recommended video, which took up as much space on mobile as the actual video I wanted to watch.

Street Fighter | New Trailer (2026 Movie)
20m views • 2:49

As a 90s kid who played Street Fighter growing up, how could I not watch it? And it was only two minutes!

But then, I watched another video.

I have sunk entire evenings watching useless videos on YouTube. I know it's not a great use of time. But the abyss is engineered to pique my curiosity and pull me in. That night felt like it was going to be another wasted evening.

As I thought about that, I felt guilty enough to stop. I locked my phone, tossed it aside, and picked up my new favorite book, The Notebook: The History of Thinking on Paper by Roland Allen. Just one paragraph in, I was reminded of how I had always wished for more time to read all the books on my reading list. I read for another half an hour before turning in.

I narrowly won this battle, but the war is ongoing. I know I cannot depend on my willpower alone to fight the temptations of YouTube. I had already deleted the YouTube app on my phone and signed out from YouTube on the Safari app. I might have to put my phone outside my room, like Craig Mod does. But I believe the more I choose my books over YouTube, the less I'll desire YouTube.

I did, after all, climb out of the abyss last night. I can do it again, and again, and again.

Note apps are an amazing invention but we underutilize them. We use them to write today's to-dos, record this week's meeting discussions, or take notes for this month's projects. But we should also use them to document things for the long term.

A filter I have been using is this: What do I want to pass down to my kids 20 to 30 years from now?

Here are a few things I have been writing down:

• Parenting: What worked and didn't work for us
• Family recipes: Dishes my kids grew up eating (online recipes never include personal tweaks)
• Life lessons and personal stories: Making major decisions, building character, and finding your values
• Timeless craft work: Learnings from writing, making things people want, and running a business
• Books: Notes from books and why I read them so that my kids can use that to decide if they want to read the books

Even if you don't have kids and don't plan to have any, this will be helpful to future you, too. Thinking about my kids is just a way to force me to think much longer term. If you don't want to think 20-30 years from now, cut it to 5 to 10 years, which is still much longer-term than how most people think.

This is not the same as hoarding as many articles, quotes, and ideas as you come across because you might somehow magically find a connection between them someday in the future. This is highly selective. Curated. Only things you want to come back to.

It doesn't matter which app you use. I would prefer apps with these traits:

• Ownership. I should be able to open and read the information 30 years from now. So, open file formats like Markdown, JPEG, and MP4 will be better than an Instagram post or a company's proprietary file format. Cloud services are fine as long as I can export my notes in those formats.
• Read-only by default. I should be able to read my notes without worrying about accidentally editing them. Writing and editing should be an intentional mode to enter.
• Hierarchy. I should be able to file my notes in a structured manner. The act of organizing helps me process the note further. But more importantly, the order can communicate meaning, like the relative importance of the notes, the intended reading sequence, and the depth of a topic.
• Linked. I should be able to jump to related notes, even when they are not hierarchically close. For example, a note on decision-making could link to a note about a book. It will be helpful if the app can also automatically suggest related notes for linking.
• Searchable. I should be able to find specific information quickly. This could be a simple search feature or one enhanced with AI, which can understand what I'm looking for and find the right notes.
• Proactive. The app should have some ways to remind me of my notes. Ideally, it can surface relevant notes at the right time (but hopefully without needing a chip in my head). It could be surfacing similar notes as I'm creating a new one, suggesting notes on a regular cadence to review, or maybe even weaving in my notes when I chat with an AI.
• Version history. I should be able to view the edits I made to every note, like how GitHub visualizes git diff, to see how my thinking evolved.
• Separation from scratchpads. I prefer to use a separate app from my daily notes app so that I think more long-term while using this particular app and temporary notes don't clutter up my organized notebook.

Unlike paper notebooks, digital notes don't physically degrade. Let's use them accordingly.

Over the weekend, a friend asked if I had tried OpenAI's new Astra model, which is apparently much better at coding visual design. His question made me realize that I haven't been looking for better models to use for coding. Claude Sonnet 5 has been sufficient for most of my coding work. (Yes, not even Opus 5.)

I'm currently not limited by how well the AI models can code. My bottleneck is an unclear value proposition for Fernsage. What I need to do is refine Fernsage's core value proposition until my ideal customers get it immediately and want to pay for it (and even tell their friends about it). This will involve some coding to tweak the product and website. But the Real Work is thinking. Thinking about what to focus on in the product. Thinking about how to communicate the core value. Thinking about how to reach potential customers.

Often, we get distracted by shiny objects and neglect the Real Work.

We don't need a better writing app. The Real Work is to write.
We don't need a new pair of running shoes. The Real Work is to run.
We don't need to buy new toys for our kids. The Real Work is to play with them.

Most of the time, we already have what we need to do the Real Work. If you feel like you need X before you can do Y, consider if you are just avoiding the Real Work.

Yesterday, I was chatting with a friend about notetaking and compounding knowledge. He mentioned how if writing is thinking and most people aren't writing, then most people aren't thinking!

its just like
there are running clubs.
there are reading clubs.
there are chess clubs. there are xyz clubs.
heck, even have ice bath club.
but...
no club to get people to sit down and think.

Well, there should be one.

If I were to start one, here are the rules:

• For two hours every Friday morning, sit down to write
• Turn off the Wi-Fi on your computer
• Turn on Do Not Disturb on your phone and leave it out of sight
• The only requirement is to publish what you have written at the end (If you have a website, great. Otherwise, a Google Doc is fine, too.)
• Bonus: Read one another's published notes

(Sorry, there will be no talks, no networking, and no food!)

You don't actually need a club to do this. It is what I have been practicing by myself at home, and it has been surprisingly helpful.

If you haven't been writing regularly, this will be hard. You will stare at the blinking cursor for 10-15 minutes with nothing coming to mind. So, here are my recommendations:

• Write about something small, and see where it leads you. Don't aim to write a novel or a thesis.
• Write about something you did or something that happened to you recently. (I once wrote about replacing my Aeron chair with a $10 wooden stool, which made me realize I had fallen for the sunk cost fallacy.)
• Or write about a decision you want to make. (Writing about wanting to focus led me to set up a more thorough writing environment.)
• Or write about something bothering you. (After I wrote about why notetaking hasn't helped me feel more knowledgeable, I went to read up on tacit knowledge.)
• For the first hour, don't edit. Just let your words flow. Edit in the second hour.

If you commit to this, after a few attempts, your brain will start noticing things you might want to write about each Friday.

What if you need to research and verify information online? No, you don't have to during that two-hour window. You can do that afterwards. In fact, if you sit with the uncertainty as you write and commit to it even just for two hours, you will remember the information better when you research online later, especially if you turn out to be wrong. You can always update your published note.

If you want to try this and want someone to hold you accountable, send me your published note at hello@alfredlua.com. I'll read it and reply to you.

Through my schooling years, I developed a notetaking system that helped me score great results. But that system didn't help in life.

The system was simple. A few weeks before the exams, I'd print out all the lecture slides and rewrite everything in my own words as much as possible in a notebook. One notebook for each module. In the days leading up to the exams, I'd read only the notebooks and not the lecturer's slides. During the exams, when I needed to recall certain information, I could even pull up a mental image of that information in the notebook, saym in the bottom-right of a page.

There were two issues with this system: First, I could remember the information well for only a few weeks. After the exams, when I didn't need the information anymore because my first job didn't require my degree, I slowly forgot what I had learned. The second issue, though, is the bigger problem:

In life, there are no neatly-defined modules, no lecture slides to print out, and no scheduled dates for "tests".

My fabulous notetaking system became useless.

For the past 10 years, I have tried various methods and modifications. But I have yet to find a suitable system. More importantly, I don't feel particularly more knowledgeable. I believe there are several causes why notetaking hasn't helped. (My counter-arguments are in italic.)

• The fields I have been in have moved fast, so notes became outdated quickly. When I was doing marketing at Buffer, content marketing (as in writing articles) was just becoming a thing. Then there was tweeting, and then Facebook and Instagram Live, and then TikTok. Then, when I moved into AI, well, things moved even faster. But I suspect (1) there has to be a good way to update notes and/or our knowledge just as quickly and (2) even as the field moves fast, there are timeless concepts and skills; for example, writing is as necessary for articles and TikTok scripts.
• I didn't have a clear purpose for my notes. This could be because I have been "jumping around" professionally, dealing with areas ranging from marketing to designing to bookkeeping, and not having one or a few clear goals. When I tried to do too many things and take notes for everything, taking notes became too overwhelming and time-consuming. This is also why I find the second-brain approach too much. I have many interests, and collecting everything I'm remotely interested in so that I might use it in the future felt like too much work for an unknown upside. Perhaps the simple solution is to take notes for only a single goal that is most important to me (e.g. learn X) and leave everything else to memory.
• Much of the "knowledge" I deal with is hard to write down. It could be "taste", "intuition", or "tacit knowledge". I can write down the formula to calculate the price of a bond but there is no one-line formula for building a product people want. "Talk to users" is great advice but insufficient on its own. Cedric Chin of Commoncog has written several articles on tacit knowledge and is running a great experiment of teaching people business expertise through repeated reading and analyses of many case studies (I'm over-simplifying his approach here!) So, such "knowledge" can be extracted and written down.
• There are no regular or well-defined "tests". I define "tests" very broadly as situations that demand our knowledge and help us refine and retain our knowledge. Writing notes alone doesn't help us grow smarter if we don't apply the knowledge or "test" ourselves. Spaced repetition is useful for remembering facts, like when I'm learning Japanese. But we can't Anki our way to writing good essays or making products people want or playing the piano. Chip War described how smart folks like Morris Chang optimized their chip production yields but that has a well-defined, easily-measurable goal. In a way, we could define each essay or even product as a test. But how do we measure it, especially when you are starting out with zero readers or users or when there is too much noise in the results? How about business decisions that happen infrequently? Can they be run like science experiments? I suspect this is more of an art than science, and it is up to individuals to define their subjective or objective measurements. For example, Michael Nielsen talked about creating artifacts, especially when he needed to teach what he had learned, to help him retain knowledge.
• Maintaining and updating notes takes a lot of effort. Some effort is necessary because the friction helps us learn and retain information better. But if it requires too much work, we are serving the system and not the other way around. As with above, reducing the scope will help. Also, regular "tests" might be a good solution, which could reduce or even eliminate the need for notetaking. A small example: if you keep coding similar functions for various products, you can reach a point where you don't have to note down how to code those functions.
• I have been using notetaking apps mostly as scratchpads rather than an accumulation of knowledge. I take meeting notes in Notion, I write outlines in Obsidian, I put todos in Apple Notes. I suspect the ease of creating notes led me to use them as temporary documents—which I think might be fine as long as I also turn the important ones into something more enduring, like an essay or permanent document.

(Do any of these resonate with you? What have you been doing to aid your learning?)

I'm coming to realize that notetaking is helpful for learning but insufficient on its own. What will compound knowledge is having a clear project where I can repeatedly apply what I know so far and seek out what I don't know yet.

After sending my kids to school this morning, I got engrossed reading the latest AI debate and forgot about buying groceries for dinner tonight. I walked right past the supermarket as I stared down on my phone. By the time I realized my mistake, I had to walk five minutes back to the supermarket.

And after buying the groceries, I got distracted by Gemini. I was asking it how to stir fry pork ribs after cooking them in a soup. This time, I left my son's stroller parked outside the supermarket.

Modern devices are such a wonder because they allow us to do so many things. But modern devices are also such a curse because they allow us to do so many things.

I have been trying to write for two hours every morning before I do anything else on my laptop. But it is just so distracting to have other apps opened at the same time: Claude, Brave Browser, Basecamp, Antigravity, Todoist, Notion Calendar. It is like eating oatmeal in front of an intercontinental breakfast buffet. Whenever I'm stuck writing, my brain will invent the most ridiculous task once it sees one of the other apps. "You know what, I should add a todo to write for two hours today in Todoist." The tasks are always small, so I don't feel bad spending a minute or so completing it. But my concentration has already been defeated, and I need to pay another few minutes to get back to writing.

Craig Mod writes on a separate laptop—without internet connection! I don't have the luxury of having another laptop... Hmm actually maybe I should get the new MacBook Neo? I remember it is quite affordable. It's a business expense, right? It'll help me concentrate and write better. Let me just quickly check... And there goes another half an hour.

Until I have an air-gap solution, I need an environment with better boundaries. For now, here is what I'm experimenting with:

1. Hard Shutdowns: At the end of the work day, I shut down my laptop, not just shut the lid. I made sure only Obsidian will open automatically on login. Opening any other app requires an additional step. Every time I turn on my laptop, I'm already in my writing setup. It is a digital version of laying out my running attire the night before a morning run.
2. Offline by Default: I set up a Shortcut to turn off my Wi-Fi and shut down my laptop. When I start a new day, my laptop doesn't have internet connection by default, so I don't get distracted by "a little" browsing until I'm done writing for at least two hours.

It might seem absurd that I resort to such friction to focus. But I know I can't trust my willpower alone. Creating the right environment beats relying on my willpower.