the importance of contexts

A context within the context note. How cool!

In the fear of repeating myself, I would like to quickly provide context that most of what you would see in the initial part of note is already outlined in the landing page.

You would find me using this word a lot in my public journal. In this page I outline what it is and why you should bother.

Here’s a primer of what it is, based on the existing snippets in my public journal which, again, you might already find in the landing page.

Case Study No. 1 | Intercontextualization

My public journal is context-dependent. The majority of its content is what I call intercontextualized. A good way to understand what I’m trying to convey with this description is through reading this context I put in the landing page:

Regarding the callout's grammar and typographical errors.

I apologize for the imperfect (as a matter of fact, mistake-rich) writing of the callout. That’s because the highlights come from a Podcast, using an app called Snipd, which I honestly don’t fiddle with that much.

I would write my entire philosophy on this, that minor mistakes such as grammatical, semantical, and typograhical errors, are okay in a Personal Knowledge Management (PKM) system. However, what I would want to highlight in this context is that the mistakes don’t matter that much to me, since there’s enough contextual information to build upon the idea I’m trying to communicate. I’d rather I can find something easily through an imperfect way — what’s important is I and my PKM system remember the context in which the material is written¹ — than not find an idea because of how pre-occupied I am with the technicalities of capturing something.

The way I see it is this: It’s important to polish an idea through refining the medium. In the context of writing, it could be crafting the perfect prose to communicate an idea. That can be done through the proper placement of punctiation marks, the deliberate placement of footnotes, the utilization of an oxford comma, etc. In the context of 3D art, that process could look like choosing the perfect image or procedural map, deliberating on the roughness parameter of a specific part of an object, “But where should the light be?”, “Should I use this displacement map, or this?”

As for the my thinking process in my PKM system, I don’t really mind about those specifics. To go back to the metaphor I used regarding 3D modeling: the model matters more than the texture. The form, not the details.

I’ve heard some people define this in layman’s term as a derogatory remark towards people who tend to struggle in the English grammar: “It’s the thought that counts.” And though I disagree with the act of berating someone based on their linguistic capabilities, I can’t help but support the overarching educative concept of such double-edged remark. It is, after all, the context that counts.

Circling back to the topic of errors, I am 100% confident that you would find a lot of grammatical, semantical, typographical, and perhaps even spelling errors on this website.

However, the one type of mistake you won’t find is contextual errors.

Everything in my public journal is context-based. Without the proper context, I wouldn’t be able to write anything of substance in this space. Hopefully that makes sense.

Link to original

All of that is to say that I don’t bother much with the specifics of the writing process. At this point, I am not obsessed with quality, as is often preached by a lot of people on the internet. As you probably could already tell, I am not the type of person to care enough about the perfection of something I make. I care much more about the volume at which I formulate my materials, and this is for a lot of reasons. ¹

My philosophy is this, as you probably have already read in the callout above:

I am 100% confident that you would find a lot of grammatical, semantic, typographical, and perhaps even spelling errors on this website.

However, the one type of mistake you won’t find is contextual errors.

Case Study No. 2 | Personal Contextualization

Please note that I don’t write for anyone here, but myself. I write for myself, which is a huge factor in why you probably wouldn’t understand half of what I would be writing about. Nonetheless, I would like to engage in this project with a Gary Vaynerchuck sort of mindset to document, document, document.

Link to original

To expound on this idea, it is important that I state the why of such case, and why I claim that you “probably wouldn’t understand half of what I would be writing about.” To tell you frankly, you could understand what I’ll be writing about. However, it is the case that I have no way to guarantee the seamlessness of the method through which I transfer my context to you through writing.

Here’s a quick way to explain it:

Truth be told, no one is special. We all have a bunch of different stuff to deal with — minor or major — and that’s just how life works, unfortunately. We all have different sets of circumstances that allow us to have different reactions, opinions, and thoughts on different contexts. Such is the reason why the concept of “glass half-full vs. glass half-empty” exists. It’s because we view the world in different lenses. Lenses that are distinguishable through the numerous variance in experiences, attitudes, values, outlooks (and many more) that we have.

Link to original

All of that is to say my contexts vary greatly from yours as you read my material. I view and experience the world differently. That is to say I contextualize the world differently. And your context and contextualization of my thoughts could highly be entirely unique from everyone else, resulting in a completely distinguishable way of understanding the content of my public journal.

Case Study No. 3 | Mindless Scribbles, Brain Doodles?

Brain scribbles, mindless doodles, brain boodles, sindless mcribbles — describe my public journal’s content anything you want, I don’t really mind. Again, this is to reiterate the first context of this public journal, Intercontextualization:

QUOTE

All of that is to say that I don’t bother much with the specifics of the writing process.

I’d long left the idea of structures in thinking and contextualizing long ago. Back then, I was obsessed with hierarchy and structures in my Personal Knowledge Management (PKM) process. I used Tiago Forte’s PARA method, which ultimately didn’t fit my thinking process. “But why?” One might ask. To which I would answer that firstly, my thinking process is intercontextualized and heavily context-dependent, rather than structured and hierarchy-based. One thought is not more important or higher in value than another. Jacky Zhao, the developer of Quartz², details this idea very nicely in his digital garden:

Rhizomatic vs Arborescent Systems, written by Jacky Zhao

Secondly, alluding to the context of rhizomatic systems, my thinking is very much non-linear. In some ways, a lot of people would describe it to be messy. To which I agree. However, and thirdly, I don’t bother that much with having a clean process for capturing thought. It is extremely counterintuitive for us to provide structure to an otherwise free-flowing and generally non-arborescent system.

The point is this: I ride the chaos of my mind to formulate timeless thoughts that I use to contextualize the world. I think of my thinking process as a form of fun, structureless brain activity. Such is the reason why I compare it to the process of doodling or scribbling, whereby I really do not have any specific idea about whichever it is that I would draw. It is, instead, the process of surrendering myself to my thoughts and allowing my brain to do its job on its own. In some sense, I can compare the act of reading my public journal to observing how my brain works. And that is why I settled with the name, “Alexander’s Thoughts”. The title of my website also coincidentally fits the nature of my thoughts. As in, they’re rhizomatic and not really something fitting a pre-existing mold.

My brain is the mold, and the thoughts inside it are what you are reading.

For me to avoid harping too much about the anecdotal and pretty much personal descriptions I have for myself, the closest contemporary idea I could relate to how I describe my thinking process as non-fitting and “of its own” is critical thinking:

Critical thinking is the intellectually disciplined process of actively and skillfully conceptualizing, applying, analyzing, synthesizing, and/or evaluating information gathered from, or generated by, observation, experience, reflection, reasoning, or communication, as a guide to belief and action.

Scriven and Paul, 2003

And lastly, to circle back to the main point of this context, refer below:

Such is my thinking process: a messy, I-legitimately-do-not-know-what-the-fuck-this-is thing — like the scribbles of a child, except in the form of words. A sketch, if you will, to examine, understand, and contextualize the world.

Link to original

Footnotes

Footnotes

1. In an articleAli Abdaal, Quantity Over Quality by Ali Abdaal, he talks about the importance of quantity vs quality in creative endeavors. I apply the same principle in my public journal, though it is not with the intention to grow an audience or formulate a business like Ali’s students in his Part-Time YouTuber Academy, which is the context of the article. In addition, I don’t think anything of what I’m doing in my Public Journal is creative, though I understand how that could be the context of other people when they see what I’m doing. I consider it more as an outlet, or a fun project, or a brain sketch, if you will, rather than something through which I deliberately channel my creative energy. More often than not, it feels more like a brain exercise than it is an artistic endeavor, which I like a lot. ↩

2. The system upon which my website is built. The following is a direct quote from Quartz’s website: “Quartz is a fast, batteries-included static-site generator that transforms Markdown content into fully functional websites.” ↩