The Fall of Roam

Software
12

Getting a paintbrush doesn’t make you Van Gogh.
Getting a digital paintbrush also doesn’t make you Van Gogh1.

To me, this article isn’t about the fall of Roam, but insights the author has gained about his own process. Rather than thinking of this as feedback that he can use to improve his system, he’s decided to discard the tool.

His storing quotes and linking them together doesn’t capture why he wanted to store them. When he returns to them through the magic of search, he has to recreate his thoughts anew. Essentially, he has torn pages from books, connected them with string, and tossed them in a box.

The easiest way for Roam to fix this would be to improve the search function.

There’s nothing wrong with the search function. Just as having camel hair brushes (really squirrel) won’t get you closer to Van Gogh than horsehair brushes.

But it’s also really clear to me that most people take notes about a few kinds of things:

  • People
  • Meetings
  • Books
  • Companies
  • Tasks
  • Projects

The things that are missing from this list are, at a least, thoughts and ideas.

There’s no fundamental reason why the Photos app on my phone should be able to automatically compile a pleasing slideshow with music about a road trip I took 6 years ago, while my note-taking app can’t do the same thing.

The photos app has information that relates the photos, it gives them temporal and spatial context that relates them to some event.

  • [[Interstitial Journal]]
  • {{[[DONE]]}} Get out Talk Therapy
  • {{[[DONE]]}} Digest edits
  • {{[[TODO]]}} Read
  • {{[[TODO]]}} Write for an hour
  • {{[[TODO]]}} Nap

First, it’s incomprehensible. I have to load a lot of context into my brain to understand it.

So he could use this feedback that he has become aware of to improve his process. When he makes notes, he should give them context. The list above is “whats”, add to that “whys” and “hows”, and maybe even “wheres”.

There seems to be a recurrent progression that comes up related to (at least) note taking and productivity, and that leads to app hopping.

  1. Recognizing that you need a system
  2. Searching for applications
  3. Decide on an application
  4. Use the application and system for a while
  5. Realizing that the application isn’t doing the work for you
  6. Return to Step 2

To move forward, recognizing that the system, the process itself, needs improvement is the key to going beyond this frenetic search for the perfect application.

  1. Recognizing that you need a system
  2. Searching for applications
  3. Decide on an application
  4. Use the application and system for a while
  5. Realizing that the system needs improvement
  6. Use information from using the application with your system as feedback to improve your system
  7. Return to Step 4
    7a. If you reach some impass with the application, return to Step 2 after very careful and thoughtful consideration.

1. Gasoline makes you Van Gogh, but that’s a dad joke

16 Likes