What stuck and what didn't

Zettelkasten in several forms never stuck: it triggers perfectionism (perfectly atomised idea or nothing, filed in its place or not at all) and breaks the moment he is listening to an audiobook while cooking. Instead: a dated, unarranged daily notebook; a short list of held questions, each with a current lean; published essays as where positions get worked out. No separate position store. This wiki must not become one. It holds what the agent found, not his positions.

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What digital makes worse than analog (July 2025)

His list (https://exitmusic.world/what-digital-makes-worse-than-analog-personal-growth-productivity-knowledge): over-capture and auto-capture (less likely to revisit or even remember capturing); proliferating repositories where things get lost; using AI to over-produce and under-think; a bias to text, where analog invites sketching and forces description rather than replication, and a poor description still fixes memory better than pasting (citing Sönke Ahrens); and drift from research into rabbit holes.

Source: James's notes at exitmusic.world (read 2026-10-26); his own position, disposition stated.

Provenance: James, in conversation with Claude, Sept 2026 (unverified). Disposition: stable.

Related: research-values See also: working-patterns