{"id":15603,"date":"2024-09-19T02:26:47","date_gmt":"2024-09-18T18:26:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.visakanv.com\/blog\/?p=15603"},"modified":"2026-03-08T13:41:14","modified_gmt":"2026-03-08T05:41:14","slug":"notesprawl","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.visakanv.com\/blog\/notesprawl\/","title":{"rendered":"notesprawl"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-twitter wp-block-embed-twitter\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"550\" data-dnt=\"true\"><p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">the goal is to have smart walkable high-density mixed-use note systems<\/p>&mdash; Visakan Veerasamy (@visakanv) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/visakanv\/status\/1775741429392039946?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">April 4, 2024<\/a><\/blockquote><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>this was originally a bit of a joke, but i also knew when joking that i was going to want to revisit this (<a href=\"https:\/\/www.visakanv.com\/blog\/joke\/\">joke about outcomes you want<\/a>), and sure enough, the concept has been growing on me over time. i found myself mentioning it in my latest wordvomit, which was reason enough for me to want to turn the tweet into a blogpost. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/visakanv.com\/1000\/0857-against-notesprawl\/\">0857\u2013against notesprawl<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/visakanv.com\/1000\/0871-bottleneck2-notesprawl\/\">0871\u2013bottleneck2: notesprawl<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.visakanv.com\/archives\/2024\/09\/16\/sort-my-notes-with-me\/\">sort my notes with me<\/a> (2024sep, archives)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u2731 <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>2026mar8: I believe that a sufficiently well-described mess will begin to organize itself, in the presence of any thoughtful person. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u2731 <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>2024dec25 one thing to consider is that my best tweets are more resonant than most of my blogposts, so if I were looking to reorganize my blogposts it would make sense to go through my saved and highlighted tweets. I know I have a tumblr post with some highlighted bits&#8230; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.tumblr.com\/hrefgopuram\/767046023071793152\/twitter-highlights-2024\">2024 highlights as of nov13<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u2731 <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>(2024dec16) <strong>Messes are clutters not just of things, but of intentions.<\/strong>&nbsp;That&#8217;s what really makes them difficult to tidy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>If you didn&#8217;t have a clutter of intentions then it quickly becomes obvious what&#8217;s relevant and what&#8217;s not, and eliminating the irrelevant should be straightforward.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>So to state the &#8220;obvious&#8221; (which is easy to lose sight of when you&#8217;re deep in the middle of a mess) \u2013 one of the best things you can do when trying to tidy a mess is to ask questions like &#8220;what is the purpose of this space?&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u2731 <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><br>(2024dec18) <strong>MESS <\/strong>In 2022, on my second trip to San Francisco I was once eating a sandwich on a bench when I noticed a troubled woman some distance away across the street. She was rummaging through a large plastic bag of her belongings. if you were there you\u2019d probably infer as I did that she was probably homeless, maybe mentally ill, maybe having some kind of episode, maybe on drugs. She didn\u2019t seem like a threat to anyone. Rather she was in a very piteous state. The bag was torn, so she was struggling- not just figuratively- to keep her shit together. It was a sorry sight. I remember just an hour earlier I had been enraptured marveling at the beauty of nature, revelling in the kinship of my friends, and now I was brought back to earth by the sight of human suffering. And I know, there are a lot of people who have it worse than she does, maybe even in her immediate vicinity. I remember my first real shock was when I was a kid visiting India with my family for the first time, around the age of 7. I had grown up in Singapore, which was squeaky-clean, orderly&#8230; But there was something about that experience for me personally that was really striking.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>this was originally a bit of a joke, but i also knew when joking that i was going to want to revisit this (joke about outcomes you want), and sure enough, the concept has been growing on me over time. i found myself mentioning it in my latest wordvomit, which was reason enough for me [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1367],"class_list":["post-15603","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-unsorted","tag-desire-paths"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.2 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>notesprawl - @visakanv&#039;s blog<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.visakanv.com\/blog\/notesprawl\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"notesprawl - @visakanv&#039;s blog\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"this was originally a bit of a joke, but i also knew when joking that i was going to want to revisit this (joke about outcomes you want), and sure enough, the concept has been growing on me over time. i found myself mentioning it in my latest wordvomit, which was reason enough for me [&hellip;]\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.visakanv.com\/blog\/notesprawl\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"@visakanv&#039;s blog\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2024-09-18T18:26:47+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2026-03-08T05:41:14+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Visakan Veerasamy\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@visakanv\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Visakan Veerasamy\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"3 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.visakanv.com\/blog\/notesprawl\/#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.visakanv.com\/blog\/notesprawl\/\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"Visakan Veerasamy\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.visakanv.com\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/3e6b165830fd1623c501696e0c9efc0f\"},\"headline\":\"notesprawl\",\"datePublished\":\"2024-09-18T18:26:47+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2026-03-08T05:41:14+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.visakanv.com\/blog\/notesprawl\/\"},\"wordCount\":468,\"commentCount\":2,\"keywords\":[\"desire paths\"],\"articleSection\":[\"unsorted\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"CommentAction\",\"name\":\"Comment\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.visakanv.com\/blog\/notesprawl\/#respond\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.visakanv.com\/blog\/notesprawl\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.visakanv.com\/blog\/notesprawl\/\",\"name\":\"notesprawl - @visakanv&#039;s blog\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.visakanv.com\/blog\/#website\"},\"datePublished\":\"2024-09-18T18:26:47+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2026-03-08T05:41:14+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.visakanv.com\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/3e6b165830fd1623c501696e0c9efc0f\"},\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.visakanv.com\/blog\/notesprawl\/#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.visakanv.com\/blog\/notesprawl\/\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.visakanv.com\/blog\/notesprawl\/#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\/\/www.visakanv.com\/blog\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"notesprawl\"}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.visakanv.com\/blog\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.visakanv.com\/blog\/\",\"name\":\"@visakanv&#039;s blog\",\"description\":\"Buy my first book FRIENDLY AMBITIOUS NERD today! 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