An Intertwingularity Mapping Project with TiddlyWiki: ADHD Slice'n Dice

[Charlie J Veniot]

Blog entry:  An Intertwingularity Mapping Project with TiddlyWiki: ADHD Slice'n Dice

I went on sick leave back in late January.  Since being diagnosed with ADHD (attention deficiency) last May, I've been really eager to have a dialog at work about very small and simple changes that could help make me successful in my job ( a job I've been successfully since 1995, but was finding impossibly challenging over the last two years because of overwhelming increase in communications/meetings.)

That turned into my job position being eliminated, me being demoted and put into a newly created job position.  Although I think it will all workout as being a good thing, it is still a pretty traumatizing surprise when I went into a return to work meeting thinking we'd be having a dialog about making my previous job work, and starting the meeting off with a "your position has been eliminated."

All that said: don't cry for me Argentina!  I take lemons and make lemonade.  Work will be awesome once I get through all the stages of grief.

To me, the greatest way to process things is to write.  So what a great time to tie a whole bunch of things in this old sponge of mine together.

As I truck along, if anybody has any ideas/questions/comments/anything you want to lob my way related to any of this (TiddlyWiki setup/tweaks to organize content; ADHD resources/questions; "Intertwingularity Mapping"; anything at all!) , please gimme gimme gimme anytime !

Cheers, best regards, and Happy Friday/Saturday !

[TW Tones]

Charlie,

Thanks for sharing, and best of luck with these challenges, although often different, we all face challenges, with a big one time to time, but most only make us stronger. 

I think writing is a good idea, but even more so if you work to build a larger resource, if not only for yourself. I am looking at writing my first book, only considering it at the moment, but I too plan to make use of tiddlywiki as a platform on which to build a knowledge network. 

I too have faced retrenchment due to business changing, twice actually, sad to hear for you it coincided with these other issues in your life. There is no reason to thank your former employer, but it is an opportunity for the new, and perhaps even better, it forces you out of your comfort zone and opens so many new possibilities. This will all be your own effort and you can take full responsibility for your successes, when they come.

Please do remain connected and sharing with the community, for support and input.

Regards

Tones.

[Charlie Veniot]

Oh man, just when I think everything will be fine, and about to embark in a healing/healthy (and wildly interesting project) as part of ripping that band-aid quickly, I read your message and realize the pinball that is my stage of grief is still bouncing all over the place.

Thanks!  Without realizing it (I'm fiercely independent and not one to ask for help, other than from doctors and very close family), I guess I really needed a friendly message (that's a serious dose of good medicine.)  

Of course, my old sponge goes all over the place like a herd of cats and puppies: why is it I can get a compassionate pat on the back from somebody I don't know at all (well, other than via a few exchanges in a fine discussion group), yet am not getting that at all in a work environment and fine enough folk I want to have dialogue with, but don't want to have any dialogue with me at all.

I chalk it up to my naive view of people in a work setting.  Not upset about it.  Just don't quite understand it, so it takes up brain cycles: something that keeps tugging at my attention.  Hence a deep dive into this fun project, a good TiddlyWiki use case built as I keep digging deeper into the intertwingled rabbit hole.

Thanks much, Tones.

And all of this aside, please keep blowing my mind with all of them really meaty posts/comments on wildly interesting topics.  Everyone of them are like running into a polar plunge (totally immersed and fully engaged in it), and it is exciting every time.

[Birthe C]

Charlie,

You wrote: given lemons you would make lemonade. Well that takes some time too, because that will be quite an acidic mixture until you find some sugar to put into it.

You are on your way, working with what you have got - and you will get there.

I have a tendency to take words too literal at times - I think you may know that one too. 

It happened when you wrote about all the meetings and communication - but still you want a dialogue. I kind of stumbled over the word communication (in a one way street). Never mind that helps me laugh sometimes.

What are your plans for your site?

Birthe

[TW Tones]

Charlie,

Do tell me to "pull  my head in" if I don't know what I am talking about, but I have come to be concerned with these issues.

Our world is still quite ignorant of the mind. We have friends and family with various conditions and in Australia the last few years have being served well with a mental health week that out Public Broadcaster has embraced. For anything we don't experience our-self, or have  someone close to use experiencing, we tend towards ignorance that drives confusion and distance from things we don't understand. The world is slowly learning and I expect their will be a day in which there is far more understanding. This understanding depends on those living their different experiences, to come out, lest we never learn from them.

The mind is so intimately linked with agency, intent and motivation, people find it hard to understand how to separate conditions (even personalities) from what motivates us behind their eyes.  Directing compassion towards those who do not understand, although sometimes difficult, is healthy for our self, but also for them. 

In response to your original post, 

if anybody has any ideas/questions/comments/anything you want to lob my way related to any of this

I think as a community we need to "curate" the various and wonder full tools to some extent that people can find what they are looking for. I for one have dozens of macros and tools to publish that before I wrote them I wish someone else had, so I feel duty bound to share. But there is also the wealth of solutions from others, and being able to choose what and when to use them does need to be more public.

So if you feel confident consider raising a topic to address an area you are confident in.

Thanks for your contributions

Tones

[Charlie Veniot]

G'day Birthe,

Plans for that site?  I'm thinking links to general ADHD resources, my own ADHD experience/journey, using the writing process to, in parallel, define this thing I call Intertwingularity Mapping, how I'm using TiddlyWiki to support Intertwingularity Mapping.  That's the thing: I have a general idea, but not quite sure how to plan ahead for content and structure.  To me, the great thing about any good wiki, you don't need a plan at all.  Let it all organically emerge/evolve from a stating point of just a simple list of things.  No big requirements up front.   Kind of a Rapid Application Development approach.  Incrementally and iteratively tweak/adjust.  Things like componentization of information, emerging/evolutionary structuring of information, testing this  "agile malleability of information" theory in my head, all while putting together this huge intertwingled mess of ADHD things in my head.

Without going to far into my ADHD experience:  I have a hard time with verbal communications that involves more than one person and more than one topic.  It boils down to over-stimulation when there is too much going on at once because everything/anything grabs my attention.  I can stay focused much more easily when dissecting one thing to pieces, so a one-on-one dialog about the simple things I need for communications/meetings, that I could handle, even better if via skype (just audio) to eliminate visual distractions.  Let's just say it is all pretty bat-poop-crazy complicated to explain, but the solutions to keeping me focused are ridiculously easy (if the other side, from my perspective, didn't treat it as some kind of power struggle: I want to do everything they ask, I just need a way of doing those things in a way I can manage.)

All of that, an attempt to give a simple answer, has turned into something akin to a whole bunch of spaghetti and meatballs flung at a wall (i.e. a disorganized mess), kind of a reflection of my head.  Eventually, I hope my TiddlyWiki-centered Intertwingularity Mapping process will turn the mess of ADHD stuff in my sponge into something coherent.

Before getting into ADHD content, the first thing I want to do is blog about (Intertwingularity Mapping) Preserving "Information Context" via "Information Folding", and applying that concept with the DetailsWidget.  I'm just not crazy about calling it "preserving information context" (i.e. keeping information I'm looking at still visible while viewing some other detail midstream).  That's got my whole focus right now.

There I go, all wordy as per my nature ...

[Charlie Veniot]

In reverse:

Just because I get the oddest thoughts that are sometimes worth chewing on for the giggles:  when one can muster up the courage to raise a topic without confidence in that topic, then the learning of the topic begets growth of the confidence.  Just a random thought, nowhere near as eloquent as I'd wish, but fun (to me) nonetheless...

It is the oddest thing.  Recently, I've found myself envious of folk in wheelchairs because needs are (and rightfully should always be without question) addressed no-fuss-no-muss.  Anything having to do with cognitive disorders seems to not get the same empathy.  Seems stigmatized.  Lately, I've been thinking: who knew ADHD-shaming was a thing?

I can't see me ever asking anybody to pull his/her head in.  I have a pretty happy philosophy:  it doesn't matter if I disagree with what you are saying, it doesn't matter if I'm not relating to what you are saying, or if we are talking past each other, or I'm not clear, or you're not clear, or if I think you're answering a question that isn't the question I'm asking, etc. etc. etc.  Everything, every thought, every word, is no more than six degrees of separation from something really awesome, whatever it is.  Especially when I see any time/effort anybody takes/puts into writing something: I gotta soak it in.

Cheers !

[TW Tones]

Charlie,

Intertiddlywikiingularity

On your thoughts of context, I did something that was context related that may be worth extending and adding to your conceptual tools. 

It goes like this, lets us say you are somewhere in a wiki, in fact at a particular tiddler, and you decide to add a related fact you thought of, or you found expressed in the content of the tiddler in front of you. In a rather simple case this tiddler may be in a particular domain, Work Vs Personal, in a particular project "gardening" or for a particular person (Grand ma). That is this tiddlers has a context of Personal/Gardening/Grand Ma. These context values can be maintained in the domain/project/person fields on the current tiddler.

Now you can have a new tiddler button (not simply "new here" that tags the new with the current), its quite simple really; to create a new tiddler in the current context

<$action-createtiddler $basetitle="New tiddler" tags=<<currentTiddler>> domain={{!!domain}} project={{!!project}} person={{!!person}}/>

The new tiddler inherits the context of the first.

The idea is when adding information always do it with the appropriate context, because this is like providing the separate context values explicitly, they are now implicit. Of course you have the option to change any or all of these context values on your new tiddler, and that will move it to a new context.

You could have a current context setting, which once set, all you code responds to that context, unless you choose to use the context from where you create the next piece of information, a relationship or generate a list.

One final comment (for now) on the way the mind works. Most "mental health" issues are usually just somewhat an uncommon place on a spectrum of of "normal" behaviours". Developing strategies for Asperger's, ADHD, bi-polar, depression etc... which is very important to the person with such conditions, may also be helpful, if not essential to everyone. If for example you find ways to focus in the storm of information in you mind, I expect a version would help me stop my focus wandering into fanciful places, that I may take tiddlywiki (when I have work to do).

On Planning

You said, 

To me, the great thing about any good wiki, you don't need a plan at all.

I was thinking recently that "planning" is only projections for future events, they are not facts, we quite often confuse the two, although time often sorts them out eventually. Perhaps we should differentiate these more perhaps even understand the difference between the level of certainty of anything.

No big requirements up front.   Kind of a Rapid Application Development approach

Add evolutionary and re-iterative or continuous improvement.

I read once of an obscure language, that demands within it's grammar, not masculine and feminine,  or other "artefacts" of language that adds a degree of redundancy and error checking, but it demands the grammar alter depending on how the information being exchanged was obtained. For example the words and grammar alter if;

• An event was 
• both seen and heard by the speaker
• both seen and heard by another person (hearsay)
  
• Only heard but not seen, presumed to have occurred
• Considered having occurred due to clues found after the event 
• by whom, 1st 2nd third person or more removed and further. Eg seen on TV

You can see in this language, there is less room for misrepresentation of the "facts" of a matter, allowing for scepticism of someones account, if the information was not as certain as it may sound. It could be quite easy to support the adoption of similar practices in TiddlyWiki.

I am confident there are plenty of common sense methods by which to improve the way we think, learn and discover we can encode support for with tiddlywiki, not an external brain but brain tools.

Regards

Tony

On Saturday, 22 August 2020 05:17:15 UTC+10, Charlie Veniot wrote:

[Charlie Veniot]

Man o' man, thanks Tony!  There is a lot of good stuff to unpack, and each thing is going to involve some lengthy chewing.

A proper chew has me putting aside it all, and re-reading each bit again to really soak in each bit and let simmer.

For whatever reason, this struck me first and sent the cats and puppies in my head  going every which way :

On Sunday, August 23, 2020 at 3:18:31 AM UTC-3 TW Tones wrote:

The idea is when adding information always do it with the appropriate context, because this is like providing the separate context values explicitly, they are now implicit. Of course you have the option to change any or all of these context values on your new tiddler, and that will move it to a new context.

Because I see everything as deeply intertwingled (ever little thing is  connected to every other little thing, and I'm not really sure when adding something what all that thing is connected to, and not yet knowing exactly which of those connections matter or not in the final scheme of things), I know a new think is appropriate in the current information context, but I'm not sure yet what other information contexts the new thing might belong to.

In TiddlyWiki (like in other wikis that deal with pages), I see every tiddler as a first class citizen, an atomic bit of information (that is useful in and of itself) that can be transcluded into any other tiddler as details to enhance some kind of information context.

All of that babbling from me because you made me think of something I've got to put together in regards to Intertwingularity Mapping.

So consideration/openness (?) of all appropriate contexts  (i.e. assume, out of the gate, that this thing is going to be needed for multiple information contexts/purposes/roles/etc.)