Depot student Dominik has already provided a good overview of how to export data from the ING depot via the ExtraETF workaround. However, not every tool can handle the CSV export properly. For example, DivvyDiary immediately recognized the relevant columns, but the balances didn’t match. The reason for this is that CSV files can vary significantly, as can the data within them. Sometimes, columns aren’t separated by a comma but by a semicolon. And while the difference between 1,000.00 and 1.000,00 might seem minor to us, for DivvyDiary, a 1000 turned into a 1 because the thousands separator was treated as a decimal point.
The solution: As much as I dislike working with Excel, if you open the CSV file in Excel and then save it again as a CSV, even DivvyDiary (and many other tools) can handle it.
I have been using Apple products almost exclusively since the mid-90s. Now and then, I engage in debates about the pros and cons of Apple products compared to their competitors, especially regarding the price difference. And of course, the question arises whether minimalism and using Apple products even go together. It creates an ambivalence between design culture and the contradiction of consumption.
There are a few topics that have been on my mind for decades, one of which is how to store and retrieve information and knowledge in a meaningful way—essentially, a Memex. In the 90s, I was a fan of Apple’s HyperCard, and since then, I’ve tried many things, but nothing has proven reliable. Data formats have disappeared (like Apple’s HyperCard), and even though the technical possibilities today are much broader than back then, I don’t have the impression that they have solved the fundamental problem. There is no quick fix that reads articles and books for you and also makes you understand them. I don’t trust summary services like Blinkist, not to mention that they don’t help me with scientific articles either.
In recent months, I’ve turned again to a system that I had used in the 90s but abandoned in favor of HyperCard: the Zettelkasten. Not just any box with index cards, but a Zettelkasten following the Luhmannian principle. Niklas Luhmann was one of the most significant sociologists of the 20th century, with an incredible number of academic publications to his name. His Zettelkasten, which actually consists of several boxes, contains about 90,000 slips and is being digitized at Bielefeld University. Luhmann attributed his productivity to this Zettelkasten system, and after several months using it, I can understand why. So how does the Zettelkasten work?
First of all, there are a few fundamental principles:
The quality of a paper depends on what has already been written. In an ideal world, the thoughts in the Zettelkasten are already formulated well enough to be directly incorporated. The goal of the Zettelkasten, therefore, is to generate insights that are worth publishing.
Everything you read is processed and placed into the Zettelkasten. Rather than following a strict plan (as is often recommended when writing academic papers), everything goes into the Zettelkasten and is, if possible, linked together right away. Luhmann himself always wrote his slips with the thought in mind of how they would fit into the existing notes. But new ideas can also emerge from the Zettelkasten at any time.
Writing about everything instead of starting directly with a hypothesis also has the advantage of reducing exposure to confirmation bias, which causes one to ignore anything that might challenge the hypothesis.
Highlighting in a text is useless, the learning effect is zero. According to Luhmann, thinking cannot happen without writing. Handwritten notes are preferable to those typed on a computer, as they tend to capture the essence better, thus facilitating understanding.
The Zettelkasten is not an archive, nor is it an idea graveyard like Moleskine notebooks.
There is no information hierarchy; thoughts can simply be inserted into Luhmann’s system wherever they fit. For example, if you have a note numbered “1,2,1” and another “1,2,2,” you can just insert a “1,2,1,a” if a thought is missing here. There’s no need to pre-think endlessly about what the best structure is.
Self-discipline is more important than IQ. A smart working environment ensures that you don’t face resistance from the start.
Daily work with the Zettelkasten leads to a new KPI for knowledge workers: How many notes are created each day!
How exactly does the Zettelkasten work?
When reading a text, “Literature Notes” are created, which contain only your own thoughts about the text, written in your own words.
These then lead to “Permanent Notes,” which are added to the Zettelkasten. The Literature Notes are discarded (this is also why I sent back my Scribe, since the Literature Notes could not be created with it).
Additionally, there are “Fleeting Notes,” which contain all the ideas you have.
The Zettelkasten system is highly minimalist, with no fancy notebooks or software tools. The reduction, or even restriction, to what is essential also stimulates creativity and thinking (see Stokes 2001 and Rheinberger 1997). Of course, there are software solutions like The Archive, and they would have advantages for me: I don’t always have my Zettelkasten with me. On the other hand, I’ve learned that when I’m sitting in front of a computer or iPad, I tend to get distracted. Therefore, I now carry index cards with me.
Here is an interesting video about Luhmann’s Zettelkasten, where he explains it himself starting at minute 37:26:
And here is the researcher who is now delving into the Zettelkasten:
Mastodon and the Fediverse had maintained a niche existence for many years until they were thrust into the spotlight by Musk’s acquisition of Twitter and the ensuing turbulence. Since then, the Mastodon community has not been growing like a hockey stick, as it’s called in investor jargon, but like a rocket. This is a big win for those who champion open-source principles. However, this rapid growth might also become a curse, and for several reasons.
I’ve been blogging about minimalism for 15 years. Digital minimalism is another form of conscious consumption. And apparently, the topic strikes a chord, because otherwise, Der Spiegel wouldn’t have locked an interview about it behind their paywall (“How to Break Free from Your Smartphone”):
Cal Newport’s Digital Minimalism contrasts with his other bestseller Deep Work in that it doesn’t focus on work and productivity, but rather on our entire lives and the impact technology has on them.
Daniel Levitin’s The Organized Mindshowed how easily our brains can be distracted, while Newport presents the opposite side: the attention economy, which primarily benefits those who can successfully market our time to advertisers. Those who think this is a modern phenomenon are mistaken—this started with the introduction of penny newspapers in 1830, where the readers were no longer the customers, but the advertisers in a newspaper.
According to Newport, the unconscious use of social media leads to exhaustion, anxiety, depression, and, above all, a waste of life’s time. Arguments such as social media helping us stay in touch with friends and family are countered by the point that this is not high-quality interaction—more “connection” than “conversation,” as Sherry Turkle distinguishes. When relationships are less digital (or when digital communication is used only to facilitate traditional communication), they are actually strengthened. The time we spend on Facebook and similar platforms is not only spent on lower-quality conversations but also on mindless scrolling through updates that give us the illusion of connection while leaving us feeling lonely.
However, Newport doesn’t advocate for completely abandoning technology. Instead, he encourages us to adopt a different attitude toward it, and he even paraphrases Dieter Rams’ phrase “Less, but better.” This leads to what he calls a digital declutter. Ironically, it was Steve Jobs, who was focused on mindfulness, who ensured that we carry around with us the symbol of constant connectivity in the form of the iPhone. His original goal was simply to have one device for both phone and iPod. The fact that the iPhone could also access the internet wasn’t even mentioned until late in the original keynote. We weren’t prepared for it. And suddenly, there was an app for everything:
We didn’t have time to think about what we truly wanted to get out of these new technologies (and even if we did think about it, like I did back then when I didn’t want a Blackberry, we later found too many reasons why a Blackberry might actually be a good idea). And since then, the door has been wide open for those who want to shape new habits in us:
Nir Eyal’s bestseller Hookeddescribes this mechanism in great detail. Fairly, Eyal also wrote the antidote to it. However, Eyal’s approach is not as elegant as Newport’s; it deals more with the symptoms, even though it sometimes touches on the causes. Where Eyal says that you can take back your time, Newport suggests you first consider what you want to fill it with. The mechanisms both describe, however, are the same.
Every post for which we might get a like or retweet is, for us, the same as using a slot machine—it triggers a dopamine release. The goal is to regain our autonomy and join the attention resistance, as Newport puts it. Digital minimalism, for him, is:
A philosophy of technology use where you focus your online time on a small number of carefully selected and optimized activities that strongly support what matters to you, while ignoring everything else. (my translation)
To this, he quotes Thoreau in Walden:
The cost of a thing is the amount of what I will call life which is required to be exchanged for it, immediately or in the long run.
This, of course, applies not only to social media & co. When someone buys a new sports car, they also need to consider how much life energy goes into working for that car and whether it’s worth it to drive a sports car in exchange for that time. The profit gained from something must be weighed against the cost of the life energy needed to obtain it. Conversely, technology should be considered optional, as long as its temporary absence doesn’t cause the collapse of one’s (work) life. Can I no longer live a meaningful life without an app, or does the app simply provide some added value that I could get elsewhere? This is in stark contrast to FOMO. To truly understand which technologies are genuinely valuable, Newport suggests a 30-day break.
As I write this, I am on the 8th day of my digital break. Newport really makes this break seem appealing, and I even started it before I had finished reading the book. During the reading, I paused my Facebook profile and deactivated my Twitter account (dangerous, because after 30 days, it is permanently lost). Instagram is deleted, as are Telegram and WhatsApp. These many ways people could contact me had already been annoying. Then, I even uninstalled email. These exact steps were already suggested in Make Time, but for Newport, it’s not about dogmatically banning all these apps, but rather about understanding what you truly miss.
In fact, I only bought my last phone because I wanted the best camera and didn’t want to carry around another camera. I enjoy listening to music. And occasionally, I like to make calls. So, here’s what my home screen looks like now:
Of the slot machines, only Signal, Apple Messages, and Safari as a browser are installed. Everything else is either essential (for example, banking—no longer possible without a phone) or helpful (e.g., the Corona app). Additionally, I’ve now set the Do Not Disturb mode as the default. Only my favorites can still call me, but their messages won’t come through either. However, this isn’t just about distraction.
Solitude (better translated here as seclusion and not as loneliness) requires the ability to be undisturbed and not have to react to everything, or the freedom from input from others. Seclusion demands that we come to terms with ourselves when we are alone, allowing for deep thinking. Our desire for social interaction must therefore be complemented by periods of solitude. How much this already occupied me 14 years ago is shown in this blog post from 2007.
But Newport goes even further. It’s not just about stopping certain activities; as mentioned earlier, you must also consider what to do with the time and attention you’ve gained, so you don’t fall into a void. The smartphone allows us to quickly escape such moments. Most systems already track how often that happens:
(On that day, I made several changes to the configuration, which is why the value was so high.)
Newport suggests writing letters to oneself, engaging in real conversations (instead of chatting, liking, or commenting), joining an offline group, or doing something non-digital with your hands. I’m out when it comes to crafting, but at least I can play instruments. The point is to deliver your best, quoting Rogowiski:
Leave good evidence of yourself. Do good work.
Not using Facebook and the like should therefore not be seen as a sign that you’ve become some kind of eccentric. It should be viewed as a bold act of resistance against the attention economy. This has become increasingly difficult, as we now carry a full-fledged computer with us at all times and actively have to seek ways to limit its possibilities. Still, my reMarkable is one of my favorite work tools. I can’t check emails on it or quickly look something up. And more and more, I’m only using that device when I sit on the couch in the evening.
Furthermore, Newport’s approach means that you need to carefully examine where you still want to gather information. I reactivated Twitter after a week, but unfollowed almost everyone because I only want to follow those who truly provide valuable content. And that’s a very small number. A kind of information diet, so to speak.
I’m not at the point yet where I want to have a Light Phone or leave my smartphone at home most of the time (the Light Phone isn’t available in Germany yet). For now, the camera in my phone is still too important to me (I used to always carry a Fujifilm X100, whose battery was always dead at the critical moments). But after just a few days of digital break, I can already hardly imagine going back to Facebook or spending the first minutes of my day reading through feeds.
Commissioning and initial experience with the Vorwerk Thermomix
The Thermomix as a data octopus
What good is the guarantee of success and guided cooking?
Conclusion: Is the Thermomix worth it?
Introduction
Either you hate him, or you love him. In between, there seems to be hardly anything on the net. Some say that you can buy something for a lot of money that you could do with a stove and good pots, others say that it is a huge relief in their lives and they don’t want to miss it anymore. We are talking about the Vorwerk Thermomix with all its accessories. This article is about the previous model of the current version, and some points have become obsolete: The WLAN module, for example, is now already included from the factory, but this was not the case with our TM5. But anyway, here is the original article!
Even after two months with the TM5, I find myself somewhere between anger about how dubious the business practices of the Vorwerk participants are in some places and what bad experiences have been made with the Thermomix, and the admission that cooking yourself is also satisfying and, above all, cheaper than delivery service, etc. The thought that you can save money by cooking more and ordering less, I can say that right away, you should get rid of it. It is very unlikely that the acquisition costs will ever be amortized,
Today’s processors usually have more than one core, but most programs only use one. Often it doesn’t matter, the computer is fast enough as it is. But then you sometimes get into areas where you are annoyed that you can only use one core. Especially with the UNIX commands, which can sometimes exploit several cores as a GNU version, one part of my Mac CPU is bored while the other is 100 percent utilized. My example is about a text file with 8.6 gigabytes (not megabytes :-), which I have to sort and process. What if you could use more than one core?
How many cores does my Mac have anyway? Open Terminal once and then
sysctl -n hw.ncpu
and the number of cores will be spat out. Well, not quite. It is the number of threads. My MacBook Air has a dual-core processor, but it shows 4 cores. And unfortunately, the Mac OS X version of sort can only use one core. Homebrew provides a remedy:
You can export notes in books as well as markups! They were just not displayed at first until I had created clippings of newspaper articles. Of course, this increases the utility value even more. Apart from the fact that Amazon has dropped another 20 dollars retrospectively. Then I would probably have had to pay less duty, but that doesn’t matter now…
While the old articles in this blog are gradually reappearing after the total crash, a few words about my Amazon Kindle, which arrived yesterday. I had been thinking for a long time about whether I should actually get an ebook reader, because actually, apart from the technical gimmick, I felt little enthusiasm for the electronic book. 10 years ago I had written a thesis about digitized classics, at that time still about literature on CD-ROM, which was supposed to introduce the end of the book (which we didn’t believe even then).
You have to own good books, I thought, and that’s how I still think, because a good book becomes part of your own story, every coffee stain in the book is a mental postcard of the café on vacation where you had the book on the table. And then there is this stupid DRM: The books are lost as soon as I decide to buy another device, and didn’t Amazon embarrass itself after it automatically deleted copies of the classic in 1984 purchased via the Amazon Whispernet? Why had I changed my mind?
I can’t deny that the technical gimmick played a role. But she didn’t play the leading role. Because, of course, the Kindle offers some advantages:
I can have several books on the Kindle at the same time, which is very charming, especially when traveling.
I can search books, which I find very convenient.
I can have books IMMEDIATELY, and that should not be underestimated, especially with technical books that could be used very urgently right now.
I can enter notes directly there and no longer have to worry about whether I still have enough Post-it! notes to stick them in the book. Ideally, I don’t have to type the notes anymore, because they are already available digitally.
English books are cheaper. According to my calculations, the Kindle should have amoritized in less than a year.
What are the disadvantages?
The books are not on the shelf. I can’t just take it out for a moment, browse through it, remember the café elsewhere because there’s a coffee stain in the book in it.
If Amazon goes bankrupt or I buy a device from another manufacturer, then the books are gone.
I can’t sell the electronic books at a flea market or on eBay.
The Kindle is probably not usable in the bathtub.
There are no used eBooks I could buy (I love buying used books)
Can the advantages compensate for the disadvantages? No. Never. But that’s not the point. You can’t compensate for the disadvantages of a convertible with the advantages of an off-road vehicle, because they are two different cars for completely different needs. The Kindle is not a substitute for the book. But that’s what someone who grew up with real books says. For the next generation, books made of paper may be just as obsolete as vinyl records.
But what is it like now, the Amazon Kindle? Quite ok:
What is disappointing for me is that I can’t export the notes I make in a book. But typing is no fun with the keyboard anyway.
But I can “copy” articles from a newspaper.
You can read excellently on the Kindle, better than I would have thought.
It feels good in the hand.
It has not yet worked for me that a book would have been downloaded within 1 minute.
I have subscribed to a newspaper (unfortunately the Süddeutsche does not yet exist), and in fact, when I wake up in the morning, it is already on the device. But here no problem was solved that I had before, after all, the act of buying the newspaper, preferably together with the breakfast rolls, contains a certain feeling of well-being.
You can’t read blogs, but that was communicated in advance.
Wikipedia goes for this, which I would not have expected.
The lexicon is excellent.
What books have I bought so far? Specialist literature, sometimes even books that I already own. I can’t imagine reading a novel on it. Maybe I’ll load up a few classics from the Gutenberg Project, I’m sure it’ll be good to be able to look up exactly what the crucial question was at any time. But at the moment, the Kindle is a work tool for me that allows me to comfortably read the books I need to read on the go. To be continued…
