Facebook is good but maybe you should keep an everything book.
- Magical Mindful Living
- Apr 3
- 3 min read
What is an everything book?
That's easy to answer. Everything is a little book that you keep with you all the time. And in this book you keep records of everything. I should be more definite when I say everything, but there is no other way to put it. If you have read my previous article about the world you may have understood everything is represented in our consciousness as thoughts. And these thoughts have a limited half life. Most of them would never come back to your consciousness again. Even important ones. Even novel ones. Even creative ones. So the everything book is the place you can collect all these. It may be a mathematical formula. A diagram or a poem. It may be an interesting idea which you should think about more. One sentence would be enough. And you can do your homework later.
Is everything book a diary?
No, everything book is not a diary. Infact a diary is the earlier version of Facebook. Think about it. What we do on Facebook is essentially collecting our memories as pictures and notes. Like a little girl. We post them online instead of writing them down. And we share them instantly without letting others discover them years and years later. So, social media may have the potential to be a diary. But it doesn't capture what you have been thinking when you were at that party. Maybe you were thinking about Charles Babbage and his Difference engine. Or some yellow leaves in the Green Park. The fact is these thoughts are as important as your photographs. And unless you capture them on a paper with words, they will blow away like answers, in the wind. So, everything book is not a diary. It's not Facebook either. But it is just a treasure trove, if you really would want to name it.
What does an everything book do?
Think about what it means to capture thoughts. The possibilities will be limitless. I wonder this would be done in the future. As human consciousness is an incredible machine, capturing thoughts we would not only be able to replicate oneself but collect these together to make a gigantic database which expand by the minute. Only Mark Zuckerberg or Google would tell what you can do with data. But let's leave the Sci-fi aside for the moment. I can show you what your everything book can do. It's already shown in the movie "Limitless". Eddie Morra who is a struggling writer in NY takes a mysterious pill which enables him to remember everything. Just like our everything book. But he amazes himself just by using unlimited amount of information his own mind stored. I think watching the movie would do better, as always there is twist in the plot. But that Is a damn good example for the potential of your everything book has.
It's not like all the things that we think throughout the day are important and relevant. Sometimes you might spend even days without any significant spark. But just having the book with you might even trigger one. You can be the judge of your own thoughts and when there is a spark, put it in the everything book.
There is more meaning to your everything book as it accumulates ideas in the long run. As these important ideas you carry will make connections with each other and you might create new knowledge out of this. It is just a natural process. Nothing fancy. Just keep feeding things from your everything book from time to time to your RAM and the machine will do the rest. How do you think those who came before us invented aeroplanes that fly? Do you think they did it just sitting on a chair by thinking? Without a single diagram? How likely is it that some innovation happens without pen and paper and words? Do you think Einstein used a blackboard? Or just his memory to calculate infinity?
It's just simple. Although minds are good at generating ideas we sometimes need tools our generations used. And everything book is just a handy extension.
I am sure I have written enough to emphasise to you the importance of ideas and capturing them the moment they arise. You would appreciate this more when you know the values (real money) are traceable to a thought in some consciousness. So the everything book will be a valuable asset to your collection of things. Think about it.
Also, yay for Charles Babbage making it into your blog. Have you written about Ada Augusta yet?
I’m thankful for having the Notes app on the iPhone for jotting ideas when they come up, and for SIRI for writing those notes when they come up while I’m driving.
It’s often also amusing to later see how SIRI transcribed them. 😉😆