Using Info-Cloud to compile knowledge and develop ideas

From the time of Aristotle through to Sir Isaac Newton and Virginia Woolf, humans have compiled their thoughts into writing. By the seventeenth century, commonplacing had become a recognised practice that was formally taught to college students in institutions such as Oxford and Harvard. This practice became known as the commonplace book and remained popular until the early twentieth century.

It seems strange that living in a time where we are supposed to be busier than ever, have more restrictions on our time and are surrounded by more and more distractions, the practice has been confined to history.

I stumbled across commonplacing back in 2018 whilst hunting for the answers to why my brain had stopped working normally after a seizure. Before it, I was lucky I could pick up a book, read it and absorb the information within it. Suddenly, the harder I thought or tried to focus on something my mind would go blank (often followed by a painful headache and dizziness). A scary place to be for someone working in the IT industry. Who’s job is literally to work out how things work, make systems work and keep them working.

I found my answers in an Open University course on brain function and the book “A Mind for Numbers by Barbara Oakley, PhD”.

It turned out that I hadn’t become stupid overnight. And all that hard-earned knowledge was still safely tucked away inside my tired and a little confused brain, but the internal wiring linking it all and allowing me to recall and extend that knowledge was a little frazzled.

Then project Info-Cloud (originally CORTEX) was born. A private web-accessible space for me to compile my thoughts, ideas and knowledge. It took a long time, and I learned to go a little easier on my brain, walk away and give it a break when needed (This alone can produce amazing results). Once I began entering and structuring the information, I knew I should know something profound started to happen.

Suddenly, seeing it, all laid out and structured, like a contents page or index of my head, the wiring in my brain began firing again, and the fog began to clear. Over time I found other benefits. It showed the gaps in my learning. I could store links and information about things I wanted to gain a deeper understanding of without it distracting me from what I was currently working on. It allowed me to learn and store information in continually evolving chunks that grow as I grow.