Building a Digital Garden

Digital gardens have largely been understood as websites that allow users to explore and publish thoughts in more fluid and unpolished ways. The term “digital garden” is not new. It’s been shaped by almost two decades of pondering, from early tinkerings in Mark Bernstein’s 1998 essay “Hypertext Gardens” to Mike Caulfield’s 2015 talk “The Garden and... See more

“With blogging, you’re talking to a large audience,” he says. “With digital gardening, you’re talking to yourself. You focus on what you want to cultivate over time.”

Tom Critchlow, a consultant who has been cultivating his digital garden for years, spells out the main difference between old-school blogging and digital gardening. “With blogging, you’re talking to a large audience,” he says. “With digital gardening, you’re talking to yourself. You focus on what you want to cultivate over time.”

Tiago Forte, creator of Building a Second Brain , argues that a knowledge system isn’t about hoarding information; it’s about making it useful. His C.O.D.E. framework (Capture, Organize, Distill, Express) breaks this down:

• Capture the ideas and insights that spark your interest. A sticky note, a voice memo, or an app like Notion—whatever works.


• Org

... See more

Ideaflow, the note-taking software I help build at work, also embodies many of these principles. In fact, Ideaflow is my current “main” notes app. Ideaflow’s main interface is a timeline of notes, what we’ve internally called your “thought stream”. Imagine a long Twitter-style timeline, where each tweet is a note of some arbitrary length, potential

... See more