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Jan 8 • 6 tweets • 3 min read
Yesterday I wrote a thread about "build only what you need"

Here's what that looks like in practice:

I'm in a group chat with a bunch of smart people, and today it rained book recommendations.

I also have an extensive #Source tag that has a field >Recommended by

I could have made every recommendation into a full Source and then added the person recommending it...
But I didn't do that. Because I didn't have the time.

(I'm spending it now writing this thread, but oh well 🤷‍♂️ 😁 )

Instead I just noted down the books, tagged them all with a new ad-hoc tag of "book recommendation" and declared it done.

Maybe later I'll update this...
so that "book recommendation" extends "Source" or whatever.

I don't know yet, and that's okay!

As I mentioned in the thread yesterday: it's not about high-modernist perfect "rational" organization all the time.

It's about getting what you need, when you need it.
I hope you've found this thread helpful!

Follow me @cortexfutura for more on Tana and personal knowledge management!

Like/Retweet the first tweet below if you can:
I also have a course where I teach you how to build powerful supertag systems – over time, by iteration!
If that sounds interesting, check the course here – skipping Tana's waitlist is included:
go.cortexfutura.com/course/masteri…

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More from @cortexfutura

Cortex Futura Profile picture
Jan 9
How I do mobile Quick Capture into Tana

This is a common and super important request for @tana_inc to build soon.

Let me share a great (albeit hacky) way to do this RIGHT NOW on iOS that I learned from the phenomenal Slack community
Miguel Tavares has created a Quick Action for @draftsapp that lets you share notes directly into Tana.

You can find it here:
directory.getdrafts.com/a/2FY
To set this up, here's what you need to do:

In Tana, make a new node somewhere (I have mine in the sidebar) and call it something like "Mobile Inbox" (name doesn't matter, just needs to be a specific node)

Then focus your cursor into it, do Cmd/Ctrl+k and "Get API Token"
Read 10 tweets
Cortex Futura Profile picture
Jan 7
Build only what needs to be built

This is one of the most common mistakes people seem to make when jumping into Tana (or other similarly powerful tools)

You don't need to start with a fully built out, high-modernist, top-down system. Start small! 🧵
I've been using Tana every day for over 90 days now – and I'm still building my systems.

Sure, you could take that and say "see, Tana isn't for getting work done – it's a hobby for people who like to fiddle with their systems!"

But that's not the case. At all.
Instead, I've opted from the get-go to only build the minimum of systems that I need _right that moment_.

Just the bare necessities to get the job done I'm working on right now.

Nothing more.
Read 8 tweets
Cortex Futura Profile picture
Jan 6
Tana has been out for just over three months – and the response to my videos and content here has been crazy to see.

I've published 17 videos on Youtube since then, and have already crossed 5000 hours of watch time 🤯

But that's not all:
The response to the 17 videos has been _great_ – the worst video has 97.4% likes – every other video is at 98-100%.

Makes me so happy.

My most-watched video has 11k views, the second most watched has >8000 views as I post this.
Same for this Twitter account – since @tana_inc launched and I started posting about using it, I've gained almost a thousand followers.

Hey, great to have you here 👋
Read 6 tweets
Cortex Futura Profile picture
Jan 5
Things I hope @tana_inc builds soon

As you know I'm a huge fan of Tana and their ability to ship consistently.

So here's a little wishlist of things I hope they build for us soon
A calendar view

I use Tana to create all the content for CortexFutura, and what I really want is a calendar view to make having a content calendar easier.

Notion has it, and Tana should too.
This setup from @evielync is great, but shouldn't be necessary:
Good markdown export

Right now, getting things out of Tana to use them elsewhere is...not fun.

People keep asking me when I'll publish something like Cite to Write for Tana – and decent Markdown export is one of the major holdbacks.
Read 8 tweets
Cortex Futura Profile picture
Jan 4
Make predictions and review them

That's one of the best tools I've found to get better at decision making and understanding reality

You can do this in any tool (a calendar can work!), but I really like the affordances @tana_inc gives me for this, so here's how I have set it up:
In Tana, all you need to do is tag your prediction – I have created the very imaginative supertag "prediction" for this:
As you can see, I have a couple of fields for this supertag:

Prediction Area lets my classify the topic of my prediction: is it about geopolitics, domestic politics, AI, or my own business?

You can obviously substitute your own areas of interest!
Read 10 tweets
Cortex Futura Profile picture
Jan 4
Big update from @tana_inc dropped today: you can now merge nodes!

Here's why that's an important feature and how to use it: 🧵
Why is merging nodes important?

Let's say you're taking notes on articles that cover ChatGPT.
But some of the article call it chatGPT, other Chat GPT, or ChatGPT, and you end up with all three spellings.

You likely want to settle on one canonical way of spelling it!
There are a couple of ways to merge nodes now – the first is really simple:

If all the nodes _live_ next to each other, you can select them all, hit CMD/Ctrl+k and search for "merge nodes"

Select the node you want to merge the other two into, and you're done!
Read 8 tweets

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