In the landscape of personal web publishing, a delightful and stimulating approach has been surfacing for past couple of years: digital gardening. Unlike traditional blogs that prioritize a linear, time-bound format, digital gardens offer a more flexible, organic way to cultivate and share ideas.
🌐 Digital Gardens Are a Living Collection of Ideas
Digital gardens resemble actual gardens in that they are always growing, changing, and being pruned. Rather than presenting content in a strict chronological order, these gardens organize information topologically. This means that ideas are linked contextually, creating a web of knowledge that readers can navigate intuitively. Think of it as a non-linear network where each node connects to related ideas, allowing for deeper exploration and understanding.
🌿 Continuous Growth and Evolution
Digital Gardens are never finished; they're constantly growing, evolving, and changing.
One of the key principles of digital gardening is its commitment to continuous growth. Unlike static blogs that might sit unchanged once published, digital gardens are dynamic. Entries are updated, refined, and expanded over time. This continuous evolution reflects the gardener’s learning journey and adapts to new insights and information.
🌱 Embracing Imperfection
Digital gardening celebrates the beauty of imperfection. In a garden, you’ll find early-stage ideas, rough sketches, and work-in-progress thoughts. This transparency encourages learning in public, fostering a community of knowledge sharing and mutual growth. By publishing imperfect and early ideas, gardeners invite feedback and collaboration, which helps refine their thoughts and mitigates imposter syndrome.
🛠️ Tools of the Trade
Tools like Obsidian and Notion are instrumental in supporting digital gardening. Personally, I use Obsidian and LogSeq in conjunction to meet my needs. These tools facilitate bi-directional linking, allowing ideas to interconnect seamlessly. This feature enhances navigation and helps create a rich, interconnected knowledge base.
🎨 Playfulness and Experimentation
Digital gardening fosters a playful and experimental approach to content creation. Unlike the polished, performative nature of traditional blogging, gardens are spaces for exploration and creativity. This playfulness encourages trying new things, taking risks, and embracing the unexpected.
🌾 Intercropping and Independent Ownership
Maggie Appleton identifies six key patterns that define digital gardening: topography over timelines, continuous growth, imperfection, playfulness, intercropping, and independent ownership.1 Intercropping, the practice of growing multiple types of plants together, symbolizes the diverse and interdisciplinary nature of digital gardens. Independent ownership emphasizes the gardener’s control over their content and the freedom to experiment without external constraints.
🔗 Bi-Directional Links and Contextual Navigation
Bi-directional links are a cornerstone of digital gardening. Tools like Roam Reserach, Obsidian have made these very popular in recent times. Bi-directional links allow ideas to refer each other, creating a rich tapestry of interconnected thoughts. This feature not only enhances navigation but also helps build a more comprehensive and nuanced understanding of the topics being explored.
⏳ Balance of Chaos and Cultivation
Digital gardening strikes a balance between chaos and cultivation. It embraces the messiness of early-stage ideas while also allowing for careful curation and refinement over time. This balance encourages ongoing engagement and continuous learning.
📢 Transparency in Thought Process
Publishing status indicators, such as hashtags helps communicate the development stage of ideas. This transparency informs readers about the maturity of the content and sets expectations for future updates.
The metadata at the top of my posts shows growth stage.
These are the terms which I will be using in this digital garden of mine:
- 🌱seedling for very rough and early ideas
- 🌿budding for notes which have been cleaned up and clarified
- 🌳evergreen for notes that is reasonably complete (though I still tend these over time).
🌍 Learning in Public and Accountability
Publishing imperfect and early ideas requires that we make the status of our notes clear to readers.
Learning in Public is a powerful antidote to imposter syndrome. By sharing your thought process openly, you not only contribute to the collective knowledge but also hold yourself accountable. This practice encourages continuous improvement and personal growth.
🌈 Conclusion
Digital gardening is more than just a trend; it’s a philosophy that reimagines personal web publishing. By embracing imperfection, continuous growth, and contextual connections, digital gardens offer a richer, more engaging way to share knowledge and ideas.