# The antifragile writing database

Sharing our texts, exercises, and writing prompts in a multiplayer Roam database has been an experience by itself.

The database has all the documentation of the course, the exercises, and the text you have written and shared for review and feedback.

Feel free to export the data in the formats that suit you. The database is not public, for obvious reasons, and it’s going to be backed up and deleted in the following days.

The database has been a particularly good example of how to work with stressors to generate chaos and then make sense of it.

Thank you!

Adolfo

## Antifragile Roam Graph
![Screen Shot 2021-04-09 at 7.37.09|690x375, 75%](upload://p8tMReVuM5ru7PV3VOI6ayfzvNy.png) 
## Content
![Screen Shot 2021-04-09 at 7.36.35|690x375, 75%](upload://htFKQRUD6DGEy4OImF9UsZJ0G7T.png) 
## Writing prompts
![Screen Shot 2021-04-09 at 7.38.52|581x500, 75%](upload://cd06wN4Fjk3GAjSxozAUHAsmv6x.png) 
## Exercises
![chrome-capture|690x434, 75%](upload://eNshngQdnHwzEttnjBDvuA2NbfG.gif) 
![chrome-capture (1)|690x434, 75%](upload://oYXJ7pBc5cLr6KLYKBYzvAMN4AN.gif)

Outline:

What is antifragile? What are the advantages of being antifragile? What are the properties of antifragility? What makes writing antifragile? Why an antifragile writing?

Roam Research basic walkthrough. Three basic elements to start writing on Roam: Daily Pages, outlining, linking.

Call 1: The antifragile concept

Outline

What is Roam Research? Tools for thought before and now. What makes Roam Research an app for antifragile writing?

The two stages of writing. Note-taking, freewriting, drafting. Reviewing, editing, migrating.

The five rules of Roam or how the golden rule of breaking rules. Writing on Roam Research - Farewell to documents and folders. - On libraries and forests or how to be a weaver of blocks. - The power of writing in blocks or how to be a phrase-thinker. - Outlining and set theory. - The particularities of time and space on Roam.

Call 2: Roam Research

Antifragile writing

The principles of antifragile writing: a list for embracing disorder and welcoming stressors for the evolution and growth of your daily practice.

Antifragile writing before Taleb: thinkers and writers that wrote antifragile text.

How to use Roam Research for antifragile writing.

Call 3: The foundations of antifragile writing with Roam Research

Outline

Thinking and expressing

Nietzsche: aphorisms and rumination. Writing aphorisms. Define an idea, explain after.

DaVinci's variations for expression. Write fast, explore combinations, subtractions, or additions later.

From simple to complex

Euclid's ideas in movement. From simplicity to complexity, one step at a time.

The rhizomatic craft of Deleuze & Guattari. Cultivating and growing first, pruning after.

Call 4: Techniques of antifragile writing I

Outline

Learning from analog methods

Bullet journaling basics. Logging, bullets, collections. The importance of migration.

Basics of zettelkasten. Write first, organize later. Index cards as an elemental unit. Nesting and linking.

Contemporary approaches

Taleb's fractals or the craft of repetition. Layers and recursion. Fragments. The art of provocation. Matuschak's evergreen note-writing. The writing inbox for transient and incomplete notes. Drafting evergreen notes.

Call 5: Techniques of antifragile writing II

Outline

Sharing your writing projects or practices is encouraged since week one in asynchronous ways or during office hours. Final presentations for project courses, however, can be shown in this last session.

Call 6: Conclusions and project presentations

Designing a writing framework not just chaos proof, but that grows and gains from stressors. Come if you prefer jungles to gardens, freewriting instead of slip boxes. If you aren't afraid of disorder.

Antifragile Writing

How to make writing less fragile, more robust, even antifragile—following N. Taleb's concept—using Roam Research, a note-taking and knowledge management app well-suited to make sense of disorder.

This is a template for collecting the artifact resulting from this cohort — a final, publicly viewable summary of what participants learned or created during the course.

❗️**Important:** The contents of this post will appear on the cohort page, visible to everyone. Don't post anything you don't want to be publicly shared.

Please edit this topic with an artifact that makes sense for your course.

## [Artifact Title]

Replace with: summary description of what the cohort created or learned together.

This may be a final writeup, a summary of each participant's project, a link roundup to externally hosted  assignments — whatever makes sense for your course.

Note that participants can reply to this post, but only this initial post of the topic will be published to the cohort page as its public artifact.

Artifact

This is a template for an assignment you want to give participants in this cohort.

Please edit this topic with description, instructions, or anything else that makes sense for the assignment you'd like to share. The text below is just a starting point.

## [Assignment Title]

Replace with: summary description of the assignment. What are participants creating? What's the learning goal in the context of this course?

## Instructions

Replace with: details on the expected format or process for completing the assignment.

Example (for a final writeup):

- Please post a link to a Google Doc with 500 words on what you learned
- Make sure that sharing is turned on so others can comment

Example (for a photography workshop)

- Select your three favorite photos from the week's theme
- Upload them to a post here, each preceded with a one-paragraph description

Assignment

This is a template for details / discussion related to a specific event in your cohort.

Please edit this topic to include most or all of the elements listed below!

❗️**Important:** Please schedule each event from the main cohort page. This template is not the main way to create an event, but may be useful as a reminder, a way to share related details, or collaborate on event notes.

## [Event Title]

Replace with: short description of the event; any additional info beyond what you included in the event description on the cohort page.

## Details / Instructions

Replace with: further details about the event, if needed. How to join, anything participants need to do to prepare; etc.

Event

## Introductions

Welcome antifragilistas and roam cultists! I hope you are ready for this interesting journey.

Please post a brief intro below! Let everyone know who you are, why you signed up, and what you hope to learn. And say hello to other participants; let's get to know each other!

## Logistics

In order to make a more personalized experience in the course, please answer this little survey. It'll help to know the different levels of expertise with Roam, the type of content or work you write on, and what do you expect from the course.

# TK

Remember to have ready your access/subscription to Roam Research. 

We'll use Zoom for the synchronous classes so if you have to install the software, test your camera and mic, or check your lights, this is the moment. 

## Start Learning!

You can start checking and reading the following links. If you are already an advanced user of Roam and a big reader of Nicholas Taleb, a beginners mind approach could be good to have a common ground for the course.

If you write notes on Roam about the readings, we can share them later in the course.

Getting Started

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Please edit this topic to include most or all of the elements listed below!

❗️**Important:** The contents of this post will automatically get published on the cohort page. That means it'll be publicly available for ANYONE, not just learners in this cohort, to see. Don't post anything you wouldn't want everyone to know (like links to video conference calls).

All *other* posts in this forum category are private to participants in this cohort. Note that each course also has its own forum space, parent to this one, that is publicly visible.

## Schedule

Replace with: brief outline of your schedule for this particular cohort, with any important meetings or deadlines.

If your meetings are regularly scheduled (for example, every Monday for six weeks), be sure to list any days when the course will deviate from the norm (rescheduling around holidays, for example).

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## Amendments

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## Anything Else…

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Notes

This is a template for a prompt — a question or discussion topic you'd like participants to discuss or respond to.

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## [Prompt Title]

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Prompt

This is a template for your cohort to run a retrospective — collecting valuable feedback from participants that will help the course improve over time.

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## Questions

Replace with: particular questions you'd like students to answer at the end of the cohort, aimed at helping your course improve.

The questions below are just examples. You'll get better feedback if you ask targeted questions about specific aspects of your course. Tweak these questions, or write your own!

- What did you expect to get out of this course? Were those expectations met? If not, how do you feel about the progress you made in this course (if any)?
- What specific things (moments, techniques, conversations) did you feel were most useful to learning in this course?
- What do you wish we'd spent more time on? Anything you felt we should add?
- What's one thing you'd suggest we change or remove?
- Please share anything else you'd like us to know!

Participants: you can quote some or all of these questions to structure your replies below.

## Sharing the Retro

Replace with: how the info from this retrospective will be used to improve the course. For example:

The maintainers of this course will review all feedback collected in this retrospective process. We'll think hard about how we can improve the course structure, specific processes, even particular assignments, questions, or readings.

We may follow up if we want to get more detail on anything mentioned below. 

Thanks so much for taking the time to help us improve this course — we really appreciate it!

Retrospective

**How many notes and ideas get aisle, lost, or broken in what we write in our journal, notebooks, drafts, documents. or apps?** How many concepts, stories, essays, not only survive the past of time but grow with it, get stronger, and generate new thoughts? Is there a writing capable to gain from the natural disorder of things?  

This course explores how can we make our writing less fragile and more robust, even antifragile—the opposite extreme of fragile, according to the thinker Nicholas N. Taleb, author of _**Antifragile: Things That Gain From Disorder**_.  

## How Antifragile Writing was born.

In the middle of the year of living under uncertainty, I wanted a writing system, a writing workflow that not only could survive disorder but get the advantage of it.

Antifragile is a good term to use here. **I wanted an antifragile writing to use in the middle of the chaos**.

Things, systems that break or lose with stressors or disorder are fragile.

Some things and systems can be less fragile. Others can even have zero fragility against some stressors. We call these systems or things robust.

The interesting thing here is things and systems that not only aren't affected by stressors but grow, gain or get better with them. **We call them antifragile**, the opposite to fragile.

Bones need stress to stay strong or even to get stronger. If no stress is applied to them, they get weak and start to deteriorate. Bones are antifragile. Some particular stressors and in specific quantities, of course.

A model for antifragile things considers stressors as the trigger or detonator for growing or gaining. So, for antifragile writing, **you have to find the stressors that make you write more and better.**

It was obvious to me that some stressors can do that. The classic example is when you have a deadline that impulses you to do the work. Or the public comment to one of your posts that encourages you to write a reply or an answer. 

Under that idea, I started to design a framework and test the hypothesis. I didn't try to reinvent the wheel, so I started to collect—or recollect because I already have most of them—techniques that could work with it this antifragile writing. 

I even took some of the writing styles or processes of old and known writers and thinkers that, I think, fall down this category of antifragile writing.

**That's how Antifragile Writing was born.**

## Course Goals

Each participant will develop a workflow for antifragile writing, a writing that embraces disorder, gains with stressors, and grows with optionality.

We’ll take advantage of the most outstanding and newest apps for note-taking and personal knowledge management, **Roam Research, logseq, Athens Research, RemNote, Obsidian.md**, especially suited for making sense of disorder.

We'll share a common Roam Research database (in multiplayer mode) for the course. But all the techniques and methods can be used in any of the last generations of personal knowledge system apps. You can use the database for practice, testing, and sharing with the class.

Each participant will develop a workflow for antifragile writing, a writing that embraces disorder, gains with stressors, and grows with optionality.

## Structure

Every week is thematic, with a topic, resources, exercises, and writing prompts. Participants are encouraged to follow the writing practice around their own writing, ideas, or issues at hand.  Those who choose to keep a particular project can work on it during the course.

There will be a shared database in Roam Research for all the participants to use as a sandbox, taking and sharing notes about the topics of the course, and for some collaborative exercises.

Every week we will have a synchronous session via video chat with a duration of 2 hours. Sessions are recorded in case you miss them. Another hour of asynchronous work—reading and writing, basically—with a total duration of 3 hours approximately is expected.  

Every week there will be office hours available for shared writing sessions.  

Every week there will be resources to read, check, listen or view in preparation for the topics of the following week.  

## Syllabus / Schedule

#### Week 1: Antifragile  

What is antifragile? What are the advantages of being antifragile? What are the properties of antifragility? What makes writing antifragile? Why an antifragile writing?  

PKMs basic walkthrough. Roam Research. Three basic elements to start writing on Roam: Daily Pages, outlining, linking.  Differences between apps.

#### Week 2: Tools of Personal Knowledge Management (PKM)  

What is a PKM? Tools for thought before and now. What makes Roam Research, logseq, Athens, Obsidian, RemNote, apps for antifragile writing? The two stages of writing. Note-taking, freewriting, drafting. Reviewing, editing, migrating.

The two stages of writing. Note-taking, freewriting, drafting. Reviewing, editing, migrating.   

#### Week 3: The foundations of antifragile writing

**Antifragile writing**
The principles of antifragile writing: a list for embracing disorder and welcoming stressors for the evolution and growth of your daily practice.
Antifragile writing before Taleb: thinkers and writers that wrote antifragile text.
How to use PKMs for antifragile writing.

#### Week 4: Techniques of antifragile writing I  

**Thinking and expressing** —**Nietzsche**: aphorisms and rumination. Writing aphorisms. Define an idea, explain after. **DaVinci**'s variations for expression. Write fast, explore combinations, subtractions, or additions later.  

**From simple to complex** —**Euclid's** ideas in movement. From simplicity to complexity, one step at a time.   
The rhizomatic craft of **Deleuze** & **Guattari**. Cultivating and growing first, pruning after.   

#### Week 5: Techniques of antifragile writing II  

**Learning from analog methods**—**Bullet journaling** basics. Logging, bullets, collections. The importance of migration.   
Basics of **zettelkasten**. Write first, organize later. Index cards as an elemental unit. Nesting and linking.   

**Contemporary approaches**—**Taleb's** fractals or the craft of repetition. Layers and recursion. Fragments. The art of provocation.  
**Matuschak's** evergreen note-writing. The writing inbox for transient and incomplete notes. Drafting evergreen notes.  


## Artifacts

Each participant will develop a personal workflow for antifragile writing with the preferred app, design and test their own templates, routines, tags, groups, etc.

Additionally, participants will follow the writing and project prompts during the course to develop a specific project for the course—book's first draft, essay, paper, etc.—, or take advantage of the techniques just to think deeper about their current topics.

## Who Should Sign Up

#### Writing Lovers

For any kind of writing practice: note-taking, blogging, researching, journaling, authoring

#### Passionate Thinkers

Those who can see writing as the doing of thinking, as the essencial tool for thought

#### Tireless Learners

Problem solvers, brainstormers, mental modelers, seekers of algorithms of thoughts

Cohort #1

Antifragile Writing

The antifragile writing database

Antifragile Roam Graph

Content

Writing prompts

Exercises

Information