I’m trying to write notes using voice input.

I’m seeing it more clearly: capturing thoughts matters more than trying to make everything perfect from the start. Yes, editing and polishing improve the text, and the thoughts become cleaner and more crystallized. But fast capture matters for something else: it lets me remember later what I was even thinking about.

On walks, I used to record thoughts on a voice recorder and then transcribe them into a huge “wall of text”, sometimes even with timestamps. But it turned out to be inefficient: there’s too much text, and I don’t want to return to it. Publishing it feels even less appealing. Speech and text simply follow different rules.

Today there are tools that can quickly turn a voice note into clear, formatted text. I’m talking about artificial intelligence. And it’s important to clarify: in this mode, it’s not about “write it for me”, it’s about capture.

The point is that you need to capture not only the thought, but also the feeling. Without that, the text becomes cold and empty. If I come back to it in six months, it won’t hook me in any way. Intonation, voice, emotions, and stories are exactly what create the hook.

So my task, when I make notes like this, is simple: give the AI tool a command like “don’t rewrite”, don’t sterilize it, keep the human texture. Let the text remain mine, just a bit clearer.

This is my attempt to find a place for the machine in life: neither to push it away nor to hand it everything, but to use it as the right tool. Because I can spend an hour writing this same text, or I can capture it in a minute or two and move on. Especially when a thought arrives during a walk and it matters to save it immediately, together with the state.

There’s one more idea: if a note is “evergreen” and I want to keep working on it, I can (and should) update it. Read it quickly, bring it back into the chat, continue the dialogue, sharpen the wording, look at it from new angles, and the thought becomes alive and “evergreen”, not a one-time capture.

And the key focus here is this: the priority of my own speech and capturing thoughts without later “re-melting” them into something else. Yes, I have another mode where I work as a “text architect”, and AI helps me assemble and connect blocks faster. But in notes like these, what matters to me is capturing the state.

Sometimes it’s easier for me to capture the flow first than to construct a thought from scratch. We’re all different: for some it’s easier to write, for others it’s easier to talk to silence. I’m just looking for the best way to express my real self here and now.

I’ve started rereading Rework (the English edition is titled Rework: Change the Way You Work Forever), and the first chapter is called “Ignore the Real World.”

I realized how my attitude toward these kinds of bold concepts has changed:

1. Yes, great! Do whatever you want! They don’t know anything and don’t understand!
2. But the world became what we see now, so the rules of the game clearly work. A norm is a viable order.
3. (you are here) Sometimes play helps you get unstuck and change something (at least your point of view, to start with).

Now I look at it positively. Maybe I’ve simply come to see that rules and norms allow for mistakes. That doesn’t mean the mistaken thing will take root (probably not). But as a designer, I understand that experiments and play are necessary.

That’s what design thinking is. Not the version with sticky notes on a wall, but the one about understanding the balance between norms and errors.

I want to understand why dictating text works not only as a speed boost, but as a different mode of thinking.

I used to talk about fast capture, but it’s not just about speed. In an interview, Andy Matuschak mentioned that he walks around the room and dictates text instead of typing. What caught my attention wasn’t that it’s faster, but that speaking seems to switch off the inner editor. When you type, you’re constantly tweaking, deleting, rewriting, and that can look like thinking. But sometimes it’s more like a brake.

I had often heard about this, but I could never truly grasp the idea myself. I’m talking about the fact that notes, in any format or medium, are first and foremost for ourselves.

Earlier, inspired by Luhmann, Matuschak, and others, I wrote notes because “that’s what you’re supposed to do.” I had heard they worked, that “evergreen” notes should produce some kind of effect in the future. I believed it, but I didn’t really understand what it meant for a note to “work.” Of course, I enjoyed writing, and that gave me energy to continue, but from time to time I would find myself facing a concrete wall with a large inscription: “WHY?”

No psychologist today will tell you about the importance of a kindred soul, or how to find it. They themselves live in a perverted world and present it as the norm.

The soul is not a function of the system — it’s a glitch, a void, a call, a light. It’s something that should not exist in a functioning system.

Recently I already wrote about the lighting that pretends. I had a feeling they’d outdo themselves. And just the other day, I was “lucky” (and there’s really no other word for it) to ride yet another version — or configuration — of this miracle of engineering and design thinking. Are you ready? They’ve added a red LED strip along the windows. Cool, right? Innovation!

But that’s not all.

Huh? What do you think of this design? I even had to squint from how bright the interior was.

Now, seriously.

When there’s no taste, everything slowly turns into a Christmas tree. Unfortunately, that’s the case here now.

I love capturing simple moments. Different generations. Ordinary people living ordinary lives. Without pretense or gloss. That evening I wasn’t thinking about the value of the frame. I just met people and pressed the shutter button.

It’s these kinds of shots that teach you to appreciate the moment. I open the photograph I took that summer evening and think about them. Some are gone. Someone got distracted by something trivial. Someone is going through a crisis or walking into the fog toward a dream, feeling the brass of life and unaware of the coming storms and cliffs.

It’s not about another lucky “shot” for social media. It’s about attention. Despite the noise and the world’s overindulgence, to notice something simple and alive.

Recently I stumbled upon the idea of liveness (see “Liveness” by Venkatesh Rao). I think it’s better to approach such ideas gradually — to let them unfold and notice how they echo in reality. I’m not yet sure it fits here, but I’ll see later. For now — a small step in that direction.

Why do modern trolleybuses have LED strips running along the windows? Stylish? Fresh?

I don’t think good design has to be invisible — but it depends on where we apply it. In a Mercedes or a Tesla, that kind of lighting works: motion, speed, space as an extension of yourself — dynamic, successful, hair blowing in the wind, your favorite song playing — welcome to the future!

Meanwhile, somewhere in an unheated office of a design department, a cheerful young designer proudly presents his project, pointing out all the stylish details. The designer has done his job well: the task was to make the trolleybus interior modern. Time to issue a bonus — and maybe a long-awaited can of government-issued condensed milk, as a reward for obedience.

But let’s go back to the trolleybus. Dirt, slush, sleepy people coming back from work. This “freshness” feels out of place here, and it only highlights the gray reality. Practical use? Only if the lights help you find what you dropped, or notice that your shoes are covered in chemical slush. Venkatesh Rao has a notion called “liveness” — when a thing truly lives instead of pretending. In public transport, it’s the kind of light that helps you see and read, clear signs, comfortable handles — things that serve people and, over time, become part of the route’s history, its continuation. It turns out that this lighting isn’t a continuation of the story but a glitch: an element that carries nothing forward on its own. I’m not even talking about the fact that the LED strips will need replacing soon — knowing the quality of things around here, that’ll have to happen very soon. Will anyone bother? Of course not.

Yes, we need progress. Of course things should improve, become more beautiful and relevant. But when we create, it’s important to consider context, to find the link between past and future, and to have the courage to say “No” to everything unnecessary.

To be continued…

We live at the junction of two systems: bodies have biorhythms and breath; servers have timestamps and uptime. The intersection of worlds is not a compromise but an interface, a place where human attention meets machine protocol. It is important to be fluent in the language of feeling and the language of systems. Silence is not a pause but a medium; the algorithm is not a judge but a tool. Meaning is a signal that passes through noise without losing the human dimension.

Design not for retention but for free will. Choose depth over reach. Recognize friction as part of the protocol, not a bug. Mark boundaries and sources, especially when AI is involved. Transparency is the new ethical minimum. Build small protocols that return agency: rituals of attention, careful maps instead of total pictures of the world. Publish not “truth forever” but careful diffs, checkpoints in the evolution of thought.

The intersection of worlds is a place where the system can be rebooted. Here we fix the initial conditions: first the body, then the tool; first reality, then the model. Between heart and circuit, between voice and code, the protocol preserves the full spectrum of the signal, including feeling.

Look at the cute little cat I added to the photo.