Jorge Arango

Traction Heroes Ep. 22: Thresholds of Change A model for acting skillfully when things are changing.

A model for acting skillfully when things are changing.

The Omni Show Ep. 164: How I Use OmniFocus An interview about a software tool central to my work life.

An interview about a software tool central to my work life.

LLMs as Robot Arms How to deliver value by rearchitecting knowledge pipelines around AI constraints.

How to deliver value by rearchitecting knowledge pipelines around AI constraints.

Diving into a deeply painful and destructive moral failing: prejudice.

Traction Heroes Ep. 21: Social Traps A taxonomy of five kinds of traps that can keep you from gaining traction — and how to avoid them.

A taxonomy of five kinds of traps that can keep you from gaining traction — and how to avoid them.

Humanities Crash Course Week 42: Evil Flowers Transcendence as a way to cope with the drabness of everyday life.

Transcendence as a way to cope with the drabness of everyday life.

Wonderful! Thanks for sharing — I'm glad to know the material helped. 🙏

Humanities Crash Course Week 41: What Moves Us Learning about memory and motivations from two classic novels.

Learning about memory and motivations from two classic novels.

The Daft Punk music is the best thing about it.

Traction Heroes Ep. 20: Gumption Unpacking a trait essential for gaining traction.

Unpacking a trait essential for gaining traction.

Humanities Crash Course Week 40: Good & Evil Connecting with meaning by transcending cultural conventions.

Connecting with meaning by transcending cultural conventions.

A screenshot of the Apple News iPad app showing several ‘news’ items that read like thinly veiled commercials.

Much of what passes for ‘news’ is more about stoking desire than informing. 👀

Humanities Crash Course Week 39: Gothic Horror Learning about agency and ethics from a 200-year-old novel (and not its more famous film adaptation.)

Last week, I delved into Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. I liked the book — and that led me to a terrible mistake: watching the 1931 film.

To say I didn’t like it is an understatement. Mercifully, it’s only 70 minutes long. Check out my full dump. 👇

www.learningbynote.com/p/humanities...

Transcribe Handwriting Using a Local LLM How to turn handwritten notes into Markdown — on your computer.

How to turn handwritten notes into Markdown — on your computer.

jarango.com/2025/09/30/t...

Sketch Your Mind Conference poster featuring Jorge Arango, Information Architect and author of Duly Noted. His talk 'How I Write My Books: Visual Structures that Help You Think' is scheduled for Thursday, October 16, 2025 at 09:00 San Francisco time, with additional times listed for New York, Paris, Tokyo, and Wellington. Website URL: sketch-your-mind.com/2025

Are you a visual thinker with a book in you? Join me at the Sketch Your Mind conference on Oct 16 where I’ll show how I used visual maps to write two of my books. It’s online — and it’s free!

Humanities Crash Course Week 39: Gothic Horror Learning about agency and ethics from a 200-year-old novel (and not its more famous film adaptation.)

Learning about agency and ethics from a 200-year-old novel (and not its more famous film adaptation.)

LLM inception: prompting ChatGPT to write a prompt for Claude Code asking it to convert a current project to instructions for a custom GPT. 🤪

That's nice!

YouTube video by David Bowie - Topic I Have Not Been to Oxford Town

David Bowie: I Have Not Been To Oxford Town - from his 1995 album, 1. Outside; co-composed and co-produced by Brian Eno; synthesizers, treatments and strategies by Eno www.youtube.com/watch?v=bDh9...

1. Outside (The Nathan Adler Diaries: A Hyper Cycle) Outside is the twentieth studio album by the English musician David Bowie, released on 25 September 1995 through Virgin Records in the United States and Arista Records, BMG and RCA Records in other…

Today is the 30th anniversary of one of my favorite records: David Bowie's "Outside." If you've never heard it, give it a spin — it's unusual, even for Bowie. music.youtube.com/playlist?lis...

Share your favorite black and white movie.

The device name of my new iPhone 17 Pro is automatically set to “Ben’s iPhone 16 Pro (2)”

Instead of having Apple Intelligence constantly offering to replacing human creativity, maybe it could just fix things like this instead?

Traction Heroes Ep. 19: Pruning Exploring a key question: How do you decide when it’s time to let go?

Exploring a key question: How do you decide when it’s time to let go?

Humanities Crash Course Week 38: Emergence Perennially relevant lessons about liberty and bottom-up organization from two classic texts.

Perennially relevant lessons about liberty and bottom-up organization from two classic texts.

Sports Sports is the third album by American rock band Huey Lewis and the News, released on September 15, 1983, by Chrysalis Records. It reached No. 1 on the Billboard 200 on June 30, 1984, and ultimately…

On today’s playlist: Huey Lewis and the News’s 1983 masterpiece, “Sports.” An upbeat, confident album that brings back good memories. music.youtube.com/playlist?lis...

I haven't tried that, alas.

Most of my drawing work happens in Figma. But when I need a proper diagram, I fire up OmniGraffle.

Such a beautiful and underrated tool. And *quietly contemplative* — like when I take notes with a nice fountain pen or read the time from an analog watch.

Tapping Into AI’s Conservatism AI favors established frameworks. Knowing that will change how you develop your information systems.

AI favors established frameworks. Knowing that will change how you develop your information systems.

The $799 Meta Ray-Ban Display add a monocular display that unlocks a wide range of hands-free capabilities like live captioning, texts and video calling, navigation, and the ability to preview… Meta Ray-Ban Display hands-on: best smart glasses I’ve ever tried

Two key design decisions here: 1) make these look like regular frames and 2) hide the screen from other people. Can't lead to positive social outcomes.

youtu.be/5cVGKvl7Oek?...

Yeah, ”performative” has that shading. 😉

It’s important to identify how you think most effectively in different scenarios. For me, some tasks go best with a paper notebook, others with an outliner or writing app. Experiment to find what works best in various use cases.