Alright, let me tell you about this little thing I started calling ‘holmes & yang’. Wasn’t really a big project, more like a personal experiment I got myself into.
It all started because I had these two different ways of tracking some stuff. Just notes and ideas, really. One method felt very logical, step-by-step, kinda like that detective guy, so I nicknamed it ‘Holmes’. The other was more free-flowing, jumping between ideas, kinda messy but creative – that one I called ‘Yang’. Yin and Yang, get it? Yeah, maybe a bit silly.
Getting Started
So, first thing I did was just dump everything I had for both methods into separate folders on my computer. Just plain text files mostly. Took a couple of hours just sorting through old notes, deciding what belonged where. The ‘Holmes’ folder got structured pretty quick – dated entries, clear topics. The ‘Yang’ folder was more like a brainstorm dump, lots of loose connections.
Then I thought, okay, how do I actually compare these? It wasn’t about which one was better overall, but more about which worked better for me for different kinds of thinking.
The Process
I decided to try using both methods side-by-side for a week. For any new idea or task:
- I’d first try to map it out the ‘Holmes’ way. Break it down logically.
- Then, I’d let myself just jot down thoughts freely, the ‘Yang’ way.
It felt a bit weird at first, almost like doing double the work. I spent evenings just looking at the notes from the day. Tried to see which method captured the useful bits better. Sometimes ‘Holmes’ gave me a clear path. Other times, ‘Yang’ sparked an idea I wouldn’t have gotten otherwise.
This wasn’t super scientific, mind you. Just me, my keyboard, and a bunch of text files. I didn’t use any fancy software. Just opened them up, read through, maybe copied bits from one style to the other if it made sense.
What Happened
After about a week or two of this back-and-forth, I noticed a pattern. For planning concrete tasks, things with deadlines, ‘Holmes’ was king. Kept me on track. But for brainstorming new ideas, or just trying to understand a complex problem, ‘Yang’ often felt more productive, even if the notes looked chaotic later.
So, I didn’t end up picking one over the other. Kind of a boring conclusion, maybe? But the real takeaway for me was understanding when to use which approach. I started consciously switching between the structured ‘Holmes’ thinking and the more open ‘Yang’ style depending on what I needed to do.
I still keep those two folders, though the ‘Yang’ one is definitely bigger now. It’s less about a strict system and more about reminding myself there’s more than one way to tackle things. Just a little practice I went through, figured I’d share.
