# Harvesting Ideas with Digital Gardens
> [!metadata]- Metadata
> **Published:** [[2025-01-27|Jan 27, 2025]]
> **Tags:** #🌐 #digital-garden #adhd #knowledge-management #obsidian
![[iStock-1126541751.jpg]]
Have you ever felt like your thoughts are like fireflies, beautiful and bright, but flitting away before you can truly grasp them? For someone with [[Attention-deficit Hyperactivity Disorder|ADHD]], this feeling is often amplified. We are awash in ideas, insights, and experiences, yet recalling them when we need them can feel like trying to catch smoke. Recently, I've been exploring the concept of *digital gardening* as a way to not just capture these fleeting thoughts, but to cultivate them into something more permanent and accessible, especially given my challenges with memory and recall due to ADHD.
In my own journey with [[Attention-deficit Hyperactivity Disorder|ADHD]] (officially diagnosed in 2022), one of the most persistent struggles has been memory. It's not about intelligence, but rather the way ADHD brains often struggle with working memory and recall. Starting the ADHD assessment journey was a significant step in understanding myself better. Like many with ADHD, I've tried various methods to manage this – from colorful [[bullet journaling]] in Notability to experimenting with apps like Day One. As I wrote in [[From Blogs to Digital Garden]], these attempts often started strong but eventually faded, mirroring the common ADHD experience with habit formation.
So, what exactly is a *digital garden*, and how does it differ from a blog or a traditional note-taking system? Think of it as my website itself - a space for [[Learning in Public|learning in public]]. It's not a manicured lawn of perfectly polished articles, but more like a real garden "with stuff at different stages of growth":
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> - Some notes are like mature trees - fully developed ideas I've thought through
> - Others are tiny seedlings - just beginning to take shape
> - Many are like wild flowers - random thoughts and observations that pop up
> - And then there are the experiments - who knows if they'll work out!
Unlike traditional blogs that demand perfection and finished pieces, a digital garden embraces organic growth and interconnectedness. As I explain in [[Learning in Public]], it's about creating "learning exhaust" - leaving behind a trail of our learning journey that others can follow. It's about sharing "authentic thoughts, shared publicly," as I aimed for when switching to [Obsidian Publish](https://obsidian.md/publish) for my website, moving [[From Blogs to Digital Garden|from blogs to a digital garden]]. This approach, focused on [[Learning in Public|learning in public]], resonates deeply with the ADHD need for lower pressure and more flexible systems.
But how does this relate to memory and ADHD? I believe digital gardening, especially when built within a tool like [Obsidian](https://obsidian.md/), offers several key benefits for managing knowledge and improving recall for ADHD brains:
## Reduced Friction for Capture
One of the core principles I've discovered for effective [[Knowledge Management for the ADHD Brain|knowledge management]] with ADHD is minimizing friction. Our brains are wired to seek novelty and can easily get overwhelmed by complex systems. A digital garden, allows for incredibly quick and easy capture of thoughts. Whether it's a fleeting idea, a quote from a book, or a link from the web, I can instantly jot it down and "plant" it in my garden. This aligns with the principle of instant capture and reducing cognitive load that I wrote about in [[Knowledge Management for the ADHD Brain]]:
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> - Enable instant capture of thoughts and ideas
> - Reduce decision points to avoid analysis paralysis
> - Be accessible across all your devices
> - Work seamlessly with your existing workflows
## Interconnectedness and Serendipitous Discovery
The beauty of a digital garden in Obsidian lies in its interconnectedness. By linking notes, we create a web of knowledge, where ideas are not isolated but connected to related concepts. This web becomes a powerful tool for memory. Instead of trying to recall a piece of information from a blank slate, we can navigate through related notes, triggering associations and pathways to jog our memory. And just like in a real garden, we serendipitously stumble upon older notes and ideas, rediscovering forgotten insights and making new connections, much like the appeal of journaling I initially felt.
## External Brain, Lower Cognitive Load
For those with ADHD, cognitive load is a significant factor. Our working memory has limited capacity, and trying to hold too much information in our heads can lead to overwhelm and mental fatigue. A digital garden acts as an external brain, offloading the burden of storage and recall. As the article "Note Taking in 2021" wisely states:
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> Use your brain for what it was built for: Thinking, cognitive processes and creativity. Definitely not for storing information.
This aligns perfectly with the concept of learning in public, where the goal isn't perfection but authentic growth and sharing.
Digital Gardening offers a powerful and ADHD-friendly approach to knowledge management and memory support. By embracing its organic nature, focusing on frictionless capture, and cultivating interconnectedness, we create what [[Learning in Public|I call]] a "beautiful mess" - a space where ideas can grow naturally, mistakes are welcome, and learning happens in the open. It's not about presenting perfect, polished content, but about growing ideas together with others who might benefit from our journey.