My life is a mess* #2

a more coherent problem solving exercise

Last week I wrote about my fear of forgetting things.

Since my crash out, I have take a step back to think about how I could approach this in a more level headed manner.

As a reminder, the problem that I was trying to solve is that I need a system to remember ideas and things I need to do that I can access anywhere, at anytime.

Here’s a few problems with my current setup

1. Obsidian is fine.. but it becomes a graveyard of ideas if nothing happens to them, or if I forget they exist.

2. The Denik Orange Halftone Classic Layflat Notebook is also great, and I prefer to write my notes in there if at all possible.

3. If I end up just going back and forth between the two, then our original sprawl problem isn’t solved at all!

Today, I want to talk specifically about solving the first problem, and how I’ve been attacking it since last year.

Part 1: Collecting Things

November 2025: Pebble Index 01

One fateful day on YouTube, I came across a product that really piqued my interest

And this is a bit what my reaction upon seeing this thumbnail looked like:

First of all - I had never heard of this guy Eric, who in all honesty seems pretty chill.

Second… why… is the product only $75?

Third… am I going to be locked into some sort of BS proprietary notes application?

And the answers to those questions were

1. Eric is the creator of pebble, whose history is complicated, but Eric is excited about pebble and does good work

2. The ring dies. It’s non-rechargable. It becomes a paperweight after about 12-15 hours of use, due to it’s use of a non-rechargable hearing aid battery. I’m going to say it one more time so we are super clear. It’s non-rechargable.

3. Not really… Pebble does good work. Seriously.

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I’m gonna circle back to number 2, since it’s fucking ridiculous. Here’s a direct quote from Pebble’s website:

“Here’s the best part: the battery lasts for years. You never need to charge it.”

Like… what???? They break it down even more:

“Roughly 12 to 15 hours of recording. On average, I use it 10-20 times per day to record 3-6 second thoughts. That's up to 2 years of usage.”

I don’t know how I feel about this marketing. It’s a little BS, but it’s little making the best out of a bad situation. I get it, but also… fuck man! $75 ($100 after pre-order window is over). Also… you put yourself in this situation??? Is it really bad if it’s your own fault??

Never having to recharge this thing is awesome in it’s own right.

Never charging = never not having it on you = never not being able to remember!

But also… fuck! I only get 12 hours out of this thing?? What if I like longer notes… it dies quicker. What if I fall asleep while pressing the button. It’s dead when I wake up!

So I gave up. Eric, if you’re reading this, this is a great start, but it has to be rechargeable for the general population to use it. And I get it dude. You’re making products for you, but that also means you kind of get an infinite supply of them.

It sucks, because I could really, really, really see myself liking this product.

December 2025: Sandbar

After rejecting Pebble, I did some research into what a chargeable alternative could look like. And through rubble, I heard of a ring called Sandbar.

It’s a similar concept to Pebble, but rechargeable, more expensive, and has an optional (optional? 🤨) monthly subscription attached to it. It’s also like… a little too Her for my taste. It’s giving end of the world.

Here's some of the big hitters out of the way

1. It’s $250 (oof)

2. It’s privacy policy… seems… okay? The product isn’t really out yet, and as we know, companies change those whenever they want and we just automatically agree by using the product!

3. The monthly subscription is $10/month and gets you…

“…advanced voice chat, unlimited messages, real-time web answers, and early features—and continues at $10/mo for preorder members.‍”

All in all, it seems okay. I’m a bit worried about data privacy, transparency, and getting trapped in a monthly subscription. It’s something worth revisiting in a few months when some real people have gotten their hands on it.

January 2025: Voice Memos

The more I thought about this problem, the more I was intrigued by the idea of voice over writing or typing.

Ultimately, the fastest and most efficient way to communicate ideas is speaking. In order of speed…

1. Speaking (I speak around 200 WPM)

2. Typing (I average around 100 WPM)

3. Writing (I write about 30 WPM)

Voice Memos are great. But, you don’t know what they say unless you listen to them, and they often just sit in the Voice Memos app rotting (similar to that of my sprawled notes…)

So I figured… If I could build some sort of Voice Memo → Note pipeline, that would be a good step in the right direction, and would be similar to that of what Pebble was trying to accomplish, without it bricking after a few years of use.

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Voice Memos are a built in feature to iPhone, which are easily tied into Shortcuts, a Visual Programming Language of sorts…

Here was my initial thought for what the flow could look like

A bunch of things made this really easy

1. Shortcuts is for the most part pretty well designed

2. iPhones can transcribe audio ON DEVICE

3. I can send a text to myself as a reminder to check the note later

4. You can start shortcuts with widgets (home screen, lock screen, quick access…)

And this worked… for a time.

I created the flow in January and have (as of today, in the middle of May) used it about 20 times. Not great. I don’t know exactly why it died off, it’s partially because I pivoted from the notes app to Obsidian earlier this year, but also partially because… it wasn’t super functional. I imagine the multitude of notes being created was too many, and I just wasn’t checking the notes that often. A pivot was required.

May 2026: Hardcore Orange. Corroded Orange. Falling Apart Orange. Rusted Orange.

Not only is the iPhone 17 Pro Orange, it also comes with an action button. And the action button got me thinking again.

You see that icon? That’s Siri shortcuts bro. We’re back in the loop. But… I’ll need to make some changes since we’ll be in the same predicament as earlier if we don’t add some improvements about remembering ideas. Not just writing them down in a bunch of separate notes.

But before that, I’d like to tell you about one more thing. A distraction of sorts.

May 2026: Perfection

Teenage engineering is a Swedish company who makes really, really cool products. The product above is the TP-7. And it is, without a doubt, the coolest thing I’ve ever seen. I mean, did you watch the Lego Batman clip?

It’s an audio recorder about the same size as a cassette tape, with a few things going on.

1. The wheel in the middle is magnetic and spins when you record. Touch it to stop it from and spinning (and thus, pausing the recording). Fuck.

2. The lever on the left hand side fast forward and rewinds (which also makes the wheel spin faster, and the audio play in reverse, or very fast). Fuck!

3. And yes. It’s got hardcore orange. FUCKKK!!!!!!

And there’s a ton of other stuff I’m not gonna cover here that this thing can do, but it’s awesome.

Now. You’re probably thinking

“Wow! Aiden, this is also the coolest thing I’ve ever seen too! You should get one! It seems like it’s a win win! It’s physical, it records audio, it’s super cool…”

No… you uh… you aren’t missing the period. It’s $1499

One Thousand Four Hundred and Ninety Nine dollars.

I get it. I do, but it’s not a purchase for today.

One day Aiden. One day.

Part 2: A Revamped Flow

I don’t know about you but I don’t remember Simba’s voice being so DAMN annoying?

ANYway

Here’s a high level overview of the new Action Button → Obsidian flow:

This is my first attempt at solving my sprawl problem.

If you look at the bottom of the flow, you see a simple If statement that either puts the transcribed audio in the inbox file or the quick notes file, based on what the local model categorized the transcribed text as.

Here’s what the prompt is doing behind the scenes:

Classify this voice memo and return JSON only.
No markdown, no explanation, no code blocks.

Format: {”type”: “todo”, “content”: “...”} or {”type”: “note”, “content”: “...”}

Rules:
- type is “todo” if it’s an action item, otherwise “note”
- content is the transcribed audio cleaned up, 
  fixing filler words and grammar but keeping the exact meaning

Voice memo:

{TRANSCRIBED_AUDIO}

This gives us separation of concerns, and also a “hub” for either type of recorded audio.

This is definitely the “simpler” solution, as eventually I’d like some sort of local model that is able to “crawl” over my notes, and can give me some insights or summarize recent notes via RAG/Embeddings/etc.

This plugin looks somewhat promising…

However, we can also push our inbox/quick notes one step further without the use of a local model.

Obsidian has a plugin called Dataview, which allows you to query your notes like a database!

-- to get all uncompleted todo items
TASK
FROM “Inbox”
WHERE !completed
SORT file.mtime DESC

-- to get the 10 most recent quick notes
LIST
FROM “Quick Notes”
SORT file.mtime DESC
LIMIT 10

So now, we can build a “mega note” of sorts with all incomplete TODO items and the last 10 quick notes, where I can quickly hop in and see things I might have missed!

For now - we have significantly improved our flow.

I don’t think this is the completed product, but it’s a much better spot to be in than where we started this article. For now, here’s a demo of how quick and easy the flow is.

Some future improvements/ideas I can already imagine needing/wanting

1. Some sort of categorization system for TODO items. I have always appreciated the Eisenhower matrix, and I’m sure there’s a way we could tag each TODO item in Obsidian.

2. I still really like the idea of having a local model wired up to my notes, and it being able to crawl over those notes to quickly and easily summarize and search through them.

And yeah! That’s about it for now. I’m going to do some testing over the next few days and hopefully add some more features to this thing.

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*My life is still, not a mess.