Nick Milo — Linking Your Thinking, Maps of Content, note-making

The Library — Learnings in Public
1

Photo of Nick Milo
Photo of Nick Milo614×686 85.5 KB

Photo: Linking Your Thinking

The person who taught the Obsidian world to link, not file — creator of Linking Your Thinking and popularizer of the Map of Content (MOC).

Field / lens: Linking Your Thinking, Maps of Content, note-making. See The Disciplines — Many Lenses, One Room.
Based in: Santa Monica, California, USA
Timezone: Pacific Time (PT, UTC−8 / UTC−7 in summer)

Why they matter to the Guild

Nick Milo gave the tools-for-thought world a practical answer to the question of how anyone finds their way once everything is linked. His Maps of Content turned a tangle of linked notes into something navigable, and his Linking Your Thinking workshop and Ideaverse kit made that approach reachable for tens of thousands of people. He is one of the clearest voices arguing that the value lives in the thinker, not in the tool — a stance the Guild shares.

The arc of their work

  • Before — Roughly fifteen years of working with digital notes across film editing, two independent feature films, and a fitness-boxing business. He credits early Speech and Debate work with the habit of connecting disparate ideas under pressure.
  • The landmark — Linking Your Thinking (LYT): the community, the cohort-based LYT Workshop, the Maps of Content idea, and later the Ideaverse for Obsidian starter kit (formerly the “LYT Kit”). This is the body of work he is known for across the Obsidian ecosystem.
  • After — Turning toward AI as a thinking partner: the Linking Your AI (LYAI) course and “AI OS” framework (2026), and a forthcoming note-making book with Simon Acumen (Simon & Schuster), reported for around Spring 2027.

Key ideas and terms

  • Map of Content (MOC) — A note that holds curated links to other notes, acting as a flexible index for a topic, question, or project; the idea Milo is most associated with. Link Glossary — Shared Language.
  • Note-making (vs. note-taking) — Shifting from passively capturing information to actively working with it to produce ideas. Link Glossary — Shared Language.
  • ACE — The folder/idea structure in the Ideaverse: Atlas (knowledge), Calendar (time), Efforts (action). Link Glossary — Shared Language.
  • ARC — A workflow taught in the LYT Workshop: Add, Relate, Communicate.
  • IDI framework — Milo’s cognitive-health model for working with AI: Imagine (bring your own questions, connections, and wonder), Discern (read AI’s output with judgment — use what’s useful, discard the rest), Integrate (close the loop by making sense of what you learned, in your own words, before consuming more). It names the human side of the interaction, which is why Milo calls it “timeless.” From his “My AI OS” series.

Their works

Communities

Courses

Products / kits

Books

  • Forthcoming note-making book (Simon Acumen / Simon & Schuster), reported ~Spring 2027 — no page yet.

Find them

Related leaders

  • Tiago Forte — Adjacent “second brain” lens; Forte’s CODE/PARA is more capture-and-output oriented, Milo’s MOC/note-making more linking-and-emergence oriented. Forte has publicly praised Ideaverse for Obsidian.
  • Sönke Ahrens — Milo’s LYT is often framed as a digital, Obsidian-native take on the smart-notes / Zettelkasten tradition Ahrens popularized.
  • Niklas Luhmann — The Zettelkasten origin point Milo builds on and adapts for linked digital notes.
  • Martijn Aslander — Shares the Obsidian / linked-notes world and the PKM Summit circuit; both stress that the human, not the tool, does the thinking.

Sources

Tiago Forte — Second Brain, PARA, CODE
Andy Matuschak — Tools for thought, evergreen notes, spaced repetition / mnemonic media
Anne-Laure Le Cunff — Mindful productivity, metacognition, tools for thought, experimental living
Douglas Engelbart — Tools for thought (the origin) · human-computer interaction · augmenting human intellect
Martijn Aslander — Personal knowledge management, Obsidian, information autonomy, digital fitness