Commentarii Roamani

In today's newsletter, we're starting a series: Pages Worth Building. We'll present you with ideas and flows for Roam structures that can work as more permanent scaffolding for your thinking.

Think pages that track patterns, hold shape-shifting ideas over time, or train a skill – which don't fit into tasks or outlines. For now, we have in mind: [[Experiments]], [[Momentum Log]], [[Reading Index]], [[Mission Control]], and more. If you’ve built something similar, or something completely different that’s earned a place in your graph, feel free to message us on Slack. We’d love to see what you’re working on!

Let's start with [[Experiments]]

🧪 Pages Worth Building: [[Experiments]]

✨ Why [[Experiments]] Deserves Its Own Page:

It’s helpful to have a place where you can track what you’re trying.
Not long-term goals or big changes, just something you’re adjusting to see what happens.

This page holds the details: what you did, when you did it, and what you noticed. It’s simple, but it’s the kind of page you’ll keep coming back to.

🧠 What Counts as an Experiment?

Anything you’re trying on purpose to see how it affects something else. The key feature is that you can think ahead of evidence that would confirm or falsify your idea going into the experimentation. You want to check that the causality works (even loosely, by your own measures).

It could be a change in routine, a new way of organizing your day, a shift in how you approach a task, or a habit you’re testing. It doesn’t need to be formal. It just needs to be specific enough that you can look back and notice what changed.

Some examples:

• No screens 1h before bed ➔ does sleep quality change?
• A timed ten-minute journaling session ➔ does it help you complete more tasks?
• Batch meetings on one day ➔ does it free up creative flow?
• No caffeine after 2pm ➔ do you feel more steady through the day?

The format can be flexible to fit behavior changes, workflow adjustments, substitutions, exploring assumptions/beliefs, etc.

🔧 How to Structure It in Roam

🗂 Main Page: [[Experiments]]

This is your master index. You list what you're testing and what you've already tried:

• Experiment:: [[Morning Phone Ban]]
• Experiment:: [[Voice Memos After Training]]
• Experiment:: [[Two-Tab Limit]]

Use tags like: #Active - #Archived - Status:: - Category:: - etc.

📄 Inside Each Experiment Block:

Each experiment starts as a single block on the [[Experiments]] page. The goal is to capture what you’re trying, how you're doing it, and what comes out of it. Keep the structure simple so it's easy to update.

Here’s an example:

Track logs directly in Daily Notes: if you mention an experiment in your daily notes, tag it:
​Experiments:: [[Morning Phone Ban]]

It will show up in your [[Experiments]] references because of the linked attribute.You can then link the block back into the log later, or leave it where it is, at the bottom of the page.

🧬 Optional Fields & Features

Your practice can become fairly thorough and deliberate, check these fields out:

Once you’ve run a few experiments, certain patterns may show up and the page can bring you a lot of value.

[[Experiments]] becomes a reference page that will surface what tends to work, what falls apart, and what’s worth trying again – *for you*, in well defined contexts. Instead of relying on memory, you’ll have a record you can look back on.

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Let us know what you think about this series and look out for our next issue of the newsletter for more updates, community spotlights, and Roam-native powerhouse tools.