Kevin Kelly has a similar system to what I call a Service Design Library, he wrote a book with 400+ pieces of advice called Excellent Advice for Living.
In the episode 166 of the Knowledge Project podcast hosted by Shane Parrish, he explains from where do these pieces of advice come from. Here are some quotes of what he said about that:
"So just to back up the general thing of what I was doing was in a curious way, I was writing these bits of advice for myself.
I found that I could make a habit out of something by reducing the idea of it to a little capsule and give it a handle so I could repeat it to myself.
I could remind myself of it. And so I wanted some way to take a lot of big weighty, large advice and reduce it into a proverb that I could repeat.
So that's sort of the origins. I was kind of doing that in my head. I would hear something and I would repeat it to me to remind myself of it.
And so these things have the origin in a sense of like, did they work for me? Do they work for me first? And then I can pass it on.
And then this idea of what I should pass it on. So the second element of this was my three kids, they're all kind of adult now.
(…)
And so, so what I'm doing, that when I'm trying to write down, I'm thinking of a way to kind of encapsulate a lot of information and advice and wisdom into a little tiny device that I can hold on to.
And so, trying to give it a general advice is definitely not about precision. It's about a general, what I call a direction.
It's about moving in the right direction."