§Note-writing systems

• Principles:
  • Evergreen note-writing as fundamental unit of knowledge work
  • “Better note-taking” misses the point; what matters is “better thinking”
  • Knowledge work should accrete
  • Note-writing practices are generally ineffective
  • Note-writing practices provide weak feedback
• Reading and note-writing
  • Write about what you read to internalize texts deeply
  • Evergreen note-writing helps reading efforts accumulate
    • Collecting material feels more useful than it usually is
  • Do your own thinking
    • Understanding requires effortful engagement
    • Writing forces sharper understanding
  • How to collect observations while reading
  • Literature notes are secondary and separate
  • How to process reading annotations into evergreen notes
  • Pocket memo pad to capture into writing inbox while out
  • A writing inbox for transient and incomplete notes
  • A reading inbox to capture possibly-useful references
  • Inboxes shouldn’t be split into multiple places
  • Beware automatic import into the reading inbox
  • Use phones to collect and triage, not (usually) to read
• Thinking and note-writing
  • Evergreen note-writing helps insight accumulate
  • Spaced repetition may be a helpful tool to incrementally develop inklings
  • Leaps of insight emerge from prior thought
  • Brainstorming may often substitute for missing insight accretion systems
  • Evergreen notes are a safe place to develop wild ideas
  • Evergreen notes can increase conversational bandwidth
  • Conversations incorporating multiple discussants’ evergreen notes may promote collaborative sense-making
• Writing and note-writing
  • Executable strategy for writing
  • Create speculative outlines while you write
  • Evergreen notes lower the emotional stakes in editing manuscripts
  • Evergreen notes permit smooth incremental progress in writing (“incremental writing”)
• Structure of the notes
  • Evergreen notes
  • Most people take only transient notes
  • Evergreen note maintenance approximates spaced repetition
  • Evergreen notes should be concept-oriented
  • Evergreen notes should be atomic
  • Evergreen note titles are like APIs
    • Prefer positive note titles to promote systematic theory
    • Prefer note titles with complete phrases to sharpen claims
  • Evergreen notes should be densely linked
  • Notes should surprise you
• associative structure in PKMs
  • Prefer associative ontologies to hierarchical taxonomies
  • Tags are an ineffective association structure
  • Indexed references vs. tags
• implications
• Relation to reference system
  • Creating hyperlinks to my reference archive
  • Advantages and disadvantages of using notes to form associations in content
• tools
  • Digital note-writing systems fixate on the presentation and manipulation of individual notes, mostly ignoring inter-note sense-making
  • the value of plaintext
  • plaintext IDs to link stuff
  • being the human connector in a system which has no app
• history / community
  • Zettelkasten
  • Luhmann
  • Christian and Sascha
  • How to Take Smart Notes - Ahrens