Much of the day-to-day thinking involved in creative work is simply lost, like sand castles in the tide. Ephemerality can actually be useful in low-fidelity thought, but it’s simply an accidental property in many cases. We should do our serious thinking in the form of Evergreen notes so that the thinking accumulates.
Leaps of insight emerge from prior thought. So where does that thought happen? It could happen in your head, or in a series of fleeting sketches in the pages of your notebook, but Knowledge work should accrete, and those mechanisms are awfully lossy.
Consider some hypothetical leap of insight you’d like to be able to make. To make that leap, you’ll typically need to evolve many independent, partially-formed ideas simultaneously, until they suddenly converge in a flash of inspiration. If you need to iterate on more than a few pieces at once, you may struggle to keep them all in your head.
By contrast, because Evergreen notes should be atomic, they’re small enough in scope that you can start and finish one note in well under half an hour (see Evergreen notes permit smooth incremental progress in writing (“incremental writing”)). Yet each note you write represents an increment in your thinking about that specific idea, and each note enriches the broader network of links (Evergreen notes should be densely linked). Because these are Evergreen notes, you now have a clear place to stand as you iterate on this specific idea.
The notes you write will interact with materials you read (Evergreen note-writing helps reading efforts accumulate) and will produce the foundations of new manuscripts (Executable strategy for writing).
And if you can’t write even one atomic note on the idea you have, Spaced repetition may be a helpful tool to incrementally develop inklings.
Related: “Better note-taking” misses the point; what matters is “better thinking”
Luhmann, N. (1992). Communicating with Slip Boxes. In A. Kieserling (Ed.), & M. Kuehn (Trans.), Universität als Milieu: Kleine Schriften (pp. 53–61). Retrieved from http://luhmann.surge.sh/communicating-with-slip-boxes
Naturally, independence presupposes a minimal measure of intrinsic complexity. The slip box needs a number of years in order to reach critical mass. Until then, it functions as a mere container from which we can retrieve what we put in. This changes with its growth in size and complexity. On the one hand, the number of approaches and occasions for questions increases. The slip box becomes a universal instrument.
Ahrens, S. (2017). How to Take Smart Notes: One Simple Technique to Boost Writing, Learning and Thinking – for Students, Academics and Nonfiction Book Writers.
It’s important to Write about what you read to internalize texts deeply, but instead of just writing about the specific book you’re reading, you can (and should) write your notes such that your reading observations accumulate over time as they interact with each other and with your own ideas (see Evergreen note-writing helps insight accumulate, Knowledge work should accrete).
This is also why we write Evergreen notes: so that if we encounter a book which discusses a concept we’ve already written about, we’re pushed to integrate new ideas with our prior conception. Certainly, we normally do this when we read, but we’re limited to our faulty memory of other works which might be related. The externalized note-taking system substantially removes this limitation.
This is why part of why Evergreen notes should be concept-oriented: so that the structure of our notes pushes us to notice the relationships between the ideas in different texts—and in our own work (see Evergreen notes should be densely linked, Notes should surprise you).
The notes you write will also produce the foundations of new manuscripts (Executable strategy for writing).
This is one reason for Evergreen note-writing as fundamental unit of knowledge work.
If you want to deeply internalize something you’re reading, the best way I know is to write about it:
For deep understanding, it’s not enough to just highlight or write marginalia in books: there isn’t much pressure to synthesize, connect, or to get to the heart of things. And they don’t add up to anything over time as you read more. Instead, write Evergreen notes as you read.
But of course, it doesn’t always make sense to read in this way: much of the time you’re not really trying to internalize the text deeply, and text may not be worthy of that much attention: The best way to read is highly contextual.
Also, it’s worth noting: The most effective readers and thinkers I know don’t take notes when reading. Speaking at least for myself, experience has suggested that I need more support to effectively engage with what I’m reading.
Our broad approach is an alternating cycle:
Luhmann, N. (1992). Communicating with Slip Boxes. In A. Kieserling (Ed.), & M. Kuehn (Trans.), Universität als Milieu: Kleine Schriften (pp. 53–61). Retrieved from http://luhmann.surge.sh/communicating-with-slip-boxes
It is impossible to think without writing; at least it is impossible in any sophisticated or networked (anschlußfähig) fashion.
Levy, N. (2013). Neuroethics and the Extended Mind. In J. Illes & B. J. Sahakian (Eds.), Oxford Handbook of Neuroethics (pp. 285–294). Oxford University Press.
Notes on paper, or on a computer screen … do not make contemporary physics or other kinds of intellectual endeavour easier, they make it possible.