(2020-02-20) Matuschak On Note-Taking

Andy Matuschak various notes' excerpts on Note-Taking and Writing...

“Better note-taking” misses the point; what matters is “better thinking”

The goal is not to take notes—the goal is to think effectively. Better questions are “what practices can help me reliably develop insights over time?”, “how can I shepherd my attention effectively?” etc. This is the frame in which Note-writing as fundamental unit of knowledge work makes sense.

• semi-counter-point: the goal is to Do Something effectively

Note-writing as fundamental unit of knowledge work

Most people take only transient notes, though with effective practices, they’re an essential foundation

Evergreen note titles are like APIs (Shared Language)

When Evergreen notes are factored and titled well, those titles become an abstraction for the note itself. The entire note’s ideas can then be referenced using that handle. In fact, this property itself functions as a kind of litmus: as you develops ideas in notes over time and improve the “APIs,” you’ll be able to write individual notes which abstract over increasingly large subtree

Prefer positive note titles to promote systematic theory

If you’ve thought them through, negatively-oriented notes usually contain a descriptive theory of why the missing/flawed property is important. By bringing that theory to the foreground, you make it easier to see the claims in a systematic context, which, in turn, makes it easier to build on.

Note-writing practices are generally ineffective

If you had to set one metric to use as a leading indicator for yourself as a knowledge worker, the best I know might be the number of Evergreen notes written per day. Note-writing can be a virtuosic skill, but Most people use notes as a bucket for storage or scratch thoughts and Note-writing practices are generally ineffective. Most people take only transient notes

Note-writing helps insight accumulate

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.

We should do our serious thinking in the form of Evergreen notes so that the thinking accumulates.

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.

Executable strategy for writing

A naive writing process begins with a rough inkling about what one wants to write and a blank page

By contrast, if you’ve already written lots of concept-oriented Evergreen notes around the topic, your task is more like editing than composition

Evergreen notes permit smooth incremental progress in writing (“incremental writing”).

Undirected version:

I describe two approaches here: an undirected version, in which writing projects emerge organically from daily work; and a directed version, in which you’re trying to write about something specific

Each time you add a note, add a link to it to an outline, creating one if necessary (Create speculative outlines while you write).

Eventually, you’ll feel excited about fleshing out one of those outlines. (Let ideas and beliefs emerge organically)

Directed version:

Review notes related to your topic (and a step or two beyond those—Notes should surprise you)

• If reading and writing notes doesn’t lead to surprises, what’s the point?This is why we have dense networks of links (Evergreen notes should be densely linked): so that searches help us see unexpected connections.

Write an outline

Attach existing notes to each point in the outline; write new notes as needed.

A writing inbox for transient and incomplete notes

This implies two important mechanisms:

• a quick way to capture transient notes which clearly isolates them from evergreen notes; and
• a place to put notes you want to develop further and a practice which reliably drains it (Inboxes only work if you trust how they’re drained)

Writing forces sharper understanding

Writing is a great way to put pressure on your thinking: it’s hard to summarize something you don’t sharply understand.

The additional step of making associations and integrating that writing with prior notes (i.e. to create Evergreen notes, particularly since Evergreen notes should be concept-oriented) makes this effect even more powerful because you have to understand how a given idea relates to other ideas

Write about what you read

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.

Digital note-writing systems fixate on the presentation and manipulation of individual notes, mostly ignoring inter-note sense-making.

If I’m writing Evergreen notes onto physical index cards, I’ll naturally arrange them on my desk as I write them

As I’m writing a new note, I’ll see all the other notes I’ve been writing, physically arranged adjacent to it. This is a kind of Peripheral vision.

In a digital Note-writing system, by contrast, the environment’s focused on the experience of writing one note.

Most systems barely support multiple windows, but even if I can open multiple windows, it’s awkward to arrange them into the spatial relationships I might naturally use for physical cards.

If I read a note some time later, I have the unnerving sense that it’s part of some “whole” that I can’t see at all. Here, the practices described in Evergreen notes should be atomic work against me

If I was working with physical notes, I’d pull a bunch of notes onto my desk and arrange them. Shuffling the notes around would help me make sense of the structure. There isn’t really a digital equivalent.

Daily working log (Daily Review)

Each day, I start a note titled with that day’s date; e.g. 2020-03-12. It captures ephemera throughout the day: reflections, scratch work, etc. It’s an intentional dumping ground, a release valve so that there’s always “a place to put that thing.”

In the Taxonomy of note types, this is the lowest-fidelity layer, ephemeral by design. But as scratch thoughts look like they might have legs, they get extracted into a note in my writing inbox (A writing inbox for transient and incomplete notes). Sometimes I’ll use the daily working log as a drafting space, and I can extract sections roughly-as-is into Evergreen notes.

Taxonomy of note types

For me, the practice of writing and revising notes is, at its core, about trying to move up the following rough ladder:

Ephemeral scratchings in Daily working log

Outline notes”, e.g. §Enabling environments, games, and the Primer

Note types outside this ladder:

Tactically speaking, I usually denote a note’s “type” with a tag.

Don’t over-obsess or over-formalize this stuff. Remember: “Better note-taking” misses the point; what matters is “better thinking”.

Create speculative outlines while you write

When you write a new note, add it to one or more outlines you’re maintaining, creating a new one if necessary. Substantially-complete writing projects will naturally emerge.

to start a writing project with a blank outline, we need to have a topic and some angle in mind. We can Use notes to avoid preconceived conclusions.