There are a few kinds of notes:
- Fleeting
- Literature
- Permanent
Fleeting notes are unstructured and free-form. Put your ideas down as soon as you have them.
Literature notes are notes taken from other content. They are meant to work as reference for later. It’s very important to write them down in your own words. Part of the process here is learning, so it can be synthesized later.
Permanent notes arise from the review of fleeting and literature notes. They are comparable to long-term memory. A permanent note is a focused “article” on an idea. You need to connect them to other notes and ideas using tags. The tags are not categories - they are meant to make notes easier to find.
Benefits
Learning:
- The process of writing helps understanding.
- Reflection deepens understanding.
- You an revisit ideas.
Content:
- As it grows it becomes easier to make “content”.
Creativity:
- Writing notes and making connections makes you see links between unrelated domains.
- You start creating relationships between things which seem unrelated.