notes should help with the thought in front of you.

the pattern

i noticed a recurring pattern in how i took and managed notes. every system began with possibility, then slowly became another thing to manage.

whenever i opened a fresh book, vault, or database, there was this exhilarating feeling. i could summon the energy to research a complex topic or write about any random topic for hours.

then i would finish and close it. the next time i returned, i would be greeted by a complex interface, open my note, find something very long, and immediately feel mentally taxed.

the failed solution

i read about atomic notes. each idea that stands on its own lives in a separate note. it seemed interesting, so i tried it.

the next time i opened the app, i was greeted by a number of notes. the source of cognitive load had moved from the size of one note to the number of notes around it.

now i had to worry about how to organise them before everything became messy. i tried all sorts of systems and ended up maintaining a system instead of actually learning.

the realization

i don’t learn by writing everything down. writing is a way of getting whatever is in my mind onto paper or a screen. i know people are different, but recording everything while consuming knowledge has never been useful to me.

i would rather read or listen, then write a reflection on the key takeaways. reaching that conclusion took time, but it gave me a clear idea of how my notes should work. i just didn’t have the right medium.

the medium

paper is calm, but it is not easily indexed. finding something means manually returning to each page and skimming until it appears.

computers happen to be very fast at this exact thing. the problem is that note-taking software often makes the collection—and the work of maintaining it—the main interface.