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They would often list dozens of tips and tricks that had little to do with each other.
There was never an overarching system for turning notes into concrete results.
But recently I picked upHow To Take Smart NotesbySonke Ahrens.
It is by far the most impactful and profound book Ive ever read on the subject.
This book is so full of insights that it broke my usual approach to summarizing books.
But this book is not written in the usual way.
It is written using an external thinking system, which I call aSecond Brain.
Every paragraph has a point, and I struggled to leave anything out of this summary.
Luhmann was a prolific note-taker, writer, and academic.
It was designed to connect any given note to as many different potentially relevant contexts as possible.
Luhmann rejected alphabetical categorization of his notes, along with fixed categories like the Dewey Decimal System.
He reported that it continuously surprised him with ideas hed forgotten he had.
Because of this, he claimed that there was actual communication going on between himself and hiszettelkasten.
This number could be referenced from any other card, because it would never change.
There is no hierarchy in thezettelkasten, which means it can grow internally without any preconceived scheme.
By creating notes as a decentralized internet instead of a hierarchical tree, Luhmann anticipated hypertext and URLs.
For years, the importance of Luhmanns slip-box was underestimated.
It happens mainly within the slip-box (Luhmann, Baecker, and Stanitzek 1987, 142).
Until recently, no one believed that such a simple system could produce such prolific output.
We are so used to the idea that great outcomes require great (and complicated) efforts.
I only write when I immediately know how to do it.
Upon his death, Luhmanns slip-box contained 90,000 notes.
This may seem like a staggering number until you realize that it amounts to only six notes per day.
The explosion of technology and connectivity has inundated us with an overabundance of information.
These principles go a long way toward reestablishing the boundaries and constraints that creativity needs to thrive.
These notes build up as a byproduct of the reading were already doing anyway.
If you want to learn and remember something long-term, you have to write it down.
If you want to understand an idea, you have to translate it into your own words.
Just because you read more doesnt automatically mean you have more or better ideas.
Its like learning to swim you have to learn by doing it, not by merely reading about it.
For example, you could memorize the fact that arteries are red and veins are blue.
And once we make this meaningful connection between ideas, its hardnotto remember it.
The problem is that the meaning of something is not always obvious.
and How can this phenomenon be explained by that theory?
or How does this argument compare to that one?
Completing these tasks is exceedingly difficult inside the confines of our heads.
An idea kept private is as good as the one you never had.
The purpose of research is to producepublicknowledge that can be scrutinized and tested.
For that to happen, it has to be written down.
This principle requires us to expand our definition of publication beyond the usual narrow sense.
Few people will ever publish their work in an academic journal or even on a blog.
This might still seem like a radical principle.
Do we really need even more people broadcasting half-baked opinions and theories online?
But the important part is the principle: Workas ifwriting is the only thing that matters.
Having a clear, tangible purpose when you consume information completely changes the way you engage with it.
Youll be more focused, more curious, more rigorous, and more demanding.
Almost every aspect of your life will change when you live as if you are working toward publication.
Youll read differently, becoming more focused on the parts most relevant to the argument youre building.
Youll ask sharper questions, no longer satisfied with vague explanations or leaps in logic.
But how can you decide on an interesting topic before youve read about it?
You have to immerse yourself in research before you even know how to formulate a good question.
And the decision to read about one subject versus another also doesnt appear out of thin air.
It usually comes from an existing interest or understanding.
The truth is every intellectual endeavor starts with a predicting conception.
This is why an external system to record your research is so critical.
It doesnt just enhance your writing process; it makes it possible.
And all this pre-research also involves writing.
We build up an ever-growing pool of externalized thoughts as we read.
When the time comes to produce, we arent following a blindly invented plan plucked from our unreliable brains.
No one ever really starts from scratch.
Anything they come up with has to come from prior experience, research, or other understanding.
But because they havent acted on this fact, they cant track ideas back to their origins.
They have neither supporting material nor accurate sources.
Its no wonder that nearly every guide to writing begins with brainstorming.
If you dont have notes, you have no other option.
Taking notes allows you to break free from the traditional, linear path of writing.
We need aworkflow a repeatable process for collecting, organizing, and sharing ideas.
Every additional technique becomes its own project without bringing the whole much further forward.
Before long, the whole mess of techniques falls apart under its own weight.
Even the best techniques wont make a difference if they are used in conflicting ways.
This is why the slip-box isnt yet another technique.
It is the system in which all the techniques are linked together.
An undistracted brain and a reliable collection of notes is pretty much all we need.
Everything else is just clutter.
Many people still take notes, if at all, in an ad-how, random way.
If they see a nice sentence, they underline it.
If they want to make a comment, they write it in the margins.
If they have a good idea, they write it in whichever notebook is close at hand.
And if an article seems important enough, they might make the effort to save an excerpt.
This leaves them with many different kinds of notes in many different places and formats.
Notes are like shipping containers for ideas.
It is this standardization of notes that enables a critical mass to build up in one place.
A common format removes unnecessary complexity and takes the second-guessing out of the process.
The same principle applies to the steps of processing our notes.
It isnt very hard to write down notes in the first place.
Nor is turning a group of notes into an outline very demanding.
And polishing a well-conceived rough draft into a final draft is trivial.
Because we have a go at do all the steps at once.
The slip-box is the host of the process outlined above.
It deliberately puts distance between ourselves and what weve written, which is essential for evaluating it objectively.
This is the work that adds value, and now we have the time to do it more effectively.
Nothing motivates us more than becoming better at what we do.
And we can only become better when we intentionally expose our work to high-quality feedback.
But notes are the only kind of feedback that is available anytime you need it.
It is the only way to deliberately practice your thinking and communication skills multiple times per day.
The better we become at it, the more efficient and enjoyable our reading becomes.
Think of the last time you read a book.
What are the chances that the book contains only the precise insights you were looking for and no others?
Extremely low it would seem.
The most interesting topics are the ones we didnt plan on learning about.
But we can anticipatethatfact and set our future selves up for a high probability of productive accidents.
The classic mistake is to organize them into ever more specific topics and subtopics.
This makes it look less complexbut quickly becomes overwhelming.
With this approach, the greater ones collection of notes, the less accessible and useful they become.
Instead of organizing by topic and subtopic, it is much more effective to organize bycontext.
Specifically, thecontext in which it will be used.
This is the essential difference between organizinglike a librarianand organizinglike a writer.
A librarian asks Where should Istorethis note?
They might file notes on a psychology paper under misjudgments, experimental psychology, or experiments.
That works fine for a library, but not for a writer.
No pile of notes filed uniformly under psychology will be easy to turn into a paper.
There is no variation or disagreement from which an interesting argument could arise.
A writer asks In which circumstances will I want to stumble upon this note?
These are concrete, near-term deliverables, and not abstract categories.
Organizing by context does take a little bit of thought.
The answer isnt always immediately obvious.
Writers dont think about a single, correct location for a piece of information.
They deal in scraps which can often be repurposed and reused elsewhere.
The discarded byproducts from one piece of writing may become the essential pillars of the next one.
The slip-box is a thinking tool, not an encyclopedia, so completeness is not important.
This approach sets up your future self with everything they need to work as decisively and efficiently as possible.
They wont need to trawl through folder after folder looking for all the sources they need.
Youll already have done that work for them.
Balduf 2009), are unable to make a connection to their personal goals (Glynn et al.
This is why we must spend as much time as possible working on things we find interesting.
It is not an indulgence.
It is an essential part of asking our work sustainable and thus successful.
This advice runs counter to the typical approach to planning we are taught.
We are told to make a plan upfront and in detail.
Success is then measured by how closely we stick to this plan.
Our changing interests and motivations are to be ignored or suppressed if they interfere with the plan.
The history of science is full of stories of accidental discoveries.
Ahrens gives the example of the team that discovered the structure of DNA.
It started with a grant, but not a grant to study DNA.
They were awarded funds to find a treatment for cancer.
Plans are meant to help us feel in control.
Our sense of motivation depends on making consistent forward progress.
But in creative work, questions change and new directions emerge.
That is the nature of insight.
So we dont want to work according to a rigid workflow that is threatened by the unexpected.
Our only criterion for what to save is whether it connects to existing ideas and adds to the discussion.
When we focus on open connections, disconfirming or contradictory data suddenly becomes very valuable.
It often raises new questions and opens new paths of inquiry.
The experience of having one piece of data completely change your perspective can be exhilarating.
The real enemy of independent thinking is not any external authority, but our own inertia.
We need to regularly confront our errors, mistakes, and misunderstandings.
We can extract certain aspects or details for our own uses.
Dont just feel smarter.
Working with a slip-box can be disheartening, because you are constantly faced with the gaps in your understanding.
But at the same time, it increases the chances that you will actually move the work forward.
Our choice then is whether we want tofeelsmarter orbecomesmarter.
Ultimately, learning should not be about hoarding stockpiles of knowledge like gold coins.
It is about becoming a different kind of person with a different way of thinking.
Writing then is best seen not only as a tool for thinking but as a tool for personal growth.
This article was originally published onPraxisbyTiago Forte.
it’s possible for you to read the original articlehere.
