Notes are a tool for …

… thinking

Writing notes is less about the content of those notes being available later. The process of writing them is a process of thinking. It’s a tool to go through information and ideas, and transform them from abstract to tangible.

In Writing is thinking, Francesco Puppo writes:

Putting your words on paper, even if digitally, forces you to deal with the core of the topic at hand. Writing forces you to think about how you express your thoughts. Your words need to stand alone on the paper. No one can read your mind so you need to be clear. And to be clear you need to fully understand the topic at hand.

While he makes a distinction between note-taking and writing in his article, I do think for this part the effects apply to both.

Writing notes and journaling provides me mental clarity and focus.

Active writing and reviewing my notes helps me make new discoveries as well. Without my notes, each thought would risk staying alone as separate thought, disconnected. With the notes, I can accumulate understanding and a knowledge base to learn more about the topics I’m interested in.

I often write notes with pen and paper on my various notebooks because it feels easier for me to connect with my thoughts compared to writing on a computer. When I then bring in those hand-written notes into my digital system (for easier sync, search and access), I don’t just copy them word for word but rather reprocess them. I add links between my notes, add references and resources from other places and deepen my thinking.

… writing

Writing in this blog and in a newsletter, having great notes makes writing process easier and smoother and it improves the quality of the finished writing. I’m not reliant on only what goes through my mind at the time of writing but can dig into my notes and let them help me add ideas that have been thought through more.

The existence of a note of a topic I might write about in the future makes me more likely to notice more articles and social media discussions and books on the topic. And as I have a note about them, it’s easy for me to gather information and references into one place where they are easy to find at time of writing.

It also helps me find more interesting things to write about as the ideas marinate in the notes for a longer period of time.

Christian writes about this in Preparing Fragments Helps You to Ease Into Writing:

A Zettelkasten makes writing texts easy. It encourages you to prepare research and the most of your writing before you compile your first draft. This way you can focus on one task at a time and needn’t sweat about getting through. This works excruciatingly well with longer texts but it’s proven indispensable for any of my shorter writing projects, too.

This is something that people who use the Zettelkasten system often talk about: notes being a sparring partner and a very useful tool in writing. I’ve taken some ideas from Zettelkasten but don’t really use myself but I do find the benefits with my note-taking system as well.

Christian also writes:

You should do research and writing separately because it’s too costly if you don’t. To get into a writing flow takes time. It’s cost-inefficient to constantly interrupt your writing just because you find your research foundation to be lacking. Doing research requires another mode of attention which, too, takes time to get into. Switching between these procedures or a regular basis is an uncomfortable waste of energy and, ultimately, a waste of your precious time.

I still write a lot of my blog posts on a single sitting, with no or very little research when they are mostly musings of the daily life but whenever I want to write something more in-depth, I turn to my notes to help guide me through the act of writing.

… learning

Active learning through making notes improves understanding and recall. Our memories are bit brittle so notes are not only great at storing the information in a way that can be pulled up when needed but they also serve as a bouncing board for ideas.

When I was a kid in school, I wrote what I considered back then extensive notes. But what I was mostly doing was just writing down everything the teacher said or had written down in their slides or blackboards. It helped me get through school but looking back now, I would approach those notes differently and write more reflection and rephrasing of the study content.

Active learning and critical thinking help with retention. There is a measurable difference between passive and active learning in terms of how much information students are able to retain. Our ability to recall information is reinforced when we employ higher order learning techniques such as applying, explaining, evaluating and creating. - British Columbia Institute of Technology

What started to make a big difference in my notes was when I started to make connections between them, referencing other notes and actively going through them whenever I was processing new information and ideas.

The best part is when my notes system surfaces old notes that I didn’t remember making. Every time I write a new note and browse through connected ones, I go through a short learning enforcement journey.

And like writing for public, when I write my notes, I do a bit of extra work to find references and links so I can refer to them in the future more confidently rather than just trusting my own thoughts or memory.

… productivity

Good notes help me be more productive as well. I can offload tasks to task lists, track my progress and record history of my actions like taking meeting notes at work or recording milestones for projects.

Just like processing my thoughts into notes brings clarity of mind, same happens with these productive notes. When I know I don’t need to worry about forgetting to do something or not remembering what was agreed in a meeting, I gain clarity that helps me focus on the work at hand.

At work, it also helps me with my reviews and career progression as I keep track of what I’m doing as well as maintain a brag doc. It’s easier to maintain one when I can refer to different notes detailing the circumstances and work done. As Julia Evans explains it:

The tactic is pretty simple! Instead of trying to remember everything you did with your brain, maintain a “brag document” that lists everything so you can refer to it when you get to performance review season! This is a pretty common tactic – when I started doing this I mentioned it to more experienced people and they were like “oh yeah, I’ve been doing that for a long time, it really helps”.