(2020-03-20) Matuschak How To Take Smart Notes Ahrens

Andy Matuschak on How to Take Smart Notes. Sönke focuses largely on the benefits of a Zettelkasten for the academic writing process. One of the core ideas here is that creative writing can become relatively closed-form and actionable; it can be made executable, GTD-style, through a series of steps drawing on a densely-connected note system.

In the future, you’re likely to be thinking about “the impact of X on Y,” not a specific book which had a point about that topic. By using Evergreen notes should be concept-oriented, you can build an organizational structure which reflects the future contexts in which you’d likely want to see the ideas you’ve distilled.

Because the slip-box is not intended to be an encyclopaedia, but a tool to think with, we don’t need to worry about completeness. We don’t need to write anything down just to bridge a gap in a note sequence. We only write if it helps us with our own thinking.

Developing arguments and ideas bottom-up instead of top-down is the first and most important step to opening ourselves up for insight.

Most people are bad at writing notes, and they don’t know it, because the feedback is indirect and delayed

We don’t experience any immediate negative feedback if we do it badly.

Brainstorming is a crutch - As proper note-taking is rarely taught or discussed, it is no wonder that almost every guide on writing recommends to start with brainstorming. If you haven’t written along the way, the brain is indeed the only place to turn to.

Steven Johnson, who wrote an insightful book about how people in science and in general come up with genuine new ideas, calls it the “slow hunch.” As a precondition to make use of this intuition, he emphasises the importance of experimental spaces where ideas can freely mingle (Johnson 2011). A laboratory with open-minded colleagues can be such a space, much as intellectuals and artists freely discussed ideas in the cafés of old Paris. I would add the slip-box as such a space in which ideas can mingle freely, so they can give birth to new ones. (Where Good Ideas Come From)

Litmus test: all that matters is writing. All activities should lead to writing.