Writing, editing, reading and exploring one’s notes is a great way to enhance thinking and learning.
Mental Kaleidoscope
In Digital Garden, I share a quote from Mark Twain’s autobiography:
There is no such thing as a new idea. It is impossible. We simply take a lot of old ideas and put them into a sort of mental kaleidoscope. We give them a turn and they make new and curious combinations. We keep on turning and making new combinations indefinitely; but they are the same old pieces of colored glass that have been in use through all the ages.
If we are to accept Mark’s vision as true, we can come to a conclusion that for us to come up with “new” ideas, we need two things:
- Lots of old ideas
- A mental kaleidoscope to mix ‘n match those ideas
To feed the first part, we can read, listen and watch, we can explore the vast world around us and we can take part in deep discussions. Collecting the learning from these into notes that live in a notes system helps us remember them.
Then, exploring the resulting system of notes, finding new connections and making new discoveries then implements the second part and acts as a mental kaleidoscope.
Working with the system
Taking notes is one part and even that alone - even if you never explore the notes later - will be beneficial to you, no matter what you do in life. The act of processing vague, intangible ideas into tangible, concrete words requires us to do way more processing than just thinking about them.
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.
Writing down notes helps us retain more knowledge and it helps us spot gaps of knowledge as well as unexpected connections.
Notes are a tool for …
In my blog post Notes are a tool for …, I shared my thoughts on how notes can be an effective tool not only for thinking but also writing, learning and productivity.
Writing
In Preparing Fragments Helps You to Ease Into Writing, Christian writes:
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.
The longer I’ve maintained a good habit of writing notes, the easier it has become for me to craft blog posts or conference talks. I let ideas marinate and grow in their notes. When I come up with new ideas, I add them to a note. When I read or listen to something relevant, I add it to the note.
When it’s time to write, I look at my notes and compose something from the marinated idea bites.
Learning
It’s been studied that making good notes improves learning outcomes.
From British Columbia Institute of Technology:
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.
The extra processing helps me remember what I’ve learned and doing that in the context of a notes system where so many other notes live, I come across many connections that I hadn’t thought about.
Productivity
A great way to stay be more productive at work and to avoid the negative impact of disruptions is to keep running notes. I’ve had so many moments when my notes have helped me get back up to speed after a meeting or after a good night sleep - or sometimes weeks or months later when me or a colleague has run into same or similar issue.