As I read discussions about note-taking and learning, I often run into complaints about how much time and effort it takes to make and maintain notes and how people wish they could end up with a nice outcome (usually a large, interconnected system of good knowledge) without having to put in the work.
I blame it partially on the popularity of notes and personal knowledge management influencer who make Youtube and TikTok videos and write books about their complex systems. There’s a lot of “big number go up” trend in these platforms which makes complex, time consuming things look more appealing than simple things that just work. Recently in Youtube, I ran into a creator who shared their vault template that took (and I quote) “1000 hours” to create. That’s bonkers but also a story for another time.
The inevitable hard truth about notes and learning is that there are no shortcuts. The desired outcome is not a complex knowledge base, it’s improved learning and new thinking. The magic lies in the process and the time spent while making notes and thinking about things.
It’s more effective and helpful to write good notes on pieces of paper and then burn those papers than to somehow automatically or otherwise create a knowledge base without doing the thinking process.
This is the reason why I heavily advice everyone to keep a large language model far away from their notes. If you use LLMs or other similar technologies to automate either the creation of notes or the creation of outcomes from the notes, you’re skipping the most important part: thinking.
I often use a double processing method for my notes (but not always). I make the first round of notes on paper. Maybe I’m attending a lecture, watching a talk, reading a book or attending a meeting. I start with a round of notes, written in a notebook. Once I’m finished, I go through my notes and reprocess them. For each note, I go back to the source (if possible) and form a more coherent version of my notes. I rewrite it, I add quotes, references, link to other notes and so on. These new notes then end up in my long term notes storage which is digital. Sometimes a quick note jotted down doesn’t hold water when reprocessing in which case I scrap it.
Doing this double processing obviously takes more time and mental effort. But that effort is the most important part of all this. Thinking is the important bit in having notes. There are no shortcuts if you want the desired results.
I do this double processing often with simple ideas too from necessity. I get an idea while I’m having lunch or I’m getting ready to go to sleep or while I’m with someone. I don’t like to pull up my phone or tablet to start typing notes so I take out my notebook or an index card I keep in my wallet and jot down the thought on it and store it away. When I get home, I then process the idea again and turn it into a note or add to existing notes in my digital notes.
Some people believe that if an idea is good enough, you don’t have to write it down because it will come up again. I believe that if an idea is good, it’s worth processing twice.