Evergreen Notes

was it possible that my personal collection of notes was a knowledge asset that could grow and compound over time?

You have to always assume that, until proven otherwise, any given note won’t necessarily ever be useful. You have no idea what your future self will need, want, or be working on. This assumption forces you to be conservative in the time you spend summarizing notes, doing so only when it’s virtually guaranteed that it will be worth it.

Ideaflow, the note-taking software I help build at work, also embodies many of these principles. In fact, Ideaflow is my current “main” notes app. Ideaflow’s main interface is a timeline of notes, what we’ve internally called your “thought stream”. Imagine a long Twitter-style timeline, where each tweet is a note of some arbitrary length, potential

Every time you take a note, ask yourself, “How can I make this as useful as possible for my future self?” That question will lead you to annotate the words and phrases that explain why you saved a note, what you were thinking, and what exactly caught your attention.

FOCUS ON INSIGHTS. Taking notes by highlighting passages in a book doesn’t work if you highlight every sentence. Don’t try to summarize everything about the article or idea; instead focus on what made the idea memorable or any insights you had at the moment you saved it. ADD LABELS. Use “note boxes” to make your notes easily skimmable. Write a few