Useful Note-Taking

“Better note-taking” misses the point; what matters is “better thinking”

Lots of people write about solutions to the problem that Note-writing practices are generally ineffective. The vast majority of that writing fixates on a myopic, “lifehacking”-type frame, focused on answering questions like: “how should I organize my notes?”, “what kind of jou... See more

My old belief was that storing all these links in a souped-up database would lead me to magically generate new insights about the topics I write about. After several years of banging my head into a wall, I realized that to generate new insights from these links I would need a new approach.

That led me to Zettelkasten, a technique for creating webs o... See more

Tiago Forte has pioneered the concept of a Second Brain. As the author of two books, he's learned that quantity and quality aren't opposing forces. Here's what else he's taught me about writing: 1. The brain is for having ideas, not storing them. Write stuff down. 2. If you… Show more

pproach though, one which has historically been associated with terms like "epurse" in the technology industry: what if the balance tracking and authorization decisions were actuall

Anyone who says X must be done in Y way is most absolutely wrong. Who is Tiago Forte to tell how I should organize my thoughts? Am I a robot to follow so simply in the footsteps of another? I would like a more general approach, please.

Any serious note taker eventually realizes that the way their brain works doesn't really fit into any PARA, ARPA or... See more

A major limitation exists for spaced repetition software (e.g. Anki, SuperMemo, or other flashcard-style systems), in my experience using them for several years for long-term memory: it's neither necessary nor sufficient to use this software to learn certain topics.

Several excellent physics and math students I worked with have never used spaced rep... See more