I love discussion of notes! I definitely share a lot of feelings from this post.
I like the lens of looking at the self at different instances of time as part of a team. It seems that your perspective is missing a clear distinction of what I see as the 3 roles that different versions of yourself perform while taking notes for reference. First there is information gathering and submission to the note archive. Then there is processing and indexing. Finally there is retrial and reference. It might be that you are quickly switching between these roles, or you might treat them as separate activities depending on the kind of notes you are taking, but there seems to always be an interplay of these 3 elements.
So it doesn’t seem like predicting the needs of the retriever should be the job of the submitter. Rather, the indexer should be creating a system that allows the submitter to easily submit notes while also allowing the retriever to find the archived notes that are relevant to what they are doing.
But it does make sense for retrievers to make requests for submitters, like “I’m looking for notes relevant to this project”, or “I want to remember songs I liked from this genre”. It kinda seems like the complaint of this post could be recontextualized as there being an impression that there is a retriever who wants a list of interesting and amusing factoids. Maybe this is a false belief and you should stop taking notes without some specific query they are in response to, or maybe you could put factoids in an anki deck and review them periodically because doing so would bring you some sense of enjoyment or well being.
Though, “notes for reference” is not the only point of notes. Notes also help with the practice of recall and focus on details.
the 3 roles that different versions of yourself perform while taking notes for reference
That seems like a reasonable decomposition.
The Holy Grail of note-taking software, for me, is something that would put the indexer out of the job. Some framework that makes it trivially easy for the submitter to place the note in the “correct” place to begin with, or which guarantees that the retriever would be trivially able to fetch all information from the notebase that is related to a given arbitrary query, and which would work without you-the-person needing to engage in time-consuming, often boring and unproductive-feeling notebase management/refactoring. Seems like a major challenge, though.
Yeah, that’s an interesting perspective. I kinda get the desire to eliminate the indexer but I feel like it’s almost the submitter and retriever I would automate and I would only do the indexing work. In a sense the indexing feels like matchmaking between submitters and retrievers who should get to know one another and promoting especially important submission or retrieval work.
But I use my notes to manage my focus and use a heavily modified version of bullet journalling with emphasis on flexible, manual, indexing work. But I wouldn’t claim my system is particularly good, just that it colours my perspective.
It kinda seems like the complaint of this post could be recontextualized as there being an impression that there is a retriever who wants a list of interesting and amusing factoids.
I think this maybe came across as a stronger sentiment than I meant it to be. Sorry.
I’m pretty interested in the model of a “future self” and “past self” or “retriever” and “submitter” who are trying to coordinate with each other. I’m not saying I’m correctly understanding the point of the post, but it seems like the problem of past self creating a bulk of poorly organized notes that future self doesn’t want to deal with can be looked at from different angles:
Past self was imprudently collecting ideas into notes like they were shiny stones picked up and put in a pocket and promptly forgotten about. (problem with submitter)
Past self is putting in work to build something but is let down by future selves inability to build on their work. (problem with retriever)
The system by which notes are getting from the past self to the future self is failing to connect the correct instances of submitting with the correct instances of receiving. (problem with indexer)
My above quote was looking at the first, problem with submitter, as the submitter having incorrect beliefs about what would be useful for the receiver. What might this incorrect belief look like? Possibly that the receiver will benefit just from lists of interesting and amusing factoids.
In response to “Seems Offtopic?” tag on
or maybe you could put factoids in an anki deck and review them periodically because doing so would bring you some sense of enjoyment or well being.
This was in response to this kind of idea:
I’ve instead burdened my future self with, what appears to be, rubbish.
It feels to me that you wouldn’t write something down if you thought it was rubbish. There was something about it that appealed to you, either because it seemed important or you had some other affection for the idea, but there is a mismatch between the sense of importance you felt writing it and later reading it.
At times in my life, I have put random ideas that I have affection for, like factoids or quotes, into an anki deck and reviewing them every morning. Thinking about it now, I might start the habit again. I wasn’t really trying to commit anything to memory like how anki is normally used, instead, I was using it to periodically remind myself of things. I really liked a few things about doing this:
It kept me connected to the context where the idea seemed useful, avoiding the phenomenon of looking at an old note and thinking “What does this even mean?” or “Why did I think this was important to write down?”
Reviewing the same ideas when I had different contexts let me notice different aspects of them and connect them to other ideas.
I could choose to delete notes if I no longer felt the sense of affection or usefulness that justified reviewing them, which gave me a better sense of what kinds of things I was trying to focus on and what things were ok to not focus on as much.
It made me very aware of the cost of trying to pick up ideas and make them part of my context when I was taking this kind of note, which helped the note taking version of myself better decide if things were worth writing down for general review, or if they should be archived in some other way, or just forgotten.
In the second sentence of my original post I wrote:
I’m principally interested in recording good ideas, tactics, or facts that help me do and finish tasks well.
I do not understand how “interesting or amusing factoids” helps me tactically, or do and finish tasks well. Therefore I think it is entirely unconnected from the point of my notetaking, and my original post. Nor do I think an Anki system solves the core problem of how to convert notes into actions, or better, more efficient behaviors or completion of tasks.
It feels to me that you wouldn’t write something down if you thought it was rubbish. There was something about it that appealed to you, either because it seemed important or you had some other affection for the idea, but there is a mismatch between the sense of importance you felt writing it and later reading it.
Something can be appealing but still utterly useless, and therefore rubbish. Most of my notes are therefore rubbish because they do not help me operate tactically or help me do and finish tasks well.
For example, I may write things that appear to have some relevance to online content creation, perhaps with the vague idea that “this will help me promote my videography business” and then never figure out how to usefully integrate them into promotion content or a advertising strategy, therefore: the note was rubbish, useless. Maybe I’m missing something here, but how does Anki reviewing or better recall help with integration? If the note is useless and rubbish, it doesn’t magically become useful if I can remember it as an ‘amusing factoid’ without application or utility.
I do not understand how “interesting or amusing factoids” helps me tactically, or do and finish tasks well.
It’s the “good ideas” aspect. Good ideas can be good because their useful, or just because they make you feel good. People feeling good is the ultimate terminal value imo. But honestly that sentence wasn’t the most salient thing to me while I was responding. If you feel it should have been I am sorry.
how does Anki reviewing or better recall help with integration?
Continuing with your example of online content creation facts for promoting a videography business, The facts have some relation to aspects of your strategy, but different aspects of your strategy will be salient to you on different days, so by reviewing that fact on different days you increase the chance of having the relevant strategy context in mind when also bringing the relevant fact to mind so that you can see how it applies to your strategy. That is assuming the fact has any relevance to your strategy. If it is indeed completely useless, then yeah, it was a waste of time to write it down, but I don’t think you can really get a sense of what things are going to be useful to you without writing down things and they checking, and remembering, whether they turned out to be useful or not.
I love discussion of notes! I definitely share a lot of feelings from this post.
I like the lens of looking at the self at different instances of time as part of a team. It seems that your perspective is missing a clear distinction of what I see as the 3 roles that different versions of yourself perform while taking notes for reference. First there is information gathering and submission to the note archive. Then there is processing and indexing. Finally there is retrial and reference. It might be that you are quickly switching between these roles, or you might treat them as separate activities depending on the kind of notes you are taking, but there seems to always be an interplay of these 3 elements.
So it doesn’t seem like predicting the needs of the retriever should be the job of the submitter. Rather, the indexer should be creating a system that allows the submitter to easily submit notes while also allowing the retriever to find the archived notes that are relevant to what they are doing.
But it does make sense for retrievers to make requests for submitters, like “I’m looking for notes relevant to this project”, or “I want to remember songs I liked from this genre”. It kinda seems like the complaint of this post could be recontextualized as there being an impression that there is a retriever who wants a list of interesting and amusing factoids. Maybe this is a false belief and you should stop taking notes without some specific query they are in response to, or maybe you could put factoids in an anki deck and review them periodically because doing so would bring you some sense of enjoyment or well being.
Though, “notes for reference” is not the only point of notes. Notes also help with the practice of recall and focus on details.
That seems like a reasonable decomposition.
The Holy Grail of note-taking software, for me, is something that would put the indexer out of the job. Some framework that makes it trivially easy for the submitter to place the note in the “correct” place to begin with, or which guarantees that the retriever would be trivially able to fetch all information from the notebase that is related to a given arbitrary query, and which would work without you-the-person needing to engage in time-consuming, often boring and unproductive-feeling notebase management/refactoring. Seems like a major challenge, though.
Yeah, that’s an interesting perspective. I kinda get the desire to eliminate the indexer but I feel like it’s almost the submitter and retriever I would automate and I would only do the indexing work. In a sense the indexing feels like matchmaking between submitters and retrievers who should get to know one another and promoting especially important submission or retrieval work.
But I use my notes to manage my focus and use a heavily modified version of bullet journalling with emphasis on flexible, manual, indexing work. But I wouldn’t claim my system is particularly good, just that it colours my perspective.
Responding to “Misses the point” tag on
I think this maybe came across as a stronger sentiment than I meant it to be. Sorry.
I’m pretty interested in the model of a “future self” and “past self” or “retriever” and “submitter” who are trying to coordinate with each other. I’m not saying I’m correctly understanding the point of the post, but it seems like the problem of past self creating a bulk of poorly organized notes that future self doesn’t want to deal with can be looked at from different angles:
Past self was imprudently collecting ideas into notes like they were shiny stones picked up and put in a pocket and promptly forgotten about. (problem with submitter)
Past self is putting in work to build something but is let down by future selves inability to build on their work. (problem with retriever)
The system by which notes are getting from the past self to the future self is failing to connect the correct instances of submitting with the correct instances of receiving. (problem with indexer)
My above quote was looking at the first, problem with submitter, as the submitter having incorrect beliefs about what would be useful for the receiver. What might this incorrect belief look like? Possibly that the receiver will benefit just from lists of interesting and amusing factoids.
In response to “Seems Offtopic?” tag on
This was in response to this kind of idea:
It feels to me that you wouldn’t write something down if you thought it was rubbish. There was something about it that appealed to you, either because it seemed important or you had some other affection for the idea, but there is a mismatch between the sense of importance you felt writing it and later reading it.
At times in my life, I have put random ideas that I have affection for, like factoids or quotes, into an anki deck and reviewing them every morning. Thinking about it now, I might start the habit again. I wasn’t really trying to commit anything to memory like how anki is normally used, instead, I was using it to periodically remind myself of things. I really liked a few things about doing this:
It kept me connected to the context where the idea seemed useful, avoiding the phenomenon of looking at an old note and thinking “What does this even mean?” or “Why did I think this was important to write down?”
Reviewing the same ideas when I had different contexts let me notice different aspects of them and connect them to other ideas.
I could choose to delete notes if I no longer felt the sense of affection or usefulness that justified reviewing them, which gave me a better sense of what kinds of things I was trying to focus on and what things were ok to not focus on as much.
It made me very aware of the cost of trying to pick up ideas and make them part of my context when I was taking this kind of note, which helped the note taking version of myself better decide if things were worth writing down for general review, or if they should be archived in some other way, or just forgotten.
In the second sentence of my original post I wrote:
I do not understand how “interesting or amusing factoids” helps me tactically, or do and finish tasks well. Therefore I think it is entirely unconnected from the point of my notetaking, and my original post. Nor do I think an Anki system solves the core problem of how to convert notes into actions, or better, more efficient behaviors or completion of tasks.
Something can be appealing but still utterly useless, and therefore rubbish. Most of my notes are therefore rubbish because they do not help me operate tactically or help me do and finish tasks well.
For example, I may write things that appear to have some relevance to online content creation, perhaps with the vague idea that “this will help me promote my videography business” and then never figure out how to usefully integrate them into promotion content or a advertising strategy, therefore: the note was rubbish, useless. Maybe I’m missing something here, but how does Anki reviewing or better recall help with integration? If the note is useless and rubbish, it doesn’t magically become useful if I can remember it as an ‘amusing factoid’ without application or utility.
It’s the “good ideas” aspect. Good ideas can be good because their useful, or just because they make you feel good. People feeling good is the ultimate terminal value imo. But honestly that sentence wasn’t the most salient thing to me while I was responding. If you feel it should have been I am sorry.
Continuing with your example of online content creation facts for promoting a videography business, The facts have some relation to aspects of your strategy, but different aspects of your strategy will be salient to you on different days, so by reviewing that fact on different days you increase the chance of having the relevant strategy context in mind when also bringing the relevant fact to mind so that you can see how it applies to your strategy. That is assuming the fact has any relevance to your strategy. If it is indeed completely useless, then yeah, it was a waste of time to write it down, but I don’t think you can really get a sense of what things are going to be useful to you without writing down things and they checking, and remembering, whether they turned out to be useful or not.