It’s important to keep my note taking system simple

Something I’ve come to realize is that it’s very important for me to keep § My note taking system as simple as possible, while still having the power to allow it to achieve it’s key goals.

In the quest for getting more out of note taking, it’s easy to inadvertently make the system more complex, and in the process add friction to note taking.

A few things I’m realizing have added friction that I can adjust:

  • Over-reliance on linking notes, and then using the Backlinks script scripts too regularly when running them is manual and takes time. I should be very mindful of linking vs tagging notes, opting for tagging where possible when the desired outcome is actually to view a list of notes, rather than to look at another specific entity.
  • Relatedly, linking notes together should often naturally be bidirectional through my own natural note taking and regular note maintenance. If it’s really valuable to have notes linked to each other both ways, then that will happen in the body of the note, and won’t be reliant upon the bottom section.
  • For future compatibility purposes, my note taking system should also be very simple. It should just use a few core elements, and the less nested tagging I have, the better. There’s a lot of power in relying on concepts that are more native and closer to protocols:
  • As a rule, I shouldn’t rely too much on any feature that are very specific to a single note taking app. For example, I should be able to lose my backlinks section and not really be too affected, because important notes are bidirectionally linked naturally.
  • Finally, I should avoid formatting that I end up needing for every single note. One example of this is the horizontal rules, and superfluous words such as “Type” that I have / had in my text expansion. This makes me reliant upon the text expansion, when sometimes I should be able to type it by hand and still form a complete note. Of course, things can be enhanced through a note maintenance process, but this shouldn’t be essential.

From ⚟ How to Take Smart Notes:

Not having to think about the organization is really good news for brains like ours – the few mental resources we have available, we need for thinking about the actual relevant questions: those concerning the content.