Disclaimer
This content comes from the Book How to Take Smart Notes and Evergreen
If you’re interested in diving deeper into psychological aspects, or you feel unconvinced or just because you need, feel free to reach those resources (or ask me questions, preferably! :D)
Why even do Note-Taking?
Because:
- We shouldn’t rely on our brain - Our brain is perfect at storing information - but this applies to the information that is relevant to use in a particular situation, e.g. at work!
- Researchers say that we can only store 7 things in our brain in the current time
- If you’ve ever began to write yourself an article, you’ll feel that you’re stuck and can’t come up with anything that would have a structure!. By taking proper notes You won’t ever start from scratch!
- Every question comes from previous research done. If you don’t do notes, then you’re missing stumbling on many awesome ideas!
- Note-Taking will make you more motivated and engaged
What is Smart Note-Taking?
In my opinion, it is Note-Taking that relies on Zettelkasten and Evergreen note-taking. Providing you with structure in your Note-Taking!
- Note-Taking is an investment - you may think that you’re wasting time note-taking, but this thought is short-sighted.
What is Zettelkasten?
It is an approach in which you link atomic (small, covering one concept notes), creating a ‘environment’ to create new insights, links to the thoughts.
The Zettelkasten Theory is advised to everyone! No matter If you’re an academic researcher or not - If you write, you need to connect your thoughts - often those which introduce completely different approaches.
What is Evergreen?
It is also an approach to Note-Taking. Similar to Zettelkasten.
Differences Between Evergreen and Zettelkasten:
| Zettelkasten | Evergreen |
|---|---|
| Recommends doing Reviews of your notes in a spaced-repetition manner, to avoid the chaos in your notes | Doesn’t enforce this rule |
| Your Zettelkasten should be your second brain, and so It shouldn’t specifically for the public | Doesn’t give any advices to that |
| You should follow the note types of Fleeting Notes, Permanent Notes and Literature Note | It recommends tagging, but doesn’t give specifics names of them |
So the main difference between these two systems is that Evergreen gives you more flexibility
Rules of Smart-Note Taking
Most of these rules focus on making it easier for us to make connections and links:
- Your Notes Should Be Atomic
- Your Notes Should Be Concept Oriented instead of by topic or date
- You Should Link your Notes
- You Should Be sticking to the note types
- You Should Do Reviews of these notes
- You Should Translate Everything into Your own words!
Let’s cover each of these rules.
1. You should link your Notes.
That is the main rule of the Zettelkasten, and other rules help it to create these links.
How to accomplish this?
- It’s way easier to use digital note-taking software than to make physical notes, I recommend:
- Obsidian - The free, open-source version, that sed markdown syntax.
- ROAM Research
2. Your Notes Should Be Atomic:
Means it should cover one concept, but also you shouldn’t feel limited and cover entirety of this concept.
The atomicity will make it easier for you to link the Notes
How to accomplish this?
There’s no a strict solution. You just need to pay attention to that - If you see that your writing too broad, then create a new note, covering this concept. Howeveeer…
- Do reviews of your notes - to see what notes could be divided into smaller, atomic ones
3. Your Notes Should Be Concept Oriented
Many of us - especially in school are learned to segregate your notes into Notebooks, and in these notebooks write topics. This makes it way harder for us to create links
It’s better to visualize this problem with segregating your notes by Date - Sure, It makes sense with diary, but not with note-taking.
Each book, topic cover many concepts (Refer to the rule about atomicity of your notes) and so you shouldn’t be writing again and again about the same concepts from different books.
How to accomplish this?
- Seek what concepts are missing, different, but are covered in a book or a topic.
- Follow the rule about making your Notes atomic -
4. You should be sticking to the Note Types
There are 3 of them
- Fleeting Note Type
- Literature Note Type
- Permanent Note
Not keeping track of them would mean to either:
- Notes not building up a critical mass
- You won’t be able to spot the good/important ideas from those less important. We’ll cover each of them.
Fleeting Note Type
Should be deleted after 3 days of writing them to create Permanent Note
Purpose of them:
- To support working memory
- Act as reminders
- Can be written however you’d like
- Capture ideas while you’re busy doing something else.
When to use them:
- When you’re in a conversation
- Listening to a lecture
- If you got an idea, but it’s not time to focus on it fully
Literature Note Type
- To take notes while listening to lecture, course, book
- The threshold in making them needs to be bigger than in Fleeting Note
- I really like copying the Table of Contents from the Book to my Literature Note to easier reference particular section.
Should be deleted or archived
Permanent Note Type
- Should be well thought
- Contain all necessary information
- Can be understood without the context
- Need to be written in details
- Have potential to inspire when writing new piece
- Needs to have the same format
Permanent Note is made FROM Literature and Fleeting Notes - Shouldn’t be made on the first try.
5. You Should Do Reviews of these notes
Because it’s all meaningless, if you don’t review these notes. They will **accumulate, and you’ll lose yourself in them. After a while you’d probably think that it’d be better to start from the beginning.
Also, creation of your notes is a process. Because of that you should review each type of these notes with the following priority:
- Fleeting Notes
- Literature Notes that are not archived
- Permanent Notes
Fleeting Note Review:
The purpose of reviewing Fleeting notes is to delete the fleeting note You should spot and extract the best ideas from them, and essentially make it so the extracted idea/thought follows the concepts of Permanent Notes
Literature Note Review
- Also should lead to extracting ideas, but the notes covering these ideas should point/link to the archived Literature Note as a reference.
Permanent Note Review
Because it is the main Note Type and because these note-types are meant to be understood without context, we should pay attention to the Notes marked as ‘Permanent’.
I recommend reviewing these notes by picking them randomly, with closed eyes even.
6. You Should Translate Everything into Your own words!
It’s easy for us to say while reading or watching on a certain topic
- …You know what I mean
- Oh, I’m learning!,
- Ah, right, I knew that!.
When the reality is way different. You should translate your thinking in every note type, no matter if It’s Fleeting, Permanent or Literature.
Questions to Ask Yourself When Translating:
- How does this fact fit into my idea of …?
- How can this phenomenon be explained by that theory?
- Are these two ideas contradictory or do they complement each other?
- Isn’t this argument similar to that one?
- Haven’t I heard this before?
- What does x mean for y?
- Why is that important in my thinking?
- You need to know if an idea/questions adds anything to the topic.
TIPS AND OTHER ADVICES IN NOTE-TAKING
Don’t feel stressed out in your Note-Taking
- Consider Note-Taking as a Process - You’re note-taking should reflect your thinking. It changes all the time. You’ll probably have other Notes structure months or years after you’ve begun making notes. That’s okay!
Do Notes mainly for Yourself!
- You won’t be overwhelmed by what the reader needs to know
- If you make yourself understand that topic, it will get easier to explain it, write and article to the audience.
- Even one Permanent notes won’t cover everything that audience needs instantly.
- Multiple Permanent notes would! But it comes with time - remember, it’s a process!
Seek Practicality With Your Note-Taking
- Will you publish these topics in the notes? Talk about the topics you’ve done research on?
- Because If not, you may want to research on as little as possible, to only meet your needs. Nobody expects from you a well-done research paper on every topic. Do what feels for you - seek the highest Return of Investment
- Only make notes to help your thinking
Don’t repeat yourself in your Note-Taking
- It will bring more burden.
- If you feel urge to do that, then do this for Permanent Notes
Don’t Focus on the indexes (MOCs)
- Because It’s not about Planning. Become an Expert Instead of a Planner
- We also want to think with our notes, not about the notes.
Focus on Permanent Notes
- Because that’s the main goal in Note-Taking - create well-thought note
For a quick overview, here’s Graph View of my notes in Obsidian
by the day of 2021-06-05: 
As you can see, it is pretty messy
- Too many untagged or fleeting notes, So I definitely need to do more reviews on them.
- And there are probably too many Permanent Notes that are not well-thought, which requires reviews.
- Too many MOCs - but I really like to have a more categorized notes, while remembering to link notes no matter which category they are inu