Embracing diversity in note taking

Some thoughts on personal note taking systems

Lots of creators have their own way of taking notes that works for them. For example:

• Robert Greene and Ryan Holiday swear by notecards
• Shane Parrish likes to sum up book notes and toss the best ones into Evernote
• David Perell uses his "second brain" to keep track of highlights , and it looks like the immediate next step is to use those highlights in his writing
• Andy Matuschak's all about evergreen notes, which is a spin on the whole Zettelkasten idea

So, the point is, there's no one-size-fits-all way to take notes. But the common key steps seem pretty simple: collect and synthesize.

I suspect it doesn't really matter much how organized your notes are. Similar to the "organized mess" many people have at home or at their desk (looking at you Einstein!), what matters in the end is your ability to quickly find what you've saved when you need it most. Some folks may use search functions for this, others will immediately track and link notes in ongoing speculative outlines, and as we've seen with Robert Greene and Ryan Holiday, some will choose to group cards by theme, which apparently can lead to some nice surprises later on.

One other takeaway on collecting notes is that it helps to collect these notes with some sort of theme or goal in mind. For example, Richard Feynman had his 12 favorite problems that he'd use as a filter. James Clear keeps a massive Word doc with info related to whatever project he's thinking about at the time. The author of Range, David Epstein, does something similar with his master thought list. The lesson here is: having a goal or some broad questions in mind makes each note or fact you gather a valuable piece of a bigger puzzle.

But of course just collecting notes isn't enough. The real game-changer, and likely the purpose of why we even take notes at all, is synthesis. This is when you turn what you've collected into something of your own. It's here you show you've truly learned something, because you're using it—and hopefully, you're adding something new to the mix.

Once you start synthesizing your notes and creating your own output from them, you take advantage of what cognitive psychologists call "the generation effect," which will make the information you're writing about more likely to stick in your memory the future. This is the start of a learning flywheel. The more you learn and understand about the world around you, the more hooks you have in your brain for new information to attach itself to, and slowly but surely your brain begins to build bridges between seemingly disparate islands of knowledge, leading to new exciting insights.

This is a reminder to myself just as much as anyone that needs to hear it: don't get lost trying to find the "perfect" system. Creativity is messy, and that's okay. Instead of chasing efficiency, go for something you can repeat. The more you do it, the better your chances of making something awesome.