1/1/2024 0 Comments Obsidian connected notesScience behind it: The very act of taking notes helps us form new neural pathways, because we process the information on a deeper level than if we were just passively listening/reading.īy writing, we clarify our own thinking. The part you subconsciously knew about, but maybe weren’t clear on the.Especially in the case of electronic notes, it’s really easy to find and reference a note of something you heard, saw, discussed, or thought about in the past (like this note which I largely wrote 2 years ago, which in turn was a transcript of sorts of many conversations I’d had with folks in 20) The obvious part: Note-taking creates a permanent(ish) retrievable record.Pretty obvious, but let me call out the two different ways by which this happens: There’s a couple of different ideas that fall under this - each linking back to the 4 challenges listed earlier. Reading without taking notes ⛲️ /ViCLEygQKf- Anne-Laure Le Cunff May 17, 2020 “Notes on paper, or on a computer screen do not make contemporary physics or other kinds of intellectual endeavour easier, they make it possible.” - Neil Levy in Writing, and note-taking specifically, can act as a scaffold for our broken brains Sharing what you learn with others, or with your future self.Drawing connections from the different things you learn.And when you can’t effectively recall those things, it’s harder to bring it up with others, or with your future self. A 15-minute YouTube explainer, a chapter in a book, a conversation with a friend… And when it’s hard to remember, it’s even harder to synthesise different learnings by drawing connections between them (and to then remember those syntheses!). In short, it’s hard to remember what we learn, especially when it’s so scattered across different domains and formats. And yet, where has all that valuable knowledge gone? Where is it when we need it? Our brain can only store a few thoughts at any one time. We spend countless hours every year reading, listening, and watching informational content. We feel a constant pressure to be learning, improving ourselves, and making progress. And over time, as all this knowledge accumulates, we grow wiser and better-able to connect it all together, even if it’s been years in between each different piece! Or do we? Books, articles, podcasts, tweets, conversations - each has something to offer. We all come across powerful ideas, insightful comments, and interesting facts all the time, from all angles. Maybe it’s because I’m quite good at Googling? (By which I mostly mean I can’t help but rely on it, though I do think it’s a skill - maybe I’ll write about that another day) In short? Human memory sucks - and mine doubly so. Google effect, which is the tendency for people to forget things that are easy to Google. For this piece, I am mostly referring to the 50 or so that relate to memory, like the Over 200 different cognitive biases at the time I wrote this paragraph. I might come back to this and re-write it at some point in the future,ĭigital garden-style. In the spirit of writing/posting more often, rather than trying to be a perfectionist and posting never, I’ve tidied my most recent draft and posted it as-is. Somewhat ironically, I wrote most of this post back in early 2021, and then redrafted it a few times, but was never happy with it. In trying to adopt better ways to understand how I collect, digest, organise, and combine things I learn (aka PKM), I have also gotten more serious about the tools I use, and have been trying out a few different ones. Over the course of the ~2.5 years, I’ve been reading around the topic of personal knowledge management (PKM) and related areas like note-taking and metacognition. You’re stuck - what was the core argument premised on again? And what about that chapter distilling a key area of the literature? Fast-forward 4 years later, you only remembered that you’ve even read the book because you dug it out of a moving box. Fast-forward 6 months later, you’re recommending the game-changing book to a friend, and they ask some probing questions to understand what made it so special. Maybe it was the novel way of thinking about a problem, or the beautiful language, or some worldview-shattering research - either way, you were hooked. You just finished a book you simply couldn’t put down before finishing.
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