Development of thought
With regard to incremental learning, it’s important to systematise development of thought and ideas. I typically scratch random notes and thoughts in my daily notes.
Anything of real interest should be moved from daily notes to a project inbox, which is regularly triaged. Every morning, I look in my inbox and look for interesting ideas to work on and develop. I’m not purely a knowledge worker, so this relies on an interplay between code and thought. If I’ve looked over an idea multiple times and don’t have any real interest in developing it, it’s archived.
From there, these still-ephemeral-but-less-than-fleeting notes are slowly derived into Evergreen notes (Notes should be atomic and disparate).
Whenever I create an evergreen note, I think about where it could be added to a speculative outline (Write ontologies to build linearity into non-linear systems).
Finally, anything that I believe should be memorized is turned into flashcards at the bottom of a document. I previously thought to separate these, but I think it’s actually useful to have them on the same note as the atomic idea, so that I can revise ideas and Embedding notes at the same time. (Notes should serve as the medium for memorization).
I previously used a heading at the bottom of atomic notes called “Related Notes” to make coarse-grained associations to other ideas. I think that this is a way of reducing friction without doing the real work, so I will change this out in favor of forcing myself to think through associated concepts while writing.
- You should relate notes to the fine-grained details: the highlights you took from a paper, for example.
When beginning a note, you have your main idea sitting right at the top — your title. Think through this concept, and create an outline of what other ideas might be related. Then, begin writing, linking other atomic notes in a fine-grained format.