(2014-07-21) Sheffler Two Goals Of Note Taking

Dan Sheffler: Two Goals of Note Taking. A lot of what I think is garbage, and most of what I hear in lectures should be promptly forgotten. Because the very act of writing sharpens and makes manifest the thought, however, I don’t realize that a thought is garbage until it is already written down.

In my old system, I used to write down everything into one central repository

As a result, it became near impossible to find relevant information when I needed it

Every one of my search queries would turn up hundreds of pieces of junk text.

To solve this problem, I adopted a strict segregation between two kinds of notes: Engagement notes, and Memory notes

Computers naturally excel at both these tasks. I keep all my memory notes in a single directory in Dropbox as plain-text markdown files

For about one hour per day, I go over my engagement notes with a red pen in hand. I pull out the really valuable information and enter this into my memory notes in an organized way.

May'2015: I have 484 files (zettels) in my notes folder. (Zettelkasten)