A little addition to what I said the other day: The “take notes to reach your goals” is kinda important. Because I am a believer that you actually shouldn’t take (too many) notes that are not in some productive way connected to what you want to achieve.

The world is big. And the amount of potential notes you could take is immense. In my own note taking I try to frame the act of note taking as an activity done by an author, not an archivist. Be an author or creator and find ways in which note taking can support you, but try not to fall into the trap of writing everything down.1 Your job is not to have the perfect Zettelkasten (or whatever), but to have and stay in contact with whatever it is your try to do with your life.


  1. Even worse: trying to perfect all this random stuff: By making everything a beautiful, artfully crafted perfect little note. No! Only do that with the stuff that makes you better in your job/helps you reach your goals. ↩︎

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Timo Koola

this is very nicely put. I have considered my own practices and have stopped worrying about the perfect Zettelkasten

Martin Hähnel

@tkoola Thanks! It’s easy to get lost in the activity of note taking, because it seems to be work.

prealpinux

I agree, I stopped taking much notes, I found myself loosing too much time taking and digging on them.