While I’ve been playing around with a few different note-taking tools over the past year, I’ve decided to just settle into Obsidian largely for the full ownership it gives you (as I shared here a few years ago).
The tool is not the point of this post, though, and it’s more about how the tool is used. I recently came across a quote from Richard Feynman that I thought summed things up very well, where he said:
“Notes aren’t a record of my thinking process. They are my thinking progress”
My only disagreement with him is that it’s some of both. In order for notes to help with my thinking progress, they also need to be a record of previous thoughts, discoveries, and citations. It’s similar to Blair Enns’ idea of “thinking through my fingers“.
My notes have a ton of recording of my thinking process, but the real magic is when they become my thinking process. Most ideas for this blog come from my notes, where two ideas come together that I hadn’t previously considered, which is why I try to pour so much into them. The more I put in, the more I get out.
What are you using these days for managing your notes, ideas, and thinking?
Feynman was an amazing thinker. I wish I could get more input from him in fewer words!
Like you, I think by writing. I pray by writing! Way too much of the email I receive is from myself because I dictated a thought for later review. My challenge, which you and I have discussed before, is that I don’t have just one system. It’s not a matter of settling on just one note taking system (I’m still in two), but it’s also all the stuff saved in email, in photos, in contacts, in tasks, in my calendar, and probably more. If I’ve read a book, I want all of it’s content to be available to me.
This is where I want a next AI solution. I want AI to be my reference librarian. “What was the name of that restaurant where I met with Mickey and I had BBQ?” (and when was that?) Here’s the thing: I have all that information! I just don’t know where. I probably even have a picture of the menu.
I can’t imagine how Feynman kept up with his notes. They were all paper! We have such an advantage. Right?