A note is only as valuable as its context - the relationships, associations, and connections it holds to other information.

• This system could extend indefinitely. Each card had a permanent ID number and could, therefore, be referenced from any other card.
• The branch...

Books seldom contain only the precise insights you were looking for. There may be many ideas, but only a fraction will be useful and relevant at a given time.

Note-taking enables you to collect all the ideas, and re-use them at a later stage without re-reading all the books again. It al...

Writing is often taught as a collection of tricks: brainstorm ideas, make an outline, use a three-paragraph structure, repeat the main points. Each one makes sense in isolation but requires a holistic perspective.

Writing needs a workflow - a repeatable process for collecting, organizin...

Many people take notes in an ad-hoc fashion. They might underline a sentence or write a comment in the margin. If they have a good idea, they write it down in one of many notebooks. They might save an except from an article. In the end, their different kinds of notes in many places and formats c...

• He wrote down any interesting or potentially useful ideas on uniformly sized index cards on one side only.
• Each new index card got a sequential number, starting at 1.
• When a new source was added to that topic or something to supplement it, he would add new index cards with...

Any ideas that are kept private are as good as the ones you never had. Everything we write down and share with someone else counts: notes to a friend, homework to a professor, emails to a colleague, presentations to clients. The feedback you receive will propel your thinking forward.

I...

Writing is the medium in which thinking takes place.
Writing does not begin when we start to put words on a page. It starts much earlier, as we take notes on articles and books, podcasts, conversations, and life experiences we have. 

These notes build up as a bypro...

A slip-box system will lead us to save contradictory or paradoxical ideas. These ideas become very valuable. It will be easier to develop an argument or pros and cons than with a string of one-sided arguments or quotes.

It will also go a long way to counteract confir...

When we take notes, it should not become a stack of forgotten thoughts. Our notes should be a rich and interconnected collection of ideas we can draw on regardless of where our interests lead us.
A smart note is a reliable and simple external structure to think in - like a second memory...

German sociologist Niklas Luhmann (1927-1998) designed his slip-box made up of index cards. They were thematically unlimited. His simple system produced a prolific output. Over his 30-year career,  Luhmann published 58 books and hundreds of articles while completing his two-volume masterwork, The...

We will become better when we intentionally expose our work to high-quality feedback. Feedback comes in the form of peers, teachers, social media, rereading our own writing. However, notes are available any time you need it.

When we write notes in our own words, we practice the ...

We are often told to "make a plan" upfront and in detail. Success is then measured by our ability to stick to this plan.

In creative work, questions change and new directions emerge to foster a rich ground for accidental discoveries. We should focus on steering our work towards ou...