I have a note-taking problem
forgive me Tiago, for I have sinned
I have a note-taking problem.
For decades, I was a proud note-taker; capturing ideas, making connections and carefully pruning my ever-expanding web of words. But over the last few weeks, I've come to resent those reams of notes. They've become the biggest hindrance to actually writing.
It would be easy to pretend I don't have a problem. Note-taking bros, with their pasty complexions and neat haircuts (ouch, self-burn) bust a nut over bidirectional linking and superior organisational schemas.
I could say I'm accelerating my learning, backing up my brain and supercharging my productivity. If I squint hard enough, it looks viable.
Except last week, I ended up journalling a familiar sentiment:
it feels like 70% of the stress is just having to manage all these fucking notes
what would happen if i just deleted all my notes...?
I felt a tingling rush at the thought of it.
At a guess, I'd say I have 200,000-300,000 words spread across a graveyard of note-taking apps: Evernote, Ulysses and finally Obsidian. I wouldn't be surprised if it's nearer half a million.
It started maybe 20 years ago. Writing was my default way to connect ideas and record insights in all the fields I loved exploring: evolution, consciousness, awakening, history and anthropology. It was how I made sense of things and remembered what was important.
My notes mean a lot to me. But they also feel like a digital abscess that I quietly lug around and whisper to when no one’s looking. I worry that other people live very adequate lives without their own computerised cankers.
My current crisis in note-taking was brought on by publishing new essays each week on Substack.
Each time I sat down to write, there was such an overwhelming mess of existing notes that I felt immediately deflated. The spontaneity of the writing impulse was flattened into yet another organisational safari through Obsidian.
In note-taking videos, reviewing existing notes is presented as a joyous process of discovering your own buried treasure. This does happen, but more often than not a new idea is crowded out by 30 other reflections on the same topic. It doesn't have to be that way, but the ethos of note-taking is connection, and so old ideas are quick to elbow their way into your fresh insights.
Of course, I could have ignored the previous notes. But then, what have I been doing all this time? And what if I miss that insight in 2022-03-11 omg the golden thread? I'm always scared of missing some key point. I sometimes think back to when I first started blogging. I had no notes. I must have just written about what was going on.
Over time, you develop a love of your abscess, and it's hard to cut it down to size, even when it's stopping you from walking through new doorways.
I've always wanted to write a book. For years, I thought I would just re-arrange and refine notes until a book spontaneously leapt forth. Needless to say, I am not a published author.
It is too easy to get lost in organising and editing. And it feels really good. It's one of my favourite things to do. This is not unique to note-taking: the temptation to edit instead of writing fresh words is a perennial challenge for writers.
But modern note-taking software makes this a uniquely seductive proposition. Man, look at that interconnected knowledge graph. It looks impressive, it feels productive. And it will happily eat up thousands of hours of your life, with very little to show for it.
This can get compounded if, like me, you have an obsession with The Big Picture. It can function as a protective barrier in the same way note-taking does: by creating something so vast and many-faceted, there's almost no way anyone can critique it. It's so nuanced! Look at all the connections! It's a great way to avoid sticking your neck out.
Another problem: notes quickly become stale. No one keeps their notes fresh because they would have no time to eat. What happens for me is that a new insight bubbles up, I open a relevant note—the titles are burned into my head—and add a drive-by conclusion to the bottom. After a while, something initially exciting is just the same idea battered from 20 angles, without ever going deeper.
Some people might refute my complaints as a failure to go far enough with my organisation. But there is no end to organising; no limit to the new ways you can connect and categorise. I don’t care about that plugin. And it's never as neat as those cute demo videos make out; each templated note dropping into neat buckets with sensical titles. My Obsidian vault is a zoo. There are weird sounds, unwelcome smells and a feral sense of organisation barely holding it together.
I should say some nice things about note-taking. I do have a poor memory and note-taking helps there. I do often find gems in old notes, once I strip 80% of the fluff away. My personal journals have been particularly useful in revisiting the past. I wouldn't have been able to add so much detail to Three Years without them.
I've also found that recording most of what I'm thinking makes it quite obvious when a theme is important to me, because it resurfaces every few months. I’m nearly always surprised to discover this and I don’t think it would happen without note-taking.
Note-taking gurus do address some of these issues, and my own neuroticism can assist you in dismissing the rest.
Lip service is paid to framing note-taking in terms of your "desired outcomes," to remember that it’s only a means to a greater end. But realistically, it always seems to come back to creating, connecting and organising an endless pool of notes. The infallible goodness of stored knowledge, the indisputable value of connected notes. Why would you want to lose anything? Don't you want to be organised?
To date, I've not seen any of my favourite authors, teachers or poets acknowledge the pivotal role that their note-taking systems played in their best works. Considering all of the hyperbole, I would expect the next generation of second-brained experts to be taking over the world any second now.
Having everything at your fingertips sounds appealing. But we can only give voice to one or two things at any time. And those things need space and zest to be articulated well.
You need to convert your private intuitions into a discrete, logical sequence of words that other people can understand. You have to step out of the house and express yourself without the supporting evidence of your other 759,213 notes. Your words need to grow up and hold their own.
I still love my notes. I will continue to cradle my digital abscess and pretend it isn't really there. But I am much more wary of note-taking as anything other than a reservoir of old ideas that might be useful when I sit down to do the hard work of writing. I am a writer, not a note-taker.
