Glasp on notes.andymatuschak.org

Glasp is a social web highlighter that people can highlight and organize quotes and thoughts from the web, and access other like-minded people’s learning.

notes.andymatuschak.org ↗︎

§Note-writing systems | Digital note-writing systems fixate on the presentation and manipulation of individual notes, mostly ignoring inter-note sense-making

Vision Pro

“Better note-taking” misses the point; what matters is “better thinking”

A writing inbox for transient and incomplete notes

Understanding requires effortful engagement

Write about what you read to internalize texts deeply

Taxonomy of note types

§Note-writing systems | Evergreen note-writing as fundamental unit of knowledge work

It’s hard to navigate to unlinked “neighbors” in associative note systems

Evergreen note-writing as fundamental unit of knowledge work | Create speculative outlines while you write

Evergreen notes | Write about what you read to internalize texts deeply | Collecting material feels more useful than it usually is | Knowledge work should accrete

How to Collect Observations While Reading

Work with the garage door up

About these notes | §What’s top of mind | Athletes and musicians pursue virtuosity in fundamental skills much more rigorously than knowledge workers do | Salience of improvement drives skill development | Knowledge workers usually have no specific methods for developing ideas over time

About these notes | Evergreen notes | Evergreen note-writing as fundamental unit of knowledge work | Executable strategy for writing

§Note-writing systems | Do your own thinking

About these notes | Evergreen notes | “Better note-taking” misses the point; what matters is “better thinking”

Prefer associative ontologies to hierarchical taxonomies | Let ideas and beliefs emerge organically

§Note-writing systems | “Better note-taking” misses the point; what matters is “better thinking” | Evergreen note-writing as fundamental unit of knowledge work | Note-writing can be a virtuosic skill

Prefer associative ontologies to hierarchical taxonomies

Evergreen notes should be atomic

Anti-marketing

§Note-writing systems | Writing forces sharper understanding

About these notes | Evergreen notes | Executable strategy for writing | Executable strategy

Evergreen note-writing as fundamental unit of knowledge work | Evergreen notes | Evergreen notes should be atomic | Evergreen notes should be densely linked

Evergreen notes | A reading inbox to capture possibly-useful references | Write about what you read to internalize texts deeply | How to collect observations while reading

§Taking knowledge work seriously (Stripe convergence talk, 2019-12-12) | Deep understanding requires detailed knowledge of fundamentals | Expertise requires building sophisticated chunk recoding schemes | Good practice encodes more effective chunk recoding schemes

How to process reading annotations into evergreen notes | Create speculative outlines while you write

Write about what you read to internalize texts deeply

People who write extensively about note-writing rarely have a serious context of use | The most effective readers and thinkers I know don’t take notes when reading | “Better note-taking” misses the point; what matters is “better thinking”

Close open loops | A reading inbox to capture possibly-useful references | Use phones to collect and triage, not (usually) to read

Work with the garage door up

Note-writing practices are generally ineffective | Most people take only transient notes | Evergreen notes

Most people take only transient notes | Note-writing practices are generally ineffective | Evergreen note-writing as fundamental unit of knowledge work

Close open loops | A reading inbox to capture possibly-useful references

About these notes | Evergreen notes | Write notes for yourself by default, disregarding audience

Log: personal mnemonic medium

§Note-writing systems | Evergreen note-writing as fundamental unit of knowledge work | “Better note-taking” misses the point; what matters is “better thinking”

About these notes | Evergreen notes | Evergreen notes should be atomic

Tags are an ineffective association structure | Prefer labeled associations

Evergreen notes | Evergreen notes should be atomic

Core practices in knowledge work are often ad-hoc

Note-writing practices provide weak feedback

Evergreen notes | §Note-writing systems

§Note-writing systems | Evergreen note-writing as fundamental unit of knowledge work | “Better note-taking” misses the point; what matters is “better thinking”

§Note-writing systems | Knowledge work should accrete

§Note-writing systems | “Better note-taking” misses the point; what matters is “better thinking” | Evergreen note-writing as fundamental unit of knowledge work | Note-writing can be a virtuosic skill | Most people use notes as a bucket for storage or scratch thoughts

§Knowledge work as serious discipline | Athletes and musicians pursue virtuosity in fundamental skills much more rigorously than knowledge workers do

Evergreen notes

How to Take Smart Notes - Ahrens

Evergreen notes should be atomic

Spaced repetition memory systems make memory a choice

My morning writing practice

The high-order bit for my productivity is whether I complete a deeply-focused morning creative block

About these notes | My morning writing practice

About these notes | §What’s top of mind | Knowledge work rarely involves deliberate practice | §Taking knowledge work seriously (Stripe convergence talk, 2019-12-12) | Spaced repetition systems can be used to program attention

Write notes for yourself by default, disregarding audience

Using machine learning models to generate good spaced repetition prompts | Can ML-based prompt generation be helpfully recast as a filtering problem?

People who write extensively about note-writing rarely have a serious context of use | The most effective readers and thinkers I know don’t take notes when reading | Write about what you read to internalize texts deeply | Understanding requires effortful engagement

Create speculative outlines while you write

Menu

About these notes | My morning writing practice

People who write extensively about note-writing rarely have a serious context of use | The most effective readers and thinkers I know don’t take notes when reading | Write about what you read to internalize texts deeply | Do your own thinking

Executable strategy for writing

Writing forces sharper understanding

Evergreen notes | Most people take only transient notes | Most people use notes as a bucket for storage or scratch thoughts | Close open loops

Evergreen notes | Evergreen notes should be atomic

Close open loops

Evergreen notes | “Better note-taking” misses the point; what matters is “better thinking”

Tags are an ineffective association structure

Expertise requires building sophisticated chunk recoding schemes

Deciding to remember something with a spaced repetition system is a lightweight gesture

“Better note-taking” misses the point; what matters is “better thinking”

Evergreen note-writing as fundamental unit of knowledge work | Evergreen note-writing helps insight accumulate

Evergreen notes should be atomic | Evergreen notes should be densely linked

Deep understanding requires detailed knowledge of fundamentals

About these notes | Evergreen notes

Elaborative encoding

§Taking knowledge work seriously (Stripe convergence talk, 2019-12-12) | Knowledge work should accrete