How to create things with your notes

TL;DR

Learn how to make your notes more useful by using a bottom-up approach, finding lightning rods of thought, using a Kanban system, and incorporating feedback into your notes.

Transcript

• Hi, everyone. I am Nicole van der Hoeven. I am a developer advocate and I also sometimes write stuff and make videos on YouTube about min-maxing my life, including digital tools like Obsidian. I live right now in Maastricht in the Netherlands. And today I'm going to talk about how you should use it or lose it, what to do with all of those notes t... Read More

Key Insights

• 😎 Taking and using notes effectively is essential to avoid hoarding information and make them genuinely useful.
• 😆 Imposter syndrome and the fear of looking like an idiot can often hold us back from sharing our expertise and insights, but it's important to remember that we don't have to be experts to offer valuable guidance.
• 😌 Having a clear purpose and niche for our content can help us focus and create meaningful and impactful work.
• 😅 The pursuit of perfection can be a hindrance to sharing our work. Embracing the concept of learning in public and showing the process of creating something can be more valuable and compelling than a finished product.
• 💡 Lightning rods of thought are clusters of ideas that attract related concepts. They can be identified through bottom-up approaches (finding commonalities in notes), top-down approaches (starting with a topic and exploring related notes), outside-in approaches (taking feedback from others), or through randomness (such as using plugins to open random notes).
• 📝 Creating a system, such as using a Kanban board, can help organize and streamline content creation. It's important to limit work in progress and have a clear workflow.
• 🔄 Continuous improvement is key. Feedback from others should be recorded and incorporated back into our notes to enhance our understanding of a topic over time.
• 🔗 Nicole's content and resources, including her YouTube channel, website, and Obsidian vault, can be found in the provided links.

Questions & Answers

Q: How does the presenter describe her approach to note-taking?

The presenter describes her approach to note-taking as a bottom-up process, where she takes notes only on topics that interest her and finds commonalities between them.

Q: What are some ways to identify lightning rods of thought?

The presenter suggests four methods: bottom-up (using graph view or search), top-down (starting with a topic and working down), outside in (using feedback from others), and chaos (randomly selecting notes).

Q: How does the presenter use the Kanban system in her note-taking process?

The presenter uses the Kanban system to organize her content production. She moves tasks/cards through different stages (e.g., on deck, editing, scheduling) and limits the work in progress to improve consistency and clarity.

Q: How does the presenter recommend incorporating feedback into notes?

The presenter suggests recording feedback and tying it back to related notes. By enriching notes with feedback and using it to improve understanding, the notes become more useful over time.

Summary & Key Takeaways

• The presenter shares her experience of using notes effectively and explains how to make notes more useful.

• She discusses the theory of note-taking and shares her main Obsidian vault as an example.

• The presenter focuses on identifying topics, using plugins and tools, and integrating feedback into notes to improve their usefulness.