Field notes · Idea · 3 min read · Reflect and learn

How to take notes you will actually reuse

Most people have a folder of notes they never open. The notes were useful to write, but a month later you cannot tell why you kept them or what they were for.

The idea

Sönke Ahrens's How to Take Smart Notes describes the way the sociologist Niklas Luhmann worked: he wrote each idea on its own card, in his own words, and linked it to related cards. The point was not storage. Writing in your own words forces you to understand the idea, and the links mean an old note turns up when you are working on something new. Ahrens argues that the notes are for your writing and thinking, not a separate archive.

Tiago Forte's PARA method, the basis of his Building a Second Brain, takes a different route. Instead of linking ideas, it files information by how soon you might act on it: Projects, Areas, Resources and Archives.

What they get right

Both ask the same question of a note: what is it for? A note written in your own words, tied to something you are doing, is far more likely to be useful than a clipped article. And both treat the habit as ongoing, not a one-time filing exercise.

Where they break in a real week

Both are practitioners' methods that worked for their authors; neither has been tested head to head. A full slip-box asks for a lot of linking effort, and it is easy to build a beautiful system and stop. PARA's folders can tempt you to keep organizing instead of using what you saved. And both can pull your life into one big pile where a note about a meeting, a lesson and a reading question all look alike.

How Trellis builds it in

Trellis keeps Notes as their own thing, with a kind: a note, something you learned, or research. A Note can be linked to one Focus Area or one Meeting, so it turns up where you are already working. A Focus Area gathers its Actions, Notes and Meetings together. A learning interest and the next Action to pursue it stay separate, so finishing the Action does not pretend you understand the topic.

Trellis does not copy the slip-box. Notes link to areas and meetings, not to each other, so it is closer to PARA's idea of keeping things by what they are for than to Luhmann's web of cards. Keeping the question you were asking beside the source is a habit worth borrowing from Ahrens in any tool.

Try this week

1. Pick three things you saved recently and write one sentence for each: what question made you keep it?
2. Link each to something you are doing, or let it go.
3. Pick one and take a small step: read a section, explain it in your own words, or ask someone.

How strong is the evidence?

These are practitioners' accounts. They describe habits that helped their authors, but they are not tested prescriptions, and Luhmann's slip-box is a single, famous case rather than a trial.