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| draft | title | aliases | series | date | author | cover | keywords | description | showFullContent | tags | |||||
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| true | Notes as tools: A mental model |
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2024-04-24 | Nick Dumas | Note-taking and the tools we use to do it can present an overwhelming abundance of possibility. Explicitly modelling your notes as tools can grant clarity when creating and organizing your knowledge. | false |
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Outline
- What I assume you know
- Why take notes
- Tools and you
- Tools with purpose
- Tools without
- Conclusion
What I assume you know
Nothing in particular, this article isn't even specifically about Obsidian.
Why take notes?
It's a question worth really thinking about. Why are you taking notes? Do you enjoy writing? Does it help you remember? Is it part of a grade? Your answer might be one or more or none of these. Regardless of the answer, what I'm here to argue is that your notes should not be an end in and of themselves.
Tools and you
My central thesis is that notes are tools. Tools are objects or processes that people create or alter in order to make some part of their life easier or better. Some very obvious examples of tools are things like knives, guns, and cars. Tools can be more complex, though. Factories are tools, eyeglasses and smartphones are tools.
Tools are not constrained to physical space either. Mnemonic devices we use to memorize how to tie our shoes or our bank passwords are tools as well, existing completely in mental space and active cognitive processes. Beyond the scope of this post but worth mentioning, social constructs are also tools; etiquette, language, art and games are all tools built out of agreements between human beings.
Tools are all around you. It is worth putting some thought into precisely what those tools are useful for, to what degree they benefit you and at what cost. Knives are used for separating objects into smaller objects, which is great, but under the wrong circumstances that object might not be something you want made into smaller pieces so that's something you have to take into account while using, organizing, and storing your knife.
Not all tools are anywhere near as dangerous as knives, but I want to center the idea that understanding the knife's purpose, cutting, informs how you should store it: blade enclosed, handle accessible.
Tools with purpose
So, your notes are tools. Now what?
Unfortunately, this hasn't armed us with a magic bullet. Physical analogies start to fall apart here; in physical space, hammering a nail has consistent characteristics. A pound of steel weighs the same in China as it does in Haiti, the coefficient of friction for pine planks doesn't change based on who's holding the hammer. Notes, or at least the ways we can transform, share, and apply them are not subject to the kind of restrictions that cars or screwdrivers might be.
In practice, what I try to focus on is names.
A note with a clear purpose will be easy to name.
Think carefully about how you're planning on using this note. Where will you be sitting or standing? What time of day will it be? What are the first words that come to mind when you think about the problem this note solves?
Do you have at least one clear answer for these questions? If not, your note might be doing too much.
Tools without
Most homes have a place where tools without a clear purpose live. It's usually a drawer in your kitchen
Conclusion
What is a tool?
You are, of course, familiar with tools like hammers and knives. You might have even heard of things like wheels, cars, and guns. These are all fairly self-evident examples of tools: things that humans create or alter to make some part of their life easier or better.
It's important to understand, however, that the category of "tools" is not restricted to things you can hold in your hand. A low-hanging example of this is math, a mental tool humans use to process and understand how quantities of things change in response to different stimuli.
Tools and You
You work in concert with an endless ocean of tools every day and probably don't think about most of them. This is not a personal failure; a well-designed tool simply requires little to no effort to use. Eyeglasses, cars, phones, books, forks and spoons all augment our natural abilities and let us interact with our environment in ways the benefit us, and most of them are largely invisible in our day to day life.
This deep integration can leave people at a bit of a loss when starting from scratch in a context where tools aren't readily available or familiar. This is often the case when delving into a new skill, hobby, or profession.
Naming Things
One of the most common problems you're likely to encounter while working on your notes is naming them. It is also, I'd argue, the hardest. The most interesting part about names, though, is that they can be an extremely potent "canary in the coal mine" when note-taking. A note that is hard to name is a note whose purpose you do not fully understand.