HOW TO TAKE BETTER NOTES

Why I Stopped Classifying My Notes (And Why You Should Do the Same)

Forget about tags and folders — Do this instead

Photo by UX Indonesia on Unsplash

Classifying is the most logical thing to do

We’re used to classifying everything.

Why?
Because if not, our life would be a mess.

We know that if we want to find our toothbrush, we’re going to find it in the bathroom.
Our socks? In the bedrooms drawer.
And the coffee, in the kitchen.

We have been classifying things since we were children.

After all, we all had to put back the toys after playing with them.

Classifying makes us interact with the world and make sense of it.

And this is why when it comes to note-taking, classifying seems the smartest thing to do.

We encounter an idea that we want don’t want to lose.
So we try to put it in the drawer to which it belongs to so that we can find it next time we’re searching for something around the same topic.

Sounds smart, but is it really the right thing to do?

If we think about it, classifying it is helpful if we want to retrieve something.
We want to be able to find what we’re looking for.
It helps us to prevent chaos.

Defining the real purpose of ideas and notes

But is this the real purpose of ideas?
Are we really looking only to retrieve ideas?
Or are we using a note system to sparkle creativity?

This is a tough question you have to answer for yourself before continuing reading.

Connecting, not just collecting

If you focus on simply classifying your notes to be retrieved,
you’ll end up collecting.

Collecting alone does not make us smarter.

When you’re simply collecting,
you’ll not be able to reap the rewards of connecting.

Because putting an idea in a box prevents it from being discovered outside its box.

Some argue that you could add multiple tags and thus put your idea into multiple boxes… but the problems remains the same:

Your idea will be limited to the number of boxes you put it in.

The solution to that?
Linking instead of classifying.

By letting all your ideas float around, you’ll be able to create more collisions between them.
It may give you a sense of chaos.

How to link between your notes

Linking is easy. Linking is fun.

Want to take better notes?

I’m explaining this process in details in my FREE Email Course about Note-taking can you can get by clicking here (safe link to my website)

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Helping experts and creators attract more clients by creating better content, faster. Check out 👉 https://mattgiaro.com?source=medium-profile

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Matt Giaro

Helping experts and creators attract more clients by creating better content, faster. Check out 👉 https://mattgiaro.com?source=medium-profile