Those writing extensively on note-writing rarely have a serious context of use

Thats a great comparison! Math is more about keeping the mind vice strong and well-lubricated, so you're ready to crack that nut when it comes down the pipe.

I bet some of that sloppiness is a strategy. Mental confusion like muscle confusion - if there's no plan/organizational schema/notes, your brain has to be ready for anything.

I think the key thing to me here is that these notes are designed to be clicked through without losing track of where you were, and keep the context of why you're reading this current note. The stack concept they have here is really great

I'm prone to winding up with too many open tabs when I use lots of atomic notes with links, and now I'm having to juggle a set of tabs while looking through this information.

People who talk about their note-taking systems often have a laundry list of things the system does for them, like todo lists, meeting notes, reading notes, note BBQ, note fried rice, buttered notes...

The trouble is, they are trying to jam all these different things into one system. It's as if they were using one spreadsheet to track everything in their business rather than using multiple spreadsheets each with very different structures and usage. That's what Roam does. It's a no-code app which people jam all sort of functionality into and it becomes a leaky mess.

Much of what people call "note taking" isn't even note taking. "Notes" is a term which is doing a lot of work.

I think there's a real problem people are looking to solve, or it wouldn't get so much air play. I think it starts with the mess of digital things which become un-usable within a couple of days. These same people can keep a project going for as long as they need becausea project becomes a useful organizing container. Once that project is done, then the items in the container immediately rot just like everything else on disk which isn't part of some other active container.

What Andy is talking about, is just one possible "application" which people might use for note-taking. Meeting notes are just reference, they aren't necessarily tools for thought. Maybe you could swap "application" with "workflow." I'm not looking for a note-taking system. I want to way to organize workflows for the files on my disk. I want these workflows to be applied to specific projects. I also want a way for one piece to be positioned within multiple projects (this is where backlinks are useful.) It just happens that a note-taking application may be the best tool for setting all this up and maybe other people agree with me. So, we call this thing "notes."

It's not notes. You're looking for something like a project management system for the mess of things which aren't at the top of your priority list. We know how to do that most important thing which will pay the bills. We don't know how to deal with the stuff which may be an interest but currently outside of our periphery. Maybe the answer is that outside of that periphery should be inbox zero.

This was my process in school when compiling cheat sheets (Spickzettel in German).

It took at least two rounds condensing the information down onto such a small note. Often more.

After that I didn't need them for the test.

I only later understood that this was a great way to learn as a system.

Extract - Condense - Extract - Condense

In school it never occurred to me that I was learning. I thought I was trying to cheat and only got lucky to know stuff.

> The most effective readers and thinkers I know don’t take notes when reading.

I get what the author is saying, but this is some serious "mistaking correlation for causation" here.

I am someone who could hold everything in his mind, never needed a single note, and was constantly baffled why others wrote so many seemingly useless notes.

Then I turned 21 and had a trivial operation under general anaesthetic.

While the change to my brain function was effectively invisible to people around me, I can tell you I suddenly started needing to write. shit. down. Effectively my mental "desktop space " feels like it has shrunk.

I am now a huge fan of Anki; something I would never have needed before my operation.