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It took over a decade, but I finally realized that this is the original purpose of the dialectical journals I was required to write for my high-school English c
by kd5bjo 6y ago
It took over a decade, but I finally realized that this is the original purpose of the dialectical journals I was required to write for my high-school English classes, before they were coopted as an assessment tool. As it’s a record of your own thinking about the various things you’ve read, it provides a way to figure out where ideas came from in a way that full-text search can’t handle.
These days, I use a traditional index card system combined with a spaced-repetition flashcard system. Each concept that I feel like collecting information about has a small stack of cards that starts with a 1- or 2-sentence definition, in case I’m using a term slightly differently from other people. Below that are cards that represent quotes, notes, summaries, and recommended reading on that topic.
The flash card deck is to make sure I know what things exist, and what words are used in the literature to refer to abstract things. If I need more detail than I can remember, those keywords will get me to a relevant wikipedia page, at least.
- fredsir 6y agoIs that the zettelkasten method?
- kd5bjo 6y agoNot exactly; it’s more modeled on a library card catalog. Instead of indexing a physical collection, it’s indexing the things I’ve read. If I need to take detailed, long form notes on something, I’ll do it in a notebook which will then get its own entries in the card index.
- hatmatrix 6y agoI do something similar with a single, monolithic org-mode file where I write down these things. Am I missing out on some useful tricks?
- kd5bjo 6y agoOne of the biggest realizations for me was that I need to be free with defining my own categories. It’s more about recording why I’m interested in something than its surface subject— I’m more likely in the future to do something related to my current interests than the article’s subject. To take a concrete example, the April 2020 issue of Smithsonian has a feature about a tidal power generation startup. I filed that under “sustainable power generation”, as you might expect. I also filed it under “Island communities” because of only a single sentence I found in the article: The startup’s target market is small- or medium-sized islands that are powered by imported diesel fuel.