How am I supposed to take notes, and add my opinions on things when I don't have any? How am I supposed to add any value to the things I'm reading? I have no option but to take raw notes, when my knowledge is so limited.
Bottom up approach involves not thinking from a hierarchical structure, but branching out infinitely from the bottom. So, there has to be a better way of organizing these notes without really organizing them. There has to be a better way of linking concepts together, unlike the method I've started off with which was for example organizing by course, and then each lecture rather than atomic concepts.
I obviously need to stop taking notes as phrases or key words, but need to start writing down and explaining concepts as if part of articles. Then it stops being about smaller bits of information, but rather, large chunks of processed facts and opinions that are coherent thoughts.
The important question here is: how can I make this idea detailed enough to stand on its own, without the context of the book or the associated highlight? You want each of these ideas to be fully formed thoughts that you can reference in a bunch of different areas later.
- Raw notes are useless.
Process: [[How to collect observations while reading]], [[How to process reading annotations into evergreen notes]]
Evergreen notes are either STRONG OPINIONS or STRONG FACTS, nothing else
[[Facts or Opinions]] - Via Nick Milo on the Obsidian Forum.
Most evergreen notes should be strong opinions, so it forces you to think about what you're trying to say.
However, in my case (especially while trying to create a system like this from scratch), there are exceptions to this, being fact-based notes.
- Concepts: which can and should stand on their own
- Known Things: “The magna carta was signed in 1215”
- Standards: Things with a pre-set language (whether that’s programming, Things that follow a process, manuals, etc)
That said, those Fact-based evergreen notes should then spawn ideas of your own that have strong opinions.
Fact-based Evergreen Notes then become sturdy dots that we can then connect to other Opinion-based Evergreen Notes through a lovely process called thinking.
It's easy to get sucked into structure and get consumed into fitting things into categories, or generally getting paralyzed before even beginning a task such as note taking.
Perhaps the best way to go about doing this is focus on the notes and then focus on organizing these notes/giving them structure.
- Dad's thoughts on these don't require abolishing a categorical way of thinking, but rather finding the right categories to put things in.
- Not kind, rather purpose.
- We'd want to sort by what the thing is doing, rather than what type the thing is. Nobody would want to go through a list of YouTube videos, but rather Philosophy notes and then see the medium.