Today is day 2 of Blogvent, where I write a post every day in December!

I am very much an Obsidian girlie. I absolutely love writing down my blogs, my newsletters, my thoughts, my snippets, my vents, my blurbs, and my bits and bobs in one place that’s easily accessible if I need to remember it. The “second brain” concept is so nice for someone like me who is admittedly forgetful about things unless it’s written down somewhere.

Collecting information is my hobby

That being said, note-taking does turn into just glorified data-hoarding, often. We have an absolutely ridiculous amount of data at our fingertips. So many of my bookmarks that I save are for “when I want to read that one article that will make me a better developer in that one aspect, someday!” So many of the courses I’ve bought are out-of-date by the time I sit down and remember that I actually want to learn the topic (but I have HOURS and HOURS of content for as long as I want!!!). There’s even memes about how book-buying and book-reading are fully separate hobbies.

We’re addicted to having information at our fingertips, even if it is information that we log ourselves, that comes from our own brains and surroundings.

Being better at thinking, not just collecting

What we really need to do as note-takers and thinkers is think less about the “what” and more about the “what now?” when it comes to writing things down.

Something that has worked for me to make my notes actionable and not just a place to hoard information (which I still do, but less) is break my notes down into two categories:

• Things I want to recall later
• Things I just want to write down to get my thoughts out

For the first, I try to add tags, blurbs, and search terms in a way to make it easy for my future self to find the note. Obsidian (and other software too) has concepts like tags, aliases, and linking between files that makes that part much smoother and less arduous.

For the second, I am a strong believer in brainstorming verbally and in writing to get thoughts out, and to think better. Translating ideas into your own words is how you understand a concept. I purposely have no proper system (tags, aliases, etc) for these kinds of notes. Freeform writing as a form of thinking is valuable in itself, and the relic of what you thought through is not the goal.

This isn’t enough. Can I read more about this?

All this being said, as you think about building the PERFECT note-taking system for yourself (so many nerds do it, you’re not alone), yes, there’s more for you to see.

• Andy Matuschak’s note-writing systems
• How to Take Smart Notes by Sönke Ahrens
• My own talk at GitHub Universe 2022 on team knowledge sharing
• Ben Hong’s productivity livestreams

But don’t just bookmark these links for your data hoarding. I’m watching you.