Knowledge Building Blocks: The New Meaning of Notes

Source: https://fortelabs.co/blog/knowledge-building-blocks-the-new-meaning-of-notes/

Highlights

• For most of us, this is how our experience of note-taking started: with a mysterious command, and very little guidance in how to carry it out.
• You knew it was time to take notes when the teacher said “This will be on the test.” This declaration implied that “getting a good grade” was the only reason you might want to take notes. The minute the final exam was over, you knew you would never make use of those notes again.
• Unlike in school, in the professional world:
• It’s not at all clear what you should be taking notes on
• No one tells you when or how your notes will be needed
• The “test” can come at any time and in any form
• You’re allowed to reference your notes, but it’s up to you to organize them
• You are expected to take action on your notes and turn them into results, not just regurgitate them
• Not to mention that the volume of information we are expected to manage doesn’t go down once we enter the workplace. It explodes.
• Connect to idea about how much information we consume; old Tiago video
• Luckily, the same technology that has fueled an explosion in the volume of information coming our way has also equipped us with the tools to manage it: digital notes apps.
• Now that our notes are digital, they can become durable. They can last for the long term, supporting our long-term goals and ambitions without relying on our fragile memory. Evergreen Notes
• **A digital note is a “knowledge building block” – a discrete unit of information interpreted through your unique perspective and stored outside your head. **Building the Global Knowledge Graph
• Once a piece of information has been interpreted through your lens, curated according to your taste, translated into your own words, or drawn from your life experience, and stored somewhere outside your head, then it’s a note.
• All you have to do is craft a single building block of knowledge each time you read or learn something, and save it in a central place.** You can leave it to your future self to figure out what to do with it.**