I find that a lot of professionals and creatives take copious notes on the content they consume…with the best of intentions.
Unfortunately, for many of them, much of that work goes to waste.
Generally speaking, they rarely—if ever—do anything with their notes, making the whole practice meaningless.
And if they do attempt to leverage their notes, the experience is often an unpleasant one.
To address this, I suggest following a four-part framework. This framework will help increase the likelihood you’ll actually come back to your notes AND make your notes infinitely more useful when you do.
It’s the same, four-part framework I walk students through in my Note-Making Mastery course. In short, this framework is the key to an effective Personal Knowledge Management system.
Collect, Connect, Crystallize, and Create
COLLECT addresses the necessary tools and workflows, understanding that your note-taking archetype informs, to some extent, the tools you’ll require.
The key here is identifying, based on your archetype, what will ultimately become the Central Hub of your PKM system.
Additionally, you’ll likely use a number of other capture tools, all of which should be optimized for getting your notes, highlights, etc., effortlessly into your Central Hub.
CONNECT is about understanding the value (and power) in connecting new ideas to your existing ideas, as well as how best to organize your system in such a way you look forward to coming back to it again and again.
Alternatively, you remain intimated by it (meaning you don’t use it regularly, if at all).
If you’re a folders person, the fewer the better (I’d suggest around seven, give or take three). In my old system, I had over a hundred folders. Yikes!
CRYSTALLIZE teaches you how to develop and distill your notes, first by summarizing in your own words what you’ve learned, and eventually adding your own unique insights and ideas into the process.
Many note-takers stop at simply copying down the words of others.
Unless your notes include the original author’s insights paraphrased in your own words (at least), or explored further with your own added ideas (at best), then they likely won’t be of much use to you later.
CREATE is the ultimate goal. It’s about understanding that each of your notes has the power to serve as a building block or knowledge asset toward something larger.
When it comes time to create, you’ll never again have to stare at a blank page or screen.
That’s because the notes you’ve already amassed, baby-step-by-baby-step along the way, means that 70 to 80% of the work is already done.
Your job is simply to connect them by means of a cohesive narrative.
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Each of your notes travels through these four phases at its own, unique pace. Some notes will go the distance, while others will only travel a portion of the way…and that’s okay.
It’s important to understand, however, that the further a note travels, the more potential value it contains for you and your system.
When practiced, it’s possible to simply glance at a note in your system and instantly recognize what phase of the journey it’s in, saving you valuable time when your time is arguably at its most valuable (i.e. during the actual creation process).