How to Think

I’m a committed note-taker at this point. I want to learn more and more, and love studying things and seeing where they all lead. Making notes helps me put it all together, remember what I would’ve otherwise forgotten, and think in a more comprehensive way than I can just on my own. It’s useful in my work, and I love talking with my friends who are as curious as I am. But most off all, I get a deep sense of satisfaction when I feel something “click” for me. So how can I maximize that?

Having taken notes for so long, I’ve tried a lot of different strategies. From maximalist, like recording conversations with friends to pour over later, to minimalist: not taking notes, and relying on my memory to surface the important parts. Neither of those were very successful for me, so I’ve settled somewhere in the middle. But even in the terrible middle, there’s a lot of wiggle room. While I think for me the most important part is simply making notes, and secondly returning back to them, what I’ve discovered is that the process by which you do both of these has a huge affect not only on the notes themselves, but their usage. The medium is the message, to an extent, and if writing is thinking, than what you’re deciding is how to think.

Right now, my process is multifaceted. I separate to-dos out into todoist, though I’m sure any similar app or system is fine. These are simply actionable items, like “write this blog post.” I personally like to log things to different projects, sort of like different categories, though I don’t do much with this information. I also assign a due date, and a rough guess of how much time this will take me to do, just so when I look at my list from a glance, I can get a sense for how long I plan on spending working, and in what groups. I usually put all that information when I create a task, but if not, I have a recurring todo list item each Saturday to sort through the tasks without due dates. Finally, I’ve made this as frictionless as I can, with a quick-add shortcut on both my computer (CTRL+SHIFT+A, for “add”) and phone (simply swiping up on my home screen opens the add window).

The medium is the message, and if writing is thinking, than what you’re deciding is how to think.

I also put meetings, events, and larger deadlines on my calendar, which is tracked across all my devices. That said, I do use a paper calendar. I’ve got a wall calendar from Hobonichi which I’ve used for several years, and this year, added a weekly calendar notebook (also from Hobonichi) where I’ve been blocking time off in chunks with highlighters, just so I can see my days at a glance. Maybe it’s redundant to have both digital and analog versions of these, and the digital is the preferred for me, but I like having both, especially within eyeshot of my desk so I can quickly get a sense for how my week’s going.

My actual note-taking as well is split into analog and digital realms; into a pocket notebook, and the Obsidian app, respectively. But rather than simply mirroring one another, I use them differently. There isn’t so much of a conscious decision, in what sort of note belongs in which location. I tend to reach for the notebook in my pocket, my pen; if only for the tactile feeling. But invariably, the usage differs. A note in my notebook could be a scribble, a thing to lookup later. It could be something someone said to me, or some thought that popped into my head. All of these get mixed in, with little thought towards organization or hierarchy. In fact, the messiness is the point. I don’t assign any sort of order, because they’re all simply thoughts. Seeing them next to one another, and flipping through this book occasionally, gives me both the ability to connect otherwise disparate thoughts, and also sometimes follow my train of thought back through time. Both of these I find really rewarding.

On Obsidian, things tend to become more organized. This is not inherently good or bad, just different. I tend to structure my notes a lot more, sometimes adding in headings, reordering items, and most importantly, separating them from unlike ideas. I use the “daily note” function in Obsidian, where a new note is made each day. There, I tend to “collect” ideas, and then sort them after. Obsidian focuses a lot on this sort of connected thinking I strive for, with the ability to add links to notes, but I’m still getting my bearings on it despite using it for several years. I’ve struggled to get beyond the paradigm of folders and files, and still tend to group ideas like that, though I’m making more of an effort to go back through these like flipping through the pages of my notebook, and drawing connections where I see them.

Finally, I have a Hobonichi planner. I’ve written about journaling quite a bit, but it’s been a hugely beneficial practice for me. After inconsistent journaling for a few years, I’ve passed two full years with daily entries. I’m looking forward to filing my second Hobonichi book with an entry for every day at the end of the month.

It’s a Hobonichi planner, but I don’t use it that way. Instead, I just enjoy the daily pages, with the goal of filling a full (A6-sized) page each day. I write out mostly what happened in a day, what I thought about, and also looking forward at what I want to do, improve on, or change. It’s a chance to romanticize or at least narrativize my life, and gives me a 10,000 foot view I don’t think I’d get otherwise. I can see patterns as they develop, from things as simple as “I want to start getting up earlier,” to more far-reaching, like “where exactly am I headed?” This chance to look at myself, both from how I’m spending my days and where I want to go, is absolutely invaluable to me.

My process may not be your process—my process might not even be my process! If it were fixed, it wouldn’t be right. It’s just a moment in time, something that’s working for me right now, but something that continues to evolve as I do.