Improving notes endlessly

The promises in different books, blogs, or videos were always alluring to me. There is this vision of a perfect knowledge system and perfectly structured notes that brings your learning and thinking to the next level. I was consuming information and taking notes heavily. But I never reached a state where I felt happy or satisfied with my system and workflow. I was looking for the right place, or connection, for my notes, and the note itself was never structured or written in a way that felt right. I was mingling around my notes and trying to make them better or stand out.

Trying to match the experts

I was trying to reach the same level of note-taking as people who are true experts in their fields. All the information I took in collided with what I was seeing on my screen. I felt a huge gap appear between literature and reality. This shows that I was relying more on the system of others than on my own thinking. I would not say that I learned too much, but I was overemphasizing theory over my own thinking and experiences.

Managing a system instead of thinking

Initially, I thought that these books and concepts would help me build my system and elevate my note-taking. But they drifted into another direction – they got me further away from what I wanted to improve in the first place. I wanted to work with my notes and start creating something. Instead, I was managing my system and working on improving my note-taking. Were my notes reduced enough? Did I set the highlights right? Is the core content easily accessible? My notes became a checklist, but not a true source of inspiration or thinking. I was outsourcing my thinking to a structure, and thereby I was relying more on external standards than on my internal judgment and thinking.

Trusting my own judgment again

What changed my perspective was realizing that my own thinking and judgement is something that has to be formed, before blindly applying a framework of someone else. From now on, I see external frameworks or concepts as a scaffold, but I no longer treat them as a substitute for my experiences. Instead of “mindlessly” adopting a concept, I started to become aware of my intentions and watch my notes develop. Once my intentions were clear and my notes started to lead me in a certain direction I had something to work with. I was able to use and adapt the external systems according to my needs. Why this approach brought me much closer to a more satisfying system is that systems can only stabilize and perform after patterns have emerged. This is where my own thinking and ideas started to take back control over my system.

Finding flow through imperfection

Imperfection is what makes our systems unique and beautiful. In the end, that’s what this is about for me: having a personal system – maybe one that might look peculiar from the outside, but deeply resonates with me. Once I became confident that making mistakes accelerates learning rather than slowing it down, my relationship with note-taking changed. I started treating it as a space without judgment. That was the moment my first and second brain finally relaxed – and note-taking became something that allowed me to enter a natural flow.

Thank you for reading.