So I’ve started writing some notes related to topic which interests me, but I want to end up with a smaller concise note capturing the quint essence of that topic. I don’t want that end note to have all the work and intermediate stuff I needed to end up with that note. Or using another taxonomy, I want to create evergreen notes but I don’t want the leaves flying around.
My question is therefore what kind of a workflow do you use to arrive at such notes (aka evergreen)? Do you use many extra intermediate notes? Do you collate all information in the final note? Do you use extra vaults for the raw material?
Use case: What makes a house a home?
My latest use case is trying to gather information on what it really means to have a personal home, a place where you feel home. To start this process I’ve done many google searches, and collated a list of link with a bunch of random quotes. I imagine the next step is to refine my quotes, and then possible do more searches.
But where should I store the raw material, and the intermediate work? My end note will be the note home, but should I also create notes like home - searches, or raw/home or home/searches, or should everything just be in the main note? I kind of like to have unique names in my vault so not sure about how to use sub-folders.
How would you approach such a scenario? What is your workflow?
I have basically one folder called Thoughts where I keep these kinds of “main notes” about things that I learn about. They vary from very atomic “1 note per idea” notes to collections of links to explore later and everything in between.
What I do on a regular basis is go through these notes and pick a few links, read the articles or watch the videos, and expand my notes. I usually start expanding within the note and then if it becomes worthy enough I separate the ideas into their own notes. I add tags or backlinks to keep them organised and easier to find later.
So now I have a collection of all sorts of notes on various topics. And I want to start writing about what makes a house a home. I start a new note and somewhat follow a model of mini-essays I learned from Nick Milo.
I start writing and then reference my other notes and external resources that I have kept in my own notes to start building something I can either publish or something that makes a great note of its own in my system.
I don’t know if my mini-essays are what your “smaller, concise note” would look like but I think the idea is similar. Keep your individual notes in the system and write a note that captures those ideas into a separate note and from the new note, link back to all the leaves.
I believe I want to end up with something similar to a mini essay (or a smaller essay), not necessarily restricted to just a single, atomic idea, but more to a given topic or narrow subject. When thinking about it, I don’t want to have neither the monolithic large note covering all there is about a large topic, nor do I want to have thousand upon thousand of atomic notes.
Another thought that is growing in my mind, is that I would love for my main graph view to be somewhat reasonable and usable, and not cluttered with all the research. So I do believe I at least would need to use at least one folder for WIP-notes/thoughts/ideas, where they can be developed/cultivated/matured into a worthwhile essay on any given topic.
It’s this cultivation process, and especially what kind of structure/notes are people using to do that cultivation that I’m wondering about.