Should You Have a Note Goal Per Day? How To Quantify Creativity to Boost Creative Performance

• Feb 3rd, 2026
• by Sascha

In the world of the Zettelkasten Method and in the broader world of PKM, size matters. The big, beautiful graph view images, and the number of notes in one’s repository are part of the genre of productivity porn that consistently catches attention.

Another genre of productivity porn is the number of written notes per day. So, why not make it a goal to write 10 notes per day? (or 6 or 20)

The answer to this question will lead us down the path of when and how to quantify creative productivity. Creativity is thought to be non-quantifiable. This article will take a non-artistic stance on creativity and claim: yes, you can measure creativity.

Exploring the Question

What are you trying to achieve if you make it a goal to write a specific number of notes per day? There are two answers: one general and one Zettelkasten-specific.

1. The general answer to the question is that you want to make your creative output more reliable. By setting a daily note number goal, you aim to ensure you produce a minimum number of ideas each day.
2. The Zettelkasten-specific answer is that the Zettelkasten unleashes its magic after reaching a critical mass, a concept coined by the grandmaster Luhmann himself and confirmed in our observation. Why not boost the daily note output to accelerate the critical mass?

Do we actually achieve these outcomes by setting a daily note goal? Well, that depends on how you take notes. GIGO means “garbage in, garbage out.” If your input is shit, your output will be shit, too. This applies to taking notes, too. The type of notes that you are creating determines the outcome of this action.

If you quickly write down a bunch of notes without a lot of care about the content, just writing down what is in your mind, you will get a similar outcome to free writing. If you wrestle with each idea of each note, you get the benefit of a deeper thinking practice.

Let’s get the typical downfall with measuring out of the way. The best way to express the reason why you might fail with the quantified approach to creativity is Goodhart’s law:

When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure. (Goodhart’s Law)

One way to fail your way to a high number of notes is to reduce the effort of writing each note. Boom. Now, you may even triple your daily note count and reduce the effort in writing these. Obviously, this is a poor way to increase the daily note count. But this is what people actually happen to do. They sacrifice the conditions under which a note counts as a good note to increase output. Here are some examples:

• Ignoring relevance: They take notes on anything and everything.
• Ignoring urgency: They spend a lot of time taking notes, sacrificing time spent on current projects.
• Ignoring quality: They jump from idea to idea without wrestling with them, because this can always be done later.

If you recognise your behavior, this is not the end of the world. With a shift in perspective, you can get back on track easily.

The number of notes is a lagging variable. That means that you measure an outcome. If you ignore other lagging variables, the desired outcome is underdetermined. Simply: The goal is not to write notes, but to write good notes.

Take strength training as an example: the goal is to increase the weight you lift to become stronger. But you don’t just take the lifted weight into account. If only lifted weight counts, a tricky bastard might hire a strongman to lift the weights for him. This example sounds silly until it doesn’t. This is what many people do (mostly unknowingly) when they aim for automation in note-taking, and even worse, AI delegation.

So, how do we make the daily note count work for us? The daily note count needs to be built on three pillars:

1. The note count should never be seen as an end in itself. The daily note count is an indirect measure of the time, energy, and attention we invest in creative thinking.
2. Allocate time, energy, and attention first, measure note count second. The daily note count is an outcome measure of a daily allocation of your resources. It shows the effectiveness of your investment.
3. Never sacrifice the quality of the notes. You should set a threshold for note quality. Don’t reduce the quality of your thinking for the quantity of output.

We need to adhere to these principles if we want to keep the note count as an accurate measure of our creative output. Keep in mind that we are not talking about true output, as in published articles, books, business deals, investments, or training plans. We are talking about your creative activity, which still needs to be funneled through your publishing machine.

How To Make The Note Count Work

Build a deep thinking practice using your notes as an externalisation of it. A deep thinking practice is the mental equivalent of a fitness regimen. The slight difference is this: typically, the miles you run and the weights you lift are just symptoms of physical fitness, evidence that you’re fit, but not useful in themselves afterward. But if you transform your note-taking into a deep thinking practice, you get to keep the actual output, the written insights, the connections, the developed thoughts, and use them again and again later on. The notes you take will be the raw material for reports, books, podcasts, and the many outputs a knowledge worker must produce. On top of that, the more you build your Zettelkasten, the better it will support you during your deep thinking practice. A compounding effect will create a huge updraft to elevate you.

Most people can evaluate the quality of their input after a session. Very few people are wrong about their focus and commitment. The struggle is more about finding and keeping a direction of work to be effective. The number of notes, together with their quality and your session, is a good metric for your efficiency. But you can surely miss out on working on material that helps us achieve our goals.

This is where safeguards come into play.

Keep a good information diet. Evaluate each source on its quality and relevance/utility towards your actual goals. Reject the idol of being well-read. Typically, it is toxic intellectualism in disguise. The people who are typically interested in the Zettelkasten are highly open and curious. This leads to a lack of focus and direction. The Zettelkasten Method won’t solve this problem. No system will solve the problem. You will always be able to store and acquire more sources than you can read, and you can always read more sources than you can process.

The solution is to be ruthless in filtering the sources that you actually consider reading. Here are some example methods on how I filter resources:

• Rarely do I acquire a resource unless it’s recommended to me by a trusted authority. This is another reason why I love processing books: I read them for their bibliography. Each source was at least valuable enough to the author that it made it into the body of references.
• If I get a good impression of an author, I tend to read more of their books. After reading Nassim Taleb’s Antifragile, I read Skin in the Game and The Black Swan directly afterwards. Typically, most authors are quickly sufficiently exploited if you read a couple of books. I read, for example, three or four books by Csíkszentmihályi. Now, I will only read his scientific articles, since I felt that after the third book, I didn’t get anything new from him.
• A source being classical literature is also a good indicator. If a source is around for a long time, it is for a reason.

I am using the Barbell Method of Reading. If you don’t know this method, make sure to read this article after this one. The Barbell Method of reading means you carefully yet swiftly read your sources, highlighting and marking any section worth a second look. During the second read, you will only read and process the highlighted sections.

This will allow you to enjoy reading, while still putting your exploiting head on. Enjoy reading. You don’t need to worry about reading speed, since you will always be able to read way more than you can process anyway.

By reading, you create an ever-growing stack of prepared sources. Process only the best, most relevant, and most useful. Ignore the duration of each source being on the shelf. You owe nothing to the source. Focus on the value that you want to bring to the world.

The purpose of the stack of read and highlighted sources is to fuel your deep thinking sessions. So, you peel from the top, and many sources will never be processed.

Process intentionally. One of the primary sources of ineffectiveness is the lack of intention. You can’t just put something in your Zettelkasten and expect something magical to happen for you. Before you process any source, you should develop a clear set of intentions:

• What is the structure that you want to build in your Zettelkasten for which the source provides the raw material?
• What is the learning result, the change of your mind, that you want to achieve by processing the source?
• What is the project or area of responsibility that you support by processing the source?

Review how I prepared both reading and processing of the book Effective Note-Taking by Fiona McPherson to get inspiration. But if needed, throw your plan out of the window.

Organize your workflow to make room for lateral thinking and still stay on track. If you follow your in-the-moment inspiration, you will be more efficient. It shouldn’t be any surprise that riding the wave of inspiration will increase your output. However, this may lead you away from what is most effective for your goals.

One strategy is to make room for both modes of working. For a while, this was my weekly schedule:

• Four out of six mornings were dedicated to my main project. I focused my efforts on moving my major project forward, and getting distracted was considered a failure.
• Two of the six mornings were dedicated solely to processing a book. I chose the book based on my interest and the inspiration I felt when I picked it from my stack of read and highlighted books. The goal was to push my mind to its limits, even if it meant deviating from the book’s topic. The book worked as my rail guard and a reminder not to deviate too much. Having the book on the table was a good enough reminder to come back to my temporary passion project.

These are some of my strategies to align my Zettelkasten work with my goals and avoid making it a hobby project.

All these strategies share a common goal: making the commitment to each idea make perfect sense.

If I set up my workflow perfectly, the commitment to the idea that I am working on is the best action that I can take. Whenever I process an idea and already have doubts that full commitment might not be worth it, I consider this a mistake. It depends on whether this mistake occurred despite my best efforts to provide the best possible ideas for processing. No system is perfect. Therefore, mistakes will happen.

However, if I didn’t choose the source carefully, didn’t do a good job of highlighting, or wasn’t intentional enough, I made an error that left me not confident enough to put my everything into the idea.

The goal is to spend the most amount of time with S-tier ideas:

Review the Complete Guide to Atomic Note-Taking for the full context of this tier list

Obviously, this isn’t possible. This is why an autoregulating way of working your way to the essence of the idea is at the heart of the Zettelkasten Method. The strategies I presented to you aim to filter ideas so you increase the likelihood of investing your resources in higher-tier ideas.

What’s the verdict then? Measuring your creative output is not only possible but beneficial when done right. The daily note count can serve as a powerful tool for building and maintaining a deep thinking practice, but only if you respect the three pillars:

1. Never treat the note count as an end in itself
2. Allocate resources first, measure outcomes second
3. Never sacrifice quality for quantity

The real measure of success isn’t the number in your counter. It’s whether you’re consistently showing up to wrestle with ideas that matter. The note count is simply a thermometer. It tells you if your deep thinking practice is running at the right temperature.

Think of it this way: a runner doesn’t become fit by obsessing over their weekly miles. They become fit by consistently putting on their shoes and running with good form. The mileage just confirms they’re doing the work. Similarly, your daily note count confirms you’re investing time and energy into deep thinking. The notes themselves are a valuable byproduct: raw material you can use repeatedly in your knowledge work.

The key insight is that creativity becomes quantifiable when you measure the inputs (time, energy, attention) rather than trying to quantify the mysterious creative output itself directly. The note count is your proxy metric, your evidence that you’re feeding your creative practice.

So yes, set that daily note goal, but only after you’ve built the infrastructure that makes each note worth writing. Filter your sources ruthlessly, process intentionally, and organize your workflow to support both focused project work and lateral exploration. When these systems are in place, the note count becomes what it should be: a reliable indicator that you’re doing the deep work that matters.

The Zettelkasten doesn’t care about your note count. It cares about the quality of thinking you put into it. Feed it well, and it will compound your creative capabilities far beyond what any single metric can capture.