Nori said my zettelkasten notes look more like mini-essays. First, I dismissed this idea as just a gut reaction to the length and thoroughness of my notes compared to the typically presented notes in the Zettelkasten world.

However, the notion stuck with me, and I came to the conclusion that Nori has a point. The penny has dropped. To make more sense of this notion, I came up with a hierarchy of text, which is based on how an idea is captured, explored, and executed:

1. Idea pointer. A small text, containing just a few sentences to point to an idea, not expressing the idea fully.
2. Atomic Note. A text aiming at presenting the essence of a single idea, sometimes with a little bit of commentary and written-down meta-cognition. Molecular notes are a special variant. Instead of focusing on a single idea, they focus on the structure of a complex idea, leaving the details to the respective atomic notes.
3. Essay. A single train of thought that is typically written to inform your future self or another person. Inform is meant broadly, ranging from straight information transmission to persuasion of the reader. An essay is understood as an act of communication. In a way, it is “thinking in public”, true to the French origin of essayer = “to try”.
4. Article. An article is centered around the idea of a more rigidly structured text than an essay. While essays range widely in intent and style, articles are typically formal and fact-oriented. An article reports finished thinking.
5. Short Book. A short book aims to expand a single idea or single train of thought and exhaust it to some extent.
6. Long Book. A long book aims to exhaust the breadth and/or the depth of a topic or a question. It is either a deep dive or a broader perspective on a topic.

Each text type offers different opportunities when writing. Each text type allows you to process an idea with a particular result and gives you a corresponding learning experience. For this article, I will focus on the first two texts, since we are discussing note-taking here. But the third one, the essay, is of special interest to us.

Why Most Note-Writing Is Ineffective

The idea pointer allows you to point to an idea (duh!). It allows you to capture a vision of an idea. There is a mild learning experience, which is mostly guided by writing down the idea pointer. This helps direct attention to the idea. The idea processing is similar to giving a note a title, which is not surprising. A title is, after all, an idea pointer as well. The difference from a title is that you typically are not restricted by conventions or space, and therefore are free to write multiple sentences.

In a previous article, I labeled notes that contain idea pointers as prompts and the corresponding system as a “prompt machine”. As you point to an idea, it remains unexplored, ununderstood, and unprocessed. You didn’t make the idea your own because you didn’t explore it, didn’t master it, and therefore can’t yet communicate it.

If your notes are idea pointers, they become tasks. This is nice if you want to make your Zettelkasten a prompt machine to help you kick-start your writing process. How well it works depends on your mastery of the topic and your writing ability. In other words, it depends on your preexisting skills and knowledge. But a practice of collecting and connecting idea pointers will not significantly expand your skills and knowledge. If this is the only write-to-think practice, it is better than nothing.

Example of an idea pointer:

# 202302270933 Glassman model for Fitness
#Fitness #Glassmanmodel

According to the Glassman model of fitness, fitness is 
**(1) work capacity over (2) multiple times and (3) movement demands**.

The atomic note aims to capture the complete essence of an idea. This means you go beyond pointing to the idea and actually spell out what it is about. The magic ingredient here is aiming for the essence of the idea. It is a struggle, and in this struggle, you will discover learning and growth.

If you are new to such a practice, it will feel hard. You might feel that this practice is slow. This perception stems mainly from two reasons:

(1) It feels hard because it is hard. Rarely can you put together a working argument without some serious editing. Rewriting other people’s thinking to make it your own is, in itself, a tedious act because writing is tedious. Remember that writing is never just writing. It is writing plus rewriting to get it right. With practice, you will build your skill because rewriting will, to some degree, tell you what does and doesn’t work.

I can write good notes today, not because I just wrote a bunch of notes. I wrote a bunch of notes and later rewrote them because many of them were bad. The skill is built in rewriting because here you will act on your feedback, which is crucial for learning.

(2) It feels slow because you put in more work per idea. I have the temptation to point to Cal Newport’s book Slow Productivity because the core idea is the same. Some processes can’t be rushed. It takes time to make an idea truly your own. You have to sit with it and focus seriously on it. Your idea mastery is directly proportional to the time, energy, and attention that you invest in it.

In today’s age, the solution to cope with the overwhelming information overload is to disengage. Minimally pay attention to each piece of information and take the least effort to make it go away. The gravest symbol of this mindset is the finger flick that keeps the social media feed on the phone scrolling. Other symptoms include highlighting e-books and automatically storing the highlights in an app.

You are trained to avoid paying attention and sitting with information. The reason why sitting with a single idea feels bad is that you act on this conditioning.

Atomic Note-Taking is a specific practice that runs counter to this conditioning. Andy Matuschak says (originally about Evergreen Notes):

Most people don’t seem to take note-writing very seriously as a skill. For some, that’s because they see it as a simple utility (e.g. Most people use notes as a bucket for storage or scratch thoughts). For others, their indifference may arise because they notice that Note-writing practices are generally ineffective.

[S]ome note-writing practices are vastly more effective than others. It’s possible to become much, much more skilled at writing notes, and that skill translates into valuable output. Source (My emphasis)

Andy is spot on. The very note-writing, both the approach and the attitude, of many people isn’t effective. The underlying pattern of this ineffective note-writing style is disengaged capturing. It is pointing to the idea instead of engaging with its essence.

Example of an atomic note:

# 202302270933 Glassman model for Fitness
#Fitness #Glassmanmodel

According to the Glassman model of fitness, fitness is **(1) work
capacity over (2) multiple times and (3) movement demands**.

Each data point represents a test. The area under the curve is the
overall fitness according to the Glassman model.

1. **Work capacity** is the ability to perform mechanical work. That
   is, to move one's body or a load over a given distance.
    * For an explanation of the physiological requirement to perform
      mechanical work, see [[202303111037]]).
2. **Multiple time demand** means that this ability to perform work
   extends multiple load durations.
    * Maximum strength is the time-independent ability to do the
      highest possible mechanical work.[[202303111038]]
    * Explosive power is the ability to do as much work as possible in
      a time window that is too short to develop the full
      force.[[202303111039]]
    * Endurance is the ability to do work against the added resistance
      of fatigue.[[202303111040]]
3. **Various movement demands** means that my work capacity can show
   itself in as many movements as possible.
    * An inventory of the most important movements for training work
      capacity.[[202303111041]]
    * For a reasoned expansion of CrossFit's movement repertoire, see:
      An Extension of CrossFit's Movement Repertoire by Movement
      [[202303201052]]

Notice the concept of molecular notes: Molecular notes deal with complex ideas, leaving the details to linked atomic ideas. Imagine creating a note about your hometown. You can capture its essence (perhaps its feel or unique characteristic), but you can go into more detail for each district. The city note still deals with this one idea of the city. But the unique features of the districts are ideas in their own right.

Technically, molecular notes are not trains of thought because there is no sequence.

You Won’t Build Knowledge if You Don’t Struggle

The French origin of essayer means “to try”, and it is the reason why I am very comfortable now with Nori’s characterization of my notes looking like mini-essays. Each of my notes is a serious struggle to get to the idea. The external manifestation of this struggle is the words.

The aim of an essay is to convey a train of thought. It is to get from point A to point B. With an essay, you struggle to find the way.

But what if you don’t have any direction? Or what if you don’t know where you should go? The answer is: At least try. Start running, get moving, and figure out the direction along the way.

This is what I am doing in this video demonstration of atomic note-taking:

The levels of atomicity are meant to provide you with good directions for each individual note. When you identify the knowledge building block, the direction is clear, and you now have something to try.

The struggle is the very reason I am confident in saying that, even in the event of the total destruction of my Zettelkasten, it would still be 100% worth it to rebuild it. Imagine building a company, only for some catastrophe to destroy it. The skills and identity you build alongside your company are never lost; they are kept forever.

What’s the verdict then? Write mini-essays. Do the struggle. Build serious knowledge.