Main sequence notes should be concept oriented ⏳
When writing notes, its best to write them by concept than by book, author, event, project, topic, etc. This way you discover connections across books and domains as you update and link to that note over time (Main sequence notes should be densely linked).
The most straightforward way to write notes is to start a new note for each book, project or topic. When you read another book which discusses the same topic, you write a new note on that book, and in this way, there is no accumulation. Your new notes don’t combine with your old thoughts to form a whole. You just have a bunch of scattered notes on a topic (contra Main sequence notes should be atomic). And its not just about accumulation either. There is also no pressure to synthesize your new ideas on the concept with your prior thoughts about it. This encourages a fragmentary left hemisphere kind of thinking, as the right hemisphere is able to integrate individual aspects of things into a coherent whole whereas the left sees only separate entities.
Connections tend to appear where they’re not quite expected. When arranging notes by concept, you may make surprising links between ideas that came up in very different books. You may have never noticed those books were related before.
References
- Matuschak, Andy. Andy’s Notes.