1a4 - Rise of the note maker
# Build notes that grow in value over time
Most people take ==“just-in-time” notes.== They take them for a specific short-term purpose—like a test or a project. When the milestone concludes, the notes lose their value. Let’s call this ==“Churn and Burn”.== Most of us grew up with these habits ingrained in us.
In contrast, the Note Maker ==“knows and grows”.== They don’t just take notes; they make notes. Through the process of note-making, your note library starts to grow more valuable over time.
Now apply the Compound Effect:
Making quality notes + consistency + time = RADICAL VALUE CREATED
In this way, your notes act as an evolving and contributing library of insights that you take with you throughout your life—across projects, careers, and decades. And it all happens from the tiny habits around building tiny links that over time go on to become a major fortune of ideas.
No sane person looks at an account with compound interest and asks, “could you stop it from compounding please?”
So why do that with one of the most valuable assets you possess: your thoughts?!
# Linking is thinking
What is a link between two notes? ==It’s a relationship.== It means something. When you link two notes, you build a new relationship. And it forces a unspoken conversation:
“How are these two notes related, in what way, and why?”
Your mind experiences a marked increase in “Thought Collisions”. Through these thought collisions (not an official term…yet) you deepen and enrich your understanding.
Regarding “Thought Collisions”
Let’s let Cognitive Science catch up in a decade or two to quantify this, but in the meantime, let’s not wait to take advantage of it.
==Linking is Thinking. ==
# Curiosity builds real value (if you let it)
If something interests you, it’s not a waste of time to develop your ideas on it. If you have the enthusiasm, lean into it. Build up your understanding. Because the truth is: you’re building hidden value.
The reason it is sometimes hard to see is because it might not be immediately useful. It might not help you with your task list. But the world changes pretty fast, and if you’re not expanding your set of skills, you’ll become obsolete. You never know when the next pandemic hits and wipes out your job. What’s your Plan B? Will your task manager save you then?
Suddenly all your note-making gives you something priceless: Options. You quite possibly have developed the option to pivot in your profession or change careers. In this way, those who wander, those who let their curiosity guide them from time to time—they actually make themselves more future proof, just like their notes.
“Not all those who wander are lost." (J.R.R. Tolkien)
# Thinking is inherently valuable
When did we lose our way? When did “getting things done” become our guiding light? When did the Destination swallow up the joy of the Journey?
Linking, Thinking, Learning, Writing, Developing, Creating…These activities can’t help but produce inherent feelings of joy and meaning.
You can be a professional and still spend time wandering, and wondering, just for the sake of it.
Do not underestimate a mind enriched with developed ideas and defined values.