Links Only Matter When You Think About Them

Introduction

This article is the text version of the previous Walnut Pie live broadcast, which is better combined with the live broadcast replay.

This article will first review the evolution history of my notes, and take a look at what a good note-taking software needs to be from the ever-changing note formats. Then let’s discuss the relationship between the card box note-taking method and double-chain note-taking software. Finally, a reading and writing workflow combining methods and tools will be introduced.

The evolution history of my notes

The evolution history of my notes can be divided into four stages. At the beginning, I continued to use the very traditional handwritten paper and pen records, but the paper and pen records cannot be retrieved quickly. So I wanted to digitize my notes, so I turned to using iPad to handwrite electronic records, hoping to solve the problem of retrieving content with the help of software. During subsequent practice, I found that handwriting was too inefficient and not suitable for following the teacher's progress in class, so I began to look for more efficient recording software. Marginnote, a software that can outline and then organize very easily, appeared in my field of vision. It was indeed very fast to record key content when I first started using it, but it gave me the illusion that I learned it by highlighting the text. This illusion lasted for a very long time. Too much pursuit of efficient results will ignore the process of learning and understanding. In order to be able to balance efficient recording and understanding of learning, I chose note-taking software that requires typing. Typing can be more efficient than handwriting, and it can also help with understanding better than just sketching text. Later, I learned about two-way links. Writing notes is like an investment. You can continuously reuse previous notes and find new connections at the same time, instead of discarding them after writing them.

The process from paper notes to electronic notes solves the problem of retrieval. From handwritten records to typed records, it solves the problem of efficient recording while retaining the necessary difficulty of understanding the content. Double-chain notes can help the notes retain their value, and can also find more internal connections through links.

Card Box Notes and Double Chain Notes

Card Box Notes and Double Chain Notes are often discussed together so that many people confuse them. However, before proceeding to the following discussion, it is necessary to clarify the relationship between these two terms. Two-way linking is a modern form of technology, and cardbox note-taking is a method for writing. To implement the card box note-taking method, you may need to use a two-way connection, but using a two-way link does not necessarily mean that the card box note-taking method is used. The following discussion will focus on how to use two-way linked note-taking software to implement the card box method.

The purpose of taking notes

Before taking notes, you need to think about what is the purpose of taking notes? This is a very important question, and the answer to this question largely determines what software to choose and what method to use. There are many purposes for taking notes. If the purpose of taking notes is to record what groceries you need to buy tomorrow, then there is no need for any methodology or any complicated note-taking software. You only need to use the memo that comes with your phone and computer, which can meet all needs. On the other hand, if you see a note-taking methodology, you also need to think about the purpose of this methodology.

The purpose of the card box note-taking method

The purpose of the card box note-taking method is very clear to help thinking and writing. However, the vast majority of people use double-chain notes not for writing. It may be for personal knowledge management or to record academic notes. There are actually only a few people who actually use writing as a purpose. Only by knowing the purpose of this method can you realize the significance of each of its function settings. These function settings are all designed to serve this purpose. The best results can only be achieved when the purpose of personal note-taking matches the purpose of the methodology.

The most typical example of mismatch between personal purpose and method purpose is to mistakenly regard double links as wiki links. Especially when taking notes about names of people or notes about defining concepts, I open backlink to view unlinked mentions, and find notes with many potential links. I connect all the potential links, and then open the map to take a look. I am very satisfied when I see the intricate map. This was also the mistake I made when I first started using DualLink note taking software. At that time, the purpose of using Obsidian was for academic notes, so there were a lot of concepts. These concepts may have been used throughout this course and would be mentioned in various places. This method will cause your notes to have a lot of links, but the result is that most of the links are meaningless links without thinking. This is not to criticize the above method. If the initial purpose is to build a personal wiki, then this method is acceptable. As mentioned earlier, two-way linking is a technology that can be used to implement the card box note-taking method and can also be used to implement a personal wiki.

Link type

It is very normal for this problem to occur. On the one hand, the current double-chain notes have turned multiple link types into one method for simplicity. At the same time, most software developers do not think about the method behind this. Software developers only saw that users liked this feature, so they chose to follow suit and add this feature. This is why there are so many homogeneous double-chain note-taking software on the market. On the other hand, many new users do not fully understand the purpose of the card box note-taking method, so they do not know why the function of the method is served.

To understand the card box note-taking method, you need to go back and look at the four link types in the card box note-taking method: topic index link, forward and backward logical link, card content link, and card encoding link.

The purposes behind the above four methods are different, which is why you must think carefully before using double chains. The purpose of the topic index is to make a rough topic classification when adding new cards. It is also to observe the clustering effect of a certain topic and to quickly discover the connections between notes under the same topic. The logical links between individual notes are so that you can find the upper and lower logic when using the notes to make output. When you have upper and lower logic for each note, the output is just a process of organizing and modifying according to the logic of the notes. The links on the card content are links that jump out of the current note's logical chain or topic to discover relationships under different topics. The coding of notes shows the thought process of a discovery for easy review later.

Necessary difficulty

The above method was limited by Luhmann's era and seemed a bit cumbersome. So now that technology has developed, can the above link method be achieved more easily? The answer is that a certain degree of necessary difficulty still needs to be maintained while taking advantage of the convenience brought by technology. Nowadays, there are too many technologies that bring convenience. You can highlight the information you want on various websites and automatically synchronize it to note-taking software. You can also use software to help discover potential links and quickly link them with one click. However, this convenience will bring an illusion. By highlighting the content of the article, you will think you understand the content. Using the software to find undiscovered links will create more links, and the map will look more complex, which will give you great satisfaction. The convenience of technology brings convenience and automation, but the consequence of this convenience is that if you do not think about the relationship behind each link, then the double chain will become a wiki. This process of thinking about relationships is to increase the necessary difficulty of taking notes. The more difficult it is to record, the easier it will be to recall.

In Luhmann's time, there was no note-taking software to help him quickly find possible potential links, so he needed to think about the possible connections between the newly created notes and all the notes in the note library. This also required him to be very familiar with his own note library, and recalling it again and again would in turn help him become more familiar with all his notes. There was no copy-paste in Luhmann's time, so when I saw good ideas in the literature, I had to excerpt and paraphrase them myself. Most of the time, we probably just copy and paste and think we have mastered it. I am not criticizing the bad form of double chain. On the contrary, the above four link methods can now be realized using double chain. Double chain brings a convenient way, but double chain integrates almost all the linking methods in the card box into one form, so that if many people don’t know which linking method to use when recording, they will lack a lot of thinking process, or they simply don’t know that more linking methods need to be done.

Workflow

With the above-mentioned in-depth understanding of the card box note-taking method and two-way linking, it will make sense to look at the workflow. The workflow is actually a method, so when you see a method as mentioned before, you also need to think about the purpose of this method. The workflow I introduced is to obtain useful information to aid thinking and writing.

If the steps in the workflow are abstracted, there are roughly four parts. Information is collected and filtered from various information sources, and then useful information is highlighted for further filtering. The filtered useful information needs to be paraphrased by oneself to help understand, and at the same time, it is necessary to think about the connection with existing notes to establish connections. When these notes have a clustering effect due to previously established connections, they can be considered for output.

Filter information

Today there are many ways to obtain information, such as articles, books, videos, podcasts, etc. A service that can integrate information collected from various places is very important. Integrate information using RSS to subscribe to high-quality content of interest. In this way, you can avoid useless information recommended by the algorithm, and you can also integrate and collect interesting content from various platforms.

Filter Highlight

After collecting useful information from various information sources, you need to highlight the important content in the information sources again. Information can be further filtered through highlighting.

Highlight integration

To obtain the highlighted content, you need to integrate these highlights and send them to the note-taking software. Readwise is a service that can integrate these highlights, collect highlighted content from various channels and then import it into a unified note-taking software. Readwise supports a lot of services, and basically all the media forms mentioned above can be fully covered.

Afterwards, you can connect with readwise in note-taking software (obsidian, roamresearch, notice, evernote), and all highlights will be automatically imported into the note-taking software.

If we use a metaphor, this method is very similar to the process of online shopping on various e-commerce websites. Various media information sources are different e-commerce platforms, providing different information products. Readwise is a courier company, and the purchased goods will be distributed by the courier company. In the end, note-taking software was naturally my home.

Information recitation

After obtaining these highlights, if the highlights are not processed, it will be the same as the express delivery that has not been opened, and will not bring any effect. The centerpiece for handling highlighted content is note-taking software. All imported highlighted notes are called reference notes. They are just highlights in the text. The most important step is to process all the highlights. How to deal with it? The answer is to paraphrase. Only through paraphrase can you convert the highlighted content into your own content. After the paraphrase is completed, you need to think about the relationship between the current note and all the notes in the current library.

Integrated output

When the cards have an aggregation effect through continuous connections, you will consider writing. With the logical links between these cards, writing is just a matter of organizing an article based on the logic of these cards.

Why do you need to write? In the past, I had never spontaneously wanted to write except for Chinese language exam compositions. But when I listed the organized notes one by one through links, I found that writing does not seem to be a very difficult task. I just need to follow this logic to organize an article. In the process of writing, you can clarify your thoughts on these notes, and at the same time, you can check whether you fully understand each note. Maybe some notes are lazy when paraphrasing and are not fully understood, but these problems will be exposed when writing. The writing process is also a process of further improving the cards. Only when the content can be completely written out and can be understood by others can you be sure that you have fully understood it. This can be regarded as a certain degree of written Feynman learning method.

Summary

The content of this article actually does not have a very clear focus. It is basically my understanding of the card box note-taking method from theory to practice. There are many points that could be written as separate articles, but due to the need to control the length of the live broadcast at that time, they could only be mixed together. If you want to explore further the content of this article, you can check out the related reading below.