Can the practice of note-taking make you smarter?

The earth’s atmosphere is full of waves and signals transmitting bits of information from one device to another. This did not exist 100 years ago.

Radio and TV signals have been replaced by Wi-Fi and 4G. The devices of yesteryear existed outside of our personal space. We had control over them. The remote control was in our hands. Not anymore.

We welcomed these smart connected devices into our lives, but have they made us smarter? If yes, at what cost?

We’re creating more information and content than we ever have in our entire history. Access to information has enormous benefits and it has helped us progress as a society, but at an individual level, the information overload has turned into a burden.

We don’t need more information. We need someone to help us make sense of it. Online gurus are filling in that need wherever you look.

What if we can take back the remote control and also have a better way of filtering, tagging, sorting and categorizing the information we receive from multiple places. Can we be mindful of the information we consume so that it actually benefits us in our personal and professional lives?

Note-taking apps on the rise

We have always documented our lives throughout our existence as a species. The earliest form of human documentation dates back to 4th millennium BC. Note-taking or journaling is a habit that has now become necessary for anyone who wants to make the best use of their time and energy.

Software and apps have existed for more than a decade that could technically help you take notes digitally if you wanted. The apps of today though have become smarter, helping you capture information as you’re consuming it, storing it and categorizing it for future retrieval. Some of them use smart linking methods to help you build a powerful and personal wiki.

There are simple note capturing apps like Apple Notes and Google Keep. And there are apps like Evernote and Microsoft OneNote, which have been around for a decade almost, that help you capture and organize information. I’ve used the latter extensively when I was in Grad school. Google Docs has enabled us to document our processes and projects at Pixelmattic over the last 6 years.

But there is something different about the new generation of note-taking and journaling apps.

Notion is a popular multi-purpose personal database app. It combines aspects of lists, documents, spreadsheets and more in the same interface. Think of Google Docs, Trello, Google Keep and Google Sheets combined in one app. You can create a document that has your notes, a spreadsheet, URL embeds, a Kanban board and a To-Do list all in one place. This kind of flexibility however can be overwhelming for new users, but there seems to be an active user base making plenty of tutorials that you can watch to get started.

Evernote is a great multi-platform app that has evolved over the years and currently has more than 200 million users. It has many features, but what I like is the ecosystem of extensions and frictionless capturing of information from any device you’re on. I’ve used this app over the years to primarily store my book notes. I used it earlier this year to capture information on the go. While that part of the app experience was good, I felt the tags and category features to sort and filter content was not advanced.

Roam is probably the most interesting tool I’ve tried in recent times. It looks spartan compared to some of the modern and slick apps, has many points of friction and lacks a true multi-platform app ecosystem. And yet, I find myself investing more and more time into this. Roam has now become my primary note-taking, journaling and To-Do list tool. Roam takes quite the opposite approach when it comes to the UI, offering a basic and functional interface and powerful shortcuts. This simplicity combined with its most useful feature, bi-directional linking, makes it a great tool to build your own personal knowledge base.

Roam Graph — Graph Overview of my connected notes in Roam

“Note-taking is the collection and organization of raw materials for stuff you are building”

Ideas for better note-taking

Quality of input affects the quality of output
Apply a discerning eye to the notes and information you capture. If the quality of raw materials you are sourcing and storing is poor, it will affect the outcomes. Whenever possible, let the notes reflect the idea you have just read about or watched, in your own words.
Categorize and tag information
Maybe in the future you could have your own personal Google that will index, process natural language and give you relevant results instantly. The note-taking tools of today are not there yet. So what you can do is categorize and tag them carefully every time you capture notes that makes it easy for you to retrieve them in the future
Review and reflect
Reviewing the notes periodically and reflecting on them is a great way to not only refresh your memory but also bring back some ideas and thoughts to the top of your mind.
Connect the dots
The ultimate goal of note-taking should be to connect the dots. Collect the dots on the go, tag and store them. When you review and reflect, you should connect the dots for building a bigger picture. Great ideas come about when you bring two disparate thoughts/notes together to create something new.