[To-Do's Day] Developing Notes into Working Material

Hey Reader,

I received a few emails after last week’s intro to note-taking, asking for more details on the capture methods. I use a few and will list below, but I want to emphasize an important point. If you don’t need additional context, skip past the sponsor shout-out and start at Expansion vs Summarization.

Tiago Forte talks about this in his book Building a Second Brain. I really liked how unstructured Tiago’s recommendations are, which leaves room for individual flexibility in the note capture stage. You can watch my review of BASB on YouTube.

Another important realization I had from both Tiago and Professor Ahrens’s books are that not all captured notes are meant to be used. They are captured because they spark something in you and may prove useful in the future. With that in mind, here are a few ways I capture notes.

• Bullet Journal or Field Notes pocket notebook
• Notion web clipper and iPhone widget
• Direct to specific Notion page or database
• Readwise highlights to Notion

Notion has become my full second brain at this point. Everything I have a note for ends up in Notion in a few different capture pages, making it easier for me to search in the future. Which leads nicely into the note-taking strategies we’re covering today.

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Expansion vs Summarization

The simplest way to think about how to start developing your captured notes into working ideas is expansion vs summarization. Expansion starts with a small note or idea, like a seed, allowing you to “expand” it to a bigger piece of text. Summarization works the opposite way. You take a series of book highlights, like a block of stone, and chip away until it’s a useful piece of text.

The 3 C’s of Developing Notes into Ideas

This is a concept we will cover in more detail on the April 25th webinar, but it’s become my checklist for developing a captured note into a working idea. There are actually 6 C’s if you want to get really deep, but these 3 are the key milestones of action.

1. Capture: discussed at length above and last week.
2. Customize: the “hard work” of developing a note into a personally relevant idea.
3. Communicate: curating and sharing the note as standalone working material.

The other 3 C’s are critique, context, and curate - we will cover those in the webinar.

The Elements of a “Finished” Note

Now that you know the process of developing a captured note into a piece of working material, it’s important to know the elements of what this “finished” note involves. Ideally, at this stage of the note-taking process the idea can know stand on its own as plug-and-play piece of content. Sure, it may need a little touch up that makes it more relevant to the larger email, presentation, sales letter, or school announcement, but 95% of the work is done.

In my experience, these 4 elements are present in almost every helpful note I’ve ever written:

1. Quality writing: it’s not scribbled notes in my bullet journal.
2. Unique to me: what does this book highlight mean to me, personally?
3. Individual ideas: one core idea per note, i.e. atomic instead molecular.
4. Processed for the future: categorized and quickly accessible to future me.

This is how we build a personal knowledge base, a second brain, a “slip box” or "zettelkasten as Niklas Luhman" called it. Luhman was the OG of organized note-taking and well worth a deep dive on his methods for capturing, customizing, and communicating his ideas.

Next week we will discuss more on refining and developing notes into working ideas. I’m planning to have a new video for email subscribers only (like you) to do more showing than telling.

In the meantime, you can take my 5 day email course about how to turn your ideas into action. Click here to get the first lesson and you'll be done before next week's WRAP is delivered!

Thanks for your email comments and replies, if there’s something specific you need a little more help with, please write me back and share.

See on you Saturday for the Weekend WRAP!

Matt

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