Zettelkasten and Evergreen notes understanding → vision → benefit
“there’s a lot someone doesn’t know anything about precisely because she photocopied a text; she has given herself in to the illusion of having read the text already.” — How to Write a Thesis - Umberto Eco
It is tempting to just collect information and add it to a PKM (especially when automated!). Obsidian’s graph looks really nice with more pages. But collecting in such a manner might feel good, but it is the wrong kind of dopamine rush. collectors fallacy helps with neither understanding nor learning.
If one does find something interesting but has no time to process it now, a solution is adding it to the inbox Writing Inbox, and process it later For information to become knowledge it should be processed.
New information should be incorporated, or linked with old information, otherwise it is of very limited use The value of a permanent note is in its links. See: ^everworkflow
Literature notes
The Collector’s Fallacy • Zettelkasten Method People collect articles and bookmarks because it makes them feel good. This is not productive, better is a habit of slower but careful study and incorporation.
- Bookmarking, or adding markdown versions of an article to your graph gives the illusion of working, but in itself is not useful
- We must choose what to study, not postpone it, we cannot study everything
- The reason people do this is that it is addictive, the dopamine rush of productivity addiction
- We need to make a habit out of reading effectively, thus comprehending and incorporating ideas in your own understanding
- Quality notes are self-supportive, no longer need the underlying material atomic note
Fleeting notes
Merely collecting notes is an ineffectual, addictive illusion. We should have a habit of taking effective atomic notes, and we need to assimilate the encompassed knowledge in our own thinking
Because ‘to know about something’ isn’t the same as ‘knowing something’ — Christian, The Collector’s Fallacy
- Just knowing about a thing is less than superficial since knowing about is merely to be certain of its existence, nothing more. Ultimately, this fake-knowledge is hindering us on our road to true excellence. Until we merge the contents, the information, ideas, and thoughts of other people into our own knowledge, we haven’t really learned a thing. We don’t change ourselves if we don’t learn, so merely filing things away doesn’t lead us anywhere.
- collecting gives the impression of knowledge gathering, but it is not assimilating knowledge in ourselves. It is collecting for secondary reasons.
- The copies grow to be an alibi, says :
> “there’s a lot someone doesn’t know anything about precisely because she photocopied a text; she has given herself in to the illusion of having read the text already.” — Umberto Eco, “How to Write a Thesis”
- (That’s from page 162 of the German translation; I translated the quote from there since it precedes the publication of the official English translation.)
- Why? Photocopying is self-rewarding and potentially addictive. That’s because we are rewarded with sheets of paper for pressing the ‘copy’ button, and we’re rewarded promptly.
- copying is an addictive illusion, a short term solution → like social media it gives a dopamine rush of productivity
- Collecting, just as Eco warned us, does not magically increase our knowledge. We have to read a text effectively to assimilate its ideas and learn from it. Reading effectively means the text changes our knowledge permanently. Only when we learn from it and begin to work with the ideas it presents. We need to extract what’s inside and write things down.
- Reading effectively (eg for reading to have an effect) means assimilating ideas (add them to our framework of thought) and learning from it (use it as a basis of further enquiry) q
- Taking notes thoroughly means you can rely on your notes alone and rarely need to look up a detail in the original text. > I rarely consult secondary sources again. If I have to do so, it means that I did not do the job right the first time. – MK, of “Taking Note Now” - Full(er) quote: What makes my approach different from that of most others I read is that I take notes of the papers and books I read, and do not keep the original PDFs of secondary sources, but just refer to my notes. I rarely consult secondary sources again. If I have to do so, it means that I did not do the job right the first time. - good notes are atomic, they don’t need supporting material anymore q
- If we train ourselves to process photocopied texts soon, we get a feeling of how much we can really handle.
- There is too much information so we must filter basing on our needs and possibilities q
- Shorter cycles of research, reading, and knowledge assimilation are better than long ones. With every full cycle from research to knowledge assimilation, we learn more about the topic. When we know more, our decisions are more informed, thus our research gets more efficient.
- To form a habit, you have to set yourself actionable limits and keep score.
- To get started, do research for one hour and no second more. Process the collected material until the stack is empty.
- Then do a quick review of the cycle: how well did it go? Did you learn something new? Was it too much or too little you found in the amount of time?
Afterwards, change the time limit a bit if you think it wasn’t appropriate.
- effective reading should be a habit of reading, digesting and incorporating the material in our own thinking q
title: Collecting information that is not processed and incorporated feels good, but has no long term benefits date: 2023-04-12 aliases:
Topic tags
tags:
undeveloped seedling growing evergreen
status: “undeveloped” created: 2023-04-15T22:15:15+02:00 updated: 2023-04-16T15:37:43+02:00
Literature notes
Fleeting notes
collectors fallacy Fear of missing out