Zettelkasten and Evergreen notes engagement dopamine
Quoting or copying is passive, more about personal gratification then about note-taking. Use your own words, think about the contents of a note.
First (re)write (summarise) the idea in your own words, as succinct and clear as possible (Notes need to be atomic because all external context is lost) Next, link ideas, there is understanding in the combination of ideas Revisit and enhance notes, Our understanding broadens and gets strengthened by adding nodes and connections to our ZK . This can be done by adding a note into a spaced repetition system (use a spaced-repetition plugin for writing)
The generation effect is at play here; by writing our own notes, instead of copying (potentially better!) notes, but the end-result is that we better remember (and understand) the subject.
A quote is an idea without context. An idea without context is ill-defined, and cannot be used highlighting is a dangerous technique to separate important points from others. It is too easy to ignore main points hypomnema
Literature notes
Specifically, when you’re reading, you ought to be writing your own little summaries of the most important things you find. When I’m reading scientific papers, I often try to summarize the most useful findings in my own voice. This is, again, because it makes it far speedier to re-encounter this info months later. But it’s also that the act of explaining to myself what the heck it is I’ve just read helps me really internalize the info. But it is a lot of work. When I’m reading and clipping out key passages, it slows me down a lot. But this is the whole point of what those cognitive psychologists explained to me, years ago. To turn notes into knowledge, you need to do some active work. –🥫How I Take Notes When I’m Doing Research | by Clive Thompson | Medium
The digital Zettelkasten, freed from physical limitations, offers a unique feature: You can flesh out ideas, look at them from different directions, apply different ways of analysis, and use theoretically infinite methods to explore the idea on a single note. –🥫 Why the Single Note Matters • Zettelkasten Method
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