Zettelkasten and Evergreen notes productivity → consistency
Colors, placement on the page and colors can convey ideas, or meta-data about a note. Consistency is important for clarity.
The opposite is also true, inconsistency adds noise and distraction, sometimes even confuses to the point of misunderstanding a text.
Having a beautiful work environment reduces friction and improves joy, even understanding. Elegant shapes and beauty promote understanding This is why a decent theme, and using colors and emojis make note taking better (obsidian theming).
Obsidian specific: Callouts are a simple and consistent way to add meta-data. Workspaces can be used to create specific layouts for specific tasks.
My rules for colors and highlights: Colors and taxonomies
Literature notes
Moved: ✂︎ Twitter low-tech emojis for easier scanning
Umberto Eco states in How to Write a Thesis that you should use different colors for different questions, topics, points of view, and he says you should mark passages in color for revisiting the text. 1 According to Eco, it’s useful to color-code your marks and reflect this code in your notes. ⤴️ – Making Proper Marks in Books • Zettelkasten Method
Transmission of information from the computer to the user increases so dramatically that the tedium of wading through written reports is replaced with a higher level of intellectual activity – depth of understanding, creative interaction with the data and conceptual problem solving the use of color … significantly affected the subjects’ ability to recall the information presented… – gremillion.jenkins_1981
inconsistency does not confuse meaning, it will distract many readers and thereby interfere with the reading process inconsistency adds a small quantity of “noise” to a communication system – farkas_1985a