What 15 years of note-taking taught me [WRAP 197]

Hey Reader, ever notice how your best ideas show up at the worst times?

You're in the shower. Driving. Halfway through a conversation. That's when your brain decides to hand you something brilliant.

But here's where most people get stuck: they write it down, then immediately wonder "What do I do with this now?"

Do I tag it?

File it somewhere?

Build a system around it?

Connect it to other ideas?

So instead of just capturing the thought, you start organizing. Adding friction. And pretty soon, you stop taking notes altogether because it feels like too much work.

Steven Johnson put it perfectly:

I learned this the hard way over 15 years of filling notebooks.

I tried elaborate systems. Four C's for note-taking. Notion databases. Tags and categories and clever organizational schemes. Every time, I'd spend more time managing the system than actually capturing ideas.

What finally worked? Letting go.

Just write it down. Don't organize. Don't tag. Don't connect the dots... yet. That comes later, when you actually have time to think.

Johnson keeps what he calls a Spark File, a chronological list of "hunches" in a Google Doc. No taxonomy. No organization. Every few months, he rereads it and watches old ideas suddenly connect to new projects.

He talks about it with David Perell on How I Write and you can read the original article on Medium. His Substack is great too.

Turns out there's science behind why this works. Research shows that writing by hand activates more interconnected brain regions—movement, vision, memory—than typing does. [1] People who write on paper complete tasks 25% faster than those using digital devices and show stronger brain activity when recalling information later. [2]

The smartest people in the world have been doing this for decades. Niklas Luhmann used his Zettelkasten method to publish 70 books. Sönke Ahrens wrote How to Take Smart Notes around this idea. Tiago Forte teaches Building a Second Brain to thousands.

But you don't need their systems.

You just need to stop organizing and start capturing.

👀 Video to Watch: The Life Changing Magic of Taking Notes

I made a video showing you exactly how I do this, including my pile of 300+ note cards with ideas I've captured over the years. No system. No friction. Just ideas that are still there when I need them.

​Watch: The Simple Note-Taking System That Actually Works​

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📖 Article(s) to Read: The Spark File

Well, I already gave you the Steven Johnson spark file article, you should definitely read that. And there's also Sönke and Tiago's books, check those out—scroll back up for links.

Oh, and you can also read about Ryan Holiday's notecard system—which I think is cool to read about but I'm not putting everything in boxes by topic. But I guess that's why he's Ryan Holiday and I'm Matt Ragland (which I'm fine with btw).

Until next time,

Matt "Capture fast, organize slow" Ragland

[1] Scientific American​

[2] ScienceDaily​