My gawd Ted: you're such a wonderful madman! Thank you for this, and it - and your delightful commenters - make me feel less alone.
Many years ago I went to a stationery store and bought a bunch of black 3x5 index card boxes, later 4x6s. I had a large array of topics that fascinated me, so when I was reading anything and there was an idea…
My gawd Ted: you're such a wonderful madman! Thank you for this, and it - and your delightful commenters - make me feel less alone.
Many years ago I went to a stationery store and bought a bunch of black 3x5 index card boxes, later 4x6s. I had a large array of topics that fascinated me, so when I was reading anything and there was an idea that I saw as linking or valuable or was "dissentual data" or just enriched said topic, I entered it on 4x6 cards, with topics like "Model Agnosticism" or "Acceleration of Information in History" or "The Sociology of Knowledge" or "James Joyce" or "Rhetoric of Humor" or "Dark Matter of Intellectual's Culture." I'll enter title/author/page number and then a few sentences. If I have a book from the library, I'll write much more, because I'll have to return the book.
I end up drawing arrows on a card to link one idea in a book to someone else's book that contains ideas that modulate, disagree with, or seem isomorphic.
Gradually, I saw how all these topics can and will "link" in my mind, which I privately think of as "psycho-logic." Now I know I can pull out a batch of cards and read my notes and sparks go off in my mind: I get ideas. I treat poetry, novels, and non-fiction as one thing. Really interesting ideas can be found anywhere.
One of the things I've learned from this is there are certain authors who I find endlessly interesting, even if hardly anyone seems to have heard of them. It's my own honed-over-years weirdness PLUS the author.
It sounds like you came up with your own version of the system described in Sonke Ahrens's How to Take Smart Notes. I've been reading it but thus far can't visualize how such a system works in practice. How do you decide on your topic headings? How do you decide whether a new note goes under an existing heading or needs a new one? Etc., etc., etc.
Thanks for the interest and questions. And I need to read Sonke Ahren now!
I pick my subject headings simply because at some point I realize I'm totally fascinated by this topic, so whatever my current understanding of it is, I'm going to want to make notes of my responses to my reading "in and around" the topic. Also, I'll get ideas about the topic while in the shower or on a bike ride, and I write those down on 4x6 cards, too. Re-reading the cards makes me clarify some aspects of the topic and leads to further questions. It's almost all intrinsic for me, although I have contributed essays for books in which my cards made writing a long essay easy and fun: it turns out I'd already done tons of "research"!
Your other Q to me: how do I know if something goes under an existing topic heading or if it needs a new one: this has been an endlessly interesting, organic way to learn about my own nervous system and all that stuff Cognitive Scientists like Eleanor Rosch of Berkeley have written on "categorization." I start off thinking "this obviously goes under this topic." At some point, I realize something goes under more than one subject 4x6 card, so I enter the data on both cards. At some point I start thinking about how I've conceptualized something too narrowly or too generally, and I end up thinking about this for a while, and make changes. Because I realize I now "see" topics in a larger dimension. EX: at first I had very many notes on "Intellectuals" but they were under "Sociology of Knowledge." Then I realized there's quite a lot of difference between the two topics: in Phenomenological Sociology, Berger and Luckmann opened up the sociology of knowledge to include everything that's taken as "knowledge" in a culture, which is, in general, not what Intellectuals do. So those notes branched off, in a big way.
Another example: many years ago I made 4x6s for the topic "Drugs". Very quickly I realized my interests weren't the same regarding Pharmaceutical Drugs, psychedelic drugs, cannabis, and alcohol and tobacco. What about addiction? Is TV and social media a drug? Etc! Those cards all splintered into different topics, and it sounds like work, but here I always think about Dr. Samuel Johnson's definition under Lexicographer: "a harmless drudge."
Maybe what I enjoy most about my boxes of index cards with TONS of notes in them: when I read my notes in one category followed by another subject, I'm guaranteed to get interesting dialectical sparks, and see connections I didn't see before.
Sorry my answers were so long, but your questions were good.
If you do read the Ahrens book, you will find a system called the Zettelkasten, created by Niklas Luhmann; it's similar to yours in lots of ways. Although I love paper methods, one advantage of computer-based ones is that you can create your structure after the fact, by adding as many tags to a note as you like. So a note can go in the Drugs, Addiction, and Media categories, and whatever else you might think of later. Ahrens does a great job at explaining this.
John Pope: Oh, now I really want to read Ahrens! And I neglected to mention in earlier comments that I also make notes on my computer: it's way better for linking indexical ideas to material - mostly articles - found online. To write on a 4x6 card: "see 'Human Psychedelic Research: A Historical and Sociological Analysis' from MAPS, 1999"...too cumbersome, even for me, and besides, I can just link the article there.
I realize I might sound kinda nutty to some who read my notes on taking notes here, but honestly, I think it's a BLAST to read and write like this! And thanks to those of you who have responded with helpful comments and questions: it makes me feel a little less alone, as an independent reader/writer/quasi scholar.
If it's nutty, there are a LOT of us nuts out there, comparing note-taking methods, haunting sites like jetpens.com for the right pen/paper/notebook combinations, etc, etc.
I write "nutty" from my actual social position of unaffiliated reader/writer, who lives in a rural area and has very little real-world contact with other intellectuals. I FEEL nutty, even though I know people like Ted Gioia and you exist. I just never meet you guys. The pandemic only added to my feelings of alienation and feeling like a "nut" who reads tabloids, Finnegans Wake, books on rhetoric, and the sociology of science, etc.
That said, I'm still quite happy to read widely and take notes and submit articles. I suspect I'm not an island.
My gawd Ted: you're such a wonderful madman! Thank you for this, and it - and your delightful commenters - make me feel less alone.
Many years ago I went to a stationery store and bought a bunch of black 3x5 index card boxes, later 4x6s. I had a large array of topics that fascinated me, so when I was reading anything and there was an idea that I saw as linking or valuable or was "dissentual data" or just enriched said topic, I entered it on 4x6 cards, with topics like "Model Agnosticism" or "Acceleration of Information in History" or "The Sociology of Knowledge" or "James Joyce" or "Rhetoric of Humor" or "Dark Matter of Intellectual's Culture." I'll enter title/author/page number and then a few sentences. If I have a book from the library, I'll write much more, because I'll have to return the book.
I end up drawing arrows on a card to link one idea in a book to someone else's book that contains ideas that modulate, disagree with, or seem isomorphic.
Gradually, I saw how all these topics can and will "link" in my mind, which I privately think of as "psycho-logic." Now I know I can pull out a batch of cards and read my notes and sparks go off in my mind: I get ideas. I treat poetry, novels, and non-fiction as one thing. Really interesting ideas can be found anywhere.
One of the things I've learned from this is there are certain authors who I find endlessly interesting, even if hardly anyone seems to have heard of them. It's my own honed-over-years weirdness PLUS the author.
It sounds like you came up with your own version of the system described in Sonke Ahrens's How to Take Smart Notes. I've been reading it but thus far can't visualize how such a system works in practice. How do you decide on your topic headings? How do you decide whether a new note goes under an existing heading or needs a new one? Etc., etc., etc.
Deborah:
Thanks for the interest and questions. And I need to read Sonke Ahren now!
I pick my subject headings simply because at some point I realize I'm totally fascinated by this topic, so whatever my current understanding of it is, I'm going to want to make notes of my responses to my reading "in and around" the topic. Also, I'll get ideas about the topic while in the shower or on a bike ride, and I write those down on 4x6 cards, too. Re-reading the cards makes me clarify some aspects of the topic and leads to further questions. It's almost all intrinsic for me, although I have contributed essays for books in which my cards made writing a long essay easy and fun: it turns out I'd already done tons of "research"!
Your other Q to me: how do I know if something goes under an existing topic heading or if it needs a new one: this has been an endlessly interesting, organic way to learn about my own nervous system and all that stuff Cognitive Scientists like Eleanor Rosch of Berkeley have written on "categorization." I start off thinking "this obviously goes under this topic." At some point, I realize something goes under more than one subject 4x6 card, so I enter the data on both cards. At some point I start thinking about how I've conceptualized something too narrowly or too generally, and I end up thinking about this for a while, and make changes. Because I realize I now "see" topics in a larger dimension. EX: at first I had very many notes on "Intellectuals" but they were under "Sociology of Knowledge." Then I realized there's quite a lot of difference between the two topics: in Phenomenological Sociology, Berger and Luckmann opened up the sociology of knowledge to include everything that's taken as "knowledge" in a culture, which is, in general, not what Intellectuals do. So those notes branched off, in a big way.
Another example: many years ago I made 4x6s for the topic "Drugs". Very quickly I realized my interests weren't the same regarding Pharmaceutical Drugs, psychedelic drugs, cannabis, and alcohol and tobacco. What about addiction? Is TV and social media a drug? Etc! Those cards all splintered into different topics, and it sounds like work, but here I always think about Dr. Samuel Johnson's definition under Lexicographer: "a harmless drudge."
Maybe what I enjoy most about my boxes of index cards with TONS of notes in them: when I read my notes in one category followed by another subject, I'm guaranteed to get interesting dialectical sparks, and see connections I didn't see before.
Sorry my answers were so long, but your questions were good.
Thank you for taking the time to respond so thoroughly.
If you do read the Ahrens book, you will find a system called the Zettelkasten, created by Niklas Luhmann; it's similar to yours in lots of ways. Although I love paper methods, one advantage of computer-based ones is that you can create your structure after the fact, by adding as many tags to a note as you like. So a note can go in the Drugs, Addiction, and Media categories, and whatever else you might think of later. Ahrens does a great job at explaining this.
John Pope: Oh, now I really want to read Ahrens! And I neglected to mention in earlier comments that I also make notes on my computer: it's way better for linking indexical ideas to material - mostly articles - found online. To write on a 4x6 card: "see 'Human Psychedelic Research: A Historical and Sociological Analysis' from MAPS, 1999"...too cumbersome, even for me, and besides, I can just link the article there.
I realize I might sound kinda nutty to some who read my notes on taking notes here, but honestly, I think it's a BLAST to read and write like this! And thanks to those of you who have responded with helpful comments and questions: it makes me feel a little less alone, as an independent reader/writer/quasi scholar.
If it's nutty, there are a LOT of us nuts out there, comparing note-taking methods, haunting sites like jetpens.com for the right pen/paper/notebook combinations, etc, etc.
I write "nutty" from my actual social position of unaffiliated reader/writer, who lives in a rural area and has very little real-world contact with other intellectuals. I FEEL nutty, even though I know people like Ted Gioia and you exist. I just never meet you guys. The pandemic only added to my feelings of alienation and feeling like a "nut" who reads tabloids, Finnegans Wake, books on rhetoric, and the sociology of science, etc.
That said, I'm still quite happy to read widely and take notes and submit articles. I suspect I'm not an island.
Good questions Deborah.
"Psycho-logic"--love it! Tx. PG