Notes on How to Take Smart Notes

Ahrens is not a productivity book. It is a book about when thinking happens.

Highlighting, underlining, and dumping quotes into a reference manager all feel like work. They are filing. The work is the sentence you write afterward, in words you would actually say.

Three rules I kept:

1. A fleeting note is a capture. It has a half-life of days.
2. A literature note is a translation of one book or paper, hung off the source so the citation is free. See [@ahrens2017smart].
3. A permanent note is a claim that still makes sense if the book vanished. Title it as a sentence: Permanent notes must stand alone.

The slip-box is a conversation with your past self. If you cannot link a note, it is still compost.

I do not use Ahrens as liturgy. I use it as a filter: would I say this in a seminar? If not, it does not go on this site.

Next: On The Craft of Research.