AAda Ng
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EssaysWhy I stopped highlighting PDFs

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ShelfNotes on How to Take Smart NotesRereading As We May ThinkOn The Craft of Research

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Essays

Public pages from Ada Ng. If it would not be said in a room, it is not here.

  • #essay 4
  • #books 3
  • #method 3
  • #reading 3
  • #transformers 3
  • #attention 2
  • #claim 2
  • #garden 2
  • #history 2
  • #literature 2
  • #architecture 1
  • #devonthink 1
  • #moc 1
  • #publishing 1
  • #retrieval 1
  • #structure 1
  • #trails 1
  • #zettelkasten 1
  • 2 Sep 2026

    Why I stopped highlighting PDFs

    Highlighting a PDF feels like work. It is filing. A year later I cannot recover the thought, only the yellow. The method The method I actually use: kind: fleeting → same d

    • #essay
    • #method
    • #garden
  • 28 Aug 2026

    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 fil

    • #essay
    • #reading
    • #books
  • 12 Aug 2026

    Rereading As We May Think

    Bush wanted the trail — the path a mind actually took through a library — to be as durable as the documents. Most “personal knowledge” software stores the documents and throws away

    • #essay
    • #reading
    • #books
    • #history
  • 4 Sep 2026

    On The Craft of Research

    Still reading. Booth’s move is the one I needed before quals: a topic is not a question, a question is not a claim. I am using the book as a template for the thesis map: - Topic —

    • #essay
    • #reading
    • #books

Claims

  • Attention is a routing function
  • The residual stream is the state
  • Permanent notes must stand alone
  • Maps of content
  • See also is a cheap form of insight
  • The Memex trail
  • Publish the garden, keep the compost

IN THIS SPACE

  • Why I stopped highlighting PDFs