202109091131 Notes should surprise us

If reading and writing notes doesn't lead to surprises, what's the point?¹

That question may seem like an innocuous one. Of course there's a point to writing things down so you don't forget them, but we're talking about 202109091129 Evergreen notes here. Remember that 202209091140 Transient notes don't create knowledge.

If we only wanted to understand things in a specific context, there'd be no point to writing notes and keeping them over time. We'd use the idea and then be done with it.

These surprises are the very reason for our principles of note taking.

• 202209091130 Notes should be atomic so that we can see the breadth and depth of our surprises through the connections we make and the connections we don't make.
• 202109091134 Notes should be concept-oriented so that they can be densely linked and show us how a concept can cross our preconceived boundaries of what it relates to.
• 202109091132 Notes should be densely linked so that we see surprising connections that we might have missed otherwise.
• 202109091133 Notes should associate organically so that we're not imposing a structure, instead being surprised by one.