202209091140 Transient notes don't create knowledge

Transient notes do not create knowledge because — by definition — they are not meant to be kept. The notes don't add up to anything after they're taken.¹ We know that 202109060835 Knowledge is constructed and that 202109060845 Knowledge is a heterarchy. Transient notes do not create any of these characteristics and most critically don't connect with each other like 202109091129 Evergreen notes do.

This is not to say that transient notes can't be useful. They certainly help us store information, remember things, and process our ongoing experiences, but they'll never accumulate to create knowledge. In this sense, we can view transient notes as "messy thought" inputs for "neat thought" notes that we'll store and connect in our long term knowledge system.²

Remember that 202209091141 The goal of note-taking is not to be better at taking notes, it's to be better at thinking and we can see how transient notes are not helping us further that goal. As such, 202209091142 Notes are the fundamental unit of knowledge work, definitely not transient notes.