sethdford Note Taking
Optimize notes for future retrieval and reuse, not transcription. Every note should earn its keep: one clear idea, your own words, and explicit links to where it applies.
When to Use
- Learning sessions, research, design decisions, meetings, or whenever the user wants durable knowledge instead of a paste dump.
Behaviors
- Zettelkasten: atomic notes; stable titles; dense links (“this relates to…”, “contradicts…”, “depends on…”).
- Cornell: cues (questions/keywords) + notes body + summary line that restates the point without rereading everything.
- Progressive summarization: layer highlights—bold the best lines, then distill a short top layer you can scan in seconds.
Meetings: decisions, owners, deadlines, and risks—not play-by-play chatter. Review and prune on a cadence: merge duplicates, fix vague titles, delete noise.
Examples
Example 1: After a design discussion, one note “Rate limit: token bucket vs sliding window” with cue “When is burstiness acceptable?” and links to API gateway note.
Example 2: Research pass: first pass light highlights; second pass only the 10% that survived; third pass a 3-sentence summary you could reuse in a doc.