Emergent Note Taking: What Ants Can Teach Us About Notes

// RESOURCES

Emergence, by Steven Johnson: https://amzn.to/3LlgLn7

@VisualPKM 's video - Book on a Page about Emergence: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4GTh0A6fp7U

Visual atomic note taking with ExcaliBrain: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GqrczIftYyA

// TIMESTAMPS

00:00 Intro

00:48 What is emergence?

03:22 Writing notes you'll find

05:40 L - Location

06:56 A - Alphabet/Aliases

07:41 T - Time

08:48 C - Category

09:35 H - Hierarchy

11:00 Different ways to find your notes

13:21 Lightning rods of thought using Dataview

18:48 Exploring your notes using ExcaliBrain

21:14 Folders, bookmarks, tags, and links

23:18 Learn in public


// ABOUT ME

Site: https://nicolevanderhoeven.com

Mastodon: https://pkm.social/@nicole

My work at Grafana Labs: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL-1Nqb2waX4WfNnD52U1Spo2z47yrIjwo

// APPS I USE

// GEAR

https://nicolevanderhoeven.com/gear/

// WANT TO SUPPORT ME?

❤️ Join my Patreon and get my sample vault with templates: https://patreon.com/nicolevdh

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Note: Some of the links above are affiliate links, which means I may get a small percentage when you sign up using those links. To see how I decide what to promote in this way, check out my Ethics Statement: https://nicolevanderhoeven.com/ethics/

Concepts

Name Weight
LATCH Weight: 8
Category organizing in Obsidian Weight: 1
Hierarchy organizing in Obsidian Weight: 1
Alphabet organizing in Obsidian Weight: 0
Location organizing in Obsidian Weight: 0
Time organizing on Obsidian Weight: 0

Transcript

Intro

0:00

- Sometimes when I take notes,

0:01

I do so top down.

0:03

Something comes up at work or I'm assigned a topic,

0:06

and I go out and specifically research that topic.

0:09

My preferred way of working though is bottom up,

0:12

meaning I like to just take notes

0:13

on whatever I'm interested in at the time

0:16

without any regard for what I'm gonna do with them later,

0:19

and then I make notes based on stuff I already have

0:22

based on notes that organically

0:24

cluster around certain topics.

0:27

If you're like me though, when you hear that,

0:29

you think that sounds nice in theory, but in reality,

0:33

how do you actually identify those clusters?

0:36

In this video I'm gonna talk about how you can go

0:38

from a bunch of just random notes to actually

0:42

being able to spot patterns emerging among them,

0:45

and being able to make something useful out of them.

What is Emergence?

0:48

"Emergence" is a book that I read recently

0:50

by someone named Steven Johnson.

0:52

Emergence is effectively the evolution

0:55

of a whole beyond its parts, in unexpected ways.

1:00

It's when new and complex behaviors arise in a system

1:03

as a whole that none of the individual parts exhibited.

1:07

For example, a single ant

1:08

on its own is a pretty basic creature.

1:11

It is very rudimentary in its thought processes.

1:14

It basically has a job,

1:16

and it's just trying to do it to the best of its abilities.

1:19

Each ant is trying to do its best,

1:22

and yet when you put them all together, they evolve

1:25

into an ant colony that can make complex decisions

1:29

and move and cooperate

1:31

in strange ways that none of the individual ants displayed.

1:36

I think that the whole concept

1:38

of ant queens is kind of misleading,

1:41

because ant leaders don't exist

1:43

in the same way that human leaders do.

1:46

There is no one queen or group

1:48

of aunts that are actually making all the decisions

1:52

for the colony.

1:53

And yet somehow, somebody's making decisions,

1:57

or they're making decisions individually

1:59

that just seem to emerge as cooperation.

2:03

Another example is natural selection.

2:05

While no one animal is trying to consciously manipulate

2:09

its genetic code to make its species to be more

2:12

than what it is, over a very long period of time,

2:15

species evolve and evolve in such a way

2:18

as to improve the chances

2:21

of survival of that entire species as a whole.

2:24

These behaviors just seem to arise

2:26

without anyone intending them,

2:29

without anyone deliberating or strategizing on them.

2:32

This is the concept of emergence, the strange quality

2:36

of organized, but complex systems being able to develop

2:40

in ways we can't always expect or comprehend.

2:44

Now, stay with me.

2:45

What if we apply this concept of emergence to note-taking?

2:49

What would emergent note-taking look like?

2:51

Well, it would look

2:52

like a system where we could combine different notes

2:56

in unexpected ways that create something more

3:00

than what the notes were about.

3:02

That would mean rethinking the way that we take notes,

3:05

and rethinking the way that we combine them.

3:08

So here are some ways to facilitate emergence.

3:11

In general,

3:12

there are two ways that we can encourage ideas to emerge

3:15

from our notes.

3:16

The first is to write notes that we will find

3:18

and the second is to try different ways to find notes.

Writing Notes You'll Find

3:22

Writing notes that you'll find might mean a different thing

3:25

to you than it would to me,

3:26

so I'm just gonna show how I do it

3:28

in case it helps you out as well.

3:31

The way that I like to do this is to think

3:33

about how I'm going to find a note before I create it.

3:36

That's usually done using a template like this.

3:39

This is a template from my Patreon vault.

3:42

You can check out the link up there to join my Patreon

3:45

if you'd like to have access to this template

3:47

and other templates, but I'm also just going

3:50

to show you what the template looks like.

3:52

There's not that much to it,

3:53

but I'm gonna show you how I set it up

3:55

so that it's automatically applied.

3:58

I'm using a plugin called Templater,

4:00

and within the Templater settings,

4:03

I already have some folder templates.

4:05

You'll need to enable this

4:06

if it's not already enabled, and I have a bunch

4:08

of default Templates that are going to be used

4:12

for these folders.

4:13

Now what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna create a different one,

4:16

but I'm gonna put it at the bottom.

4:18

Now you can also just move templates up

4:21

and down, and what that means is the ones

4:23

at the top will be applied first.

4:25

So those are the super specific ones.

4:28

Here I'm just going to use the parent directory,

4:31

and then I'm going to look for that note.

4:34

Now what should happen

4:35

is if I just create a note within meetings,

4:38

then it'll apply the person template,

4:40

and then it'll go down this list,

4:42

and if none of those has been applied yet,

4:44

then it'll default to this note template.

4:47

Now if I go here and I just click on New Note,

4:49

it is going to create a new note,

4:52

but it's going to apply the template that I had.

4:55

So let's just have a look at that again.

4:57

So it has some templater strings, so you'll see

5:00

that it was already filled in exactly according

5:03

to the template except that the date

5:05

and the file title have now been replaced

5:08

by the actual date and the file title.

5:11

So I'm going to kind of generally follow the latch system.

5:15

Latch stands for location,

5:17

alphabet, time, category, and hierarchy.

5:19

I kind of talked about this in this video,

5:22

but I'm also briefly going through it here.

5:24

First is location.

5:26

I kind of think of location in a different sense.

5:29

Now I could think about it in terms

5:32

of geography and have another location parameter here,

5:35

but that doesn't really occur

5:36

that often outside of my game session notes.

L - Location

5:40

So I kind of think of location now

5:42

in terms of where this note is

5:45

in the context of my vault.

5:47

To do this, I'm gonna show you what this looks

5:49

like in my actual vault with a real example.

5:52

So I've got this book that I read sometime ago

5:55

called the Clean Coder.

5:56

Let's say I want to create a note for clean coding.

6:00

So I'm going to open up something new, and again,

6:02

the same sort of parameters are filled in

6:05

because I have the same template

6:07

in my personal one that I do on the Patreon one,

6:10

so I'm going to call it clean code.

6:12

So now let's think about location.

6:14

Where does this belong within my notes?

6:16

And the way that I like to do that is through links.

6:19

So when describing what clean code is, I'm going to think

6:22

about other notes that I already have that come to mind.

6:27

Clean code is a practice in software development.

6:32

I'm gonna stop there

6:34

and not finish the rest of the sentence,

6:36

but I'm just showing you that this is already

6:38

kind of trying to place it relative to something else,

6:42

which in this case is my note on software development.

6:46

This is that note and it already has a bunch of stuff in it,

6:49

but I'm trying to show what it's adjacent to,

6:52

and that's kind

6:53

of my interpretation of location.

A - Alphabet/Aliases

6:56

In terms of alphabet,

6:57

this doesn't matter so much in a digital filing system,

7:00

but it is a prompt to think about the title.

7:03

Should it be clean code or should it be clean coding?

7:06

Well, another way that you can kind of hedge your bets

7:09

on this, 'cause remember,

7:12

we're trying to write something that we're gonna find later.

7:15

You could also put clean coding here as an alias.

7:19

What that means is later, when we're looking

7:21

for something and I type clean coding,

7:23

it's still going to show me this note for clean code.

7:27

What if I was just looking for good code and not clean code?

7:31

So I might put that in alias later to try

7:34

and guess what Future Me is going to be searching

7:38

for when I want to stumble across this note.

T - Time

7:41

Now for time.

7:42

Now the time part was already filled in for me.

7:44

If you remember,

7:45

I had a template that had a template or string.

7:48

That's what this looks like,

7:50

and because this Templater string has these brackets,

7:53

it's also a link to my daily note.

7:55

So if I hover over that, it goes right to my note for today.

8:00

The reason that I like to link

8:01

to the daily note is that now, when I go

8:03

to the daily note and I won't show you everything,

8:06

because there might be some private things in there,

8:08

but now if I go back in time to any note,

8:11

I'm going to be able to look at the linked mentions for this

8:15

and I'll be able to see the things that I did that day.

8:18

So for example, it's saying that I worked on clean code,

8:21

and apparently I worked on this page on Pirate Borg,

8:24

which is a TTRPG system, and there were a bunch

8:27

of things that we're seeing through readwise today.

8:30

In this way, I'm kind of using the natural chronology

8:32

of my daily notes to kind of put bookmarks

8:35

in my vault of what I was thinking when,

8:39

and that way I can follow along that trail

8:41

if I need to remember what I was thinking

8:43

of later on in the future.

8:46

So the time part is taken care of.

C - Category

8:48

What about category?

8:49

Well, you can say

8:50

that it's a software development thing already.

8:54

But I might also think

8:55

that maybe the category of this is best practices.

8:59

So I don't have a note for that yet,

9:01

but I can already see like I have best practices

9:04

for application performance testing,

9:06

for initializing a new virtual server, Git best practices,

9:09

scripting best practices, Kubernetes best practices.

9:12

Okay, so just by thinking about the category,

9:15

I've already identified something that isn't

9:18

in my notes that maybe should be.

9:20

Apparently I write about best practices a lot,

9:22

so I'm actually going to put this in, best practice,

9:27

I'm already creating an alias

9:29

because I don't wanna create this note right now

9:31

but I just want to link to it,

9:33

and then later on create a best practices note.

H - Hierarchy

9:35

H stands for hierarchy.

9:37

Now I think about this in terms of relationships.

9:40

How does this relate to other notes?

9:42

Where is it on the hierarchy of my notes?

9:46

So I already talked about software development.

9:49

I probably would still go and identify that as a parent,

9:54

but I might also put in something

9:57

like related and I'm going to say test-driven development,

10:02

because that is something that's like an adjacent topic.

10:06

I could also say something like applies best practices,

10:11

and that way, this is delineating this

10:13

as an application of the general concept of best practices.

10:18

I could also say

10:19

that aside from just best practices, the principle

10:23

of ethnicity is also something that I'm applying

10:26

in this concept of clean code.

10:28

So I've gone through the latch system.

10:30

L is the location where this note is

10:33

within the other notes.

10:35

Alphabet, I've given it a descriptive title and alias,

10:39

I've bookmarked it in time

10:40

by adding the date and a link to my daily notes.

10:43

I've added some things that are more categorical

10:46

like best practices, and I've thought

10:48

about the H of hierarchy

10:51

and added some metadata here that are relational,

10:55

and are mentioning other notes whether they exist or not.

10:58

So that's how I write notes to be found.

Different Ways to Find Your Notes

11:00

But the other part of encouraging emergence

11:03

in my note taking is regularly reviewing my vault

11:07

and looking

11:08

for different ways to find ideas that are ready to emerge.

11:13

So here are some ways that I might do that.

11:15

Really, the most common way that I might try

11:18

to find something is using

11:19

the quick switcher.

11:21

So you can open up the quick switcher,

11:23

make sure that it's enabled,

11:24

but I always just do Command + O,

11:27

and that is my keyboard shortcut for it,

11:29

and then I might try code.

11:31

So code spaces, maybe I'll try coding, and look,

11:36

this is already number five, but even if I were looking

11:40

for something else, I could just go down the list,

11:43

and look at the notes where I've said code or coding.

11:46

This is when having that alias is a really good idea,

11:50

because as you can see, there's so much more that comes up

11:52

for code versus what came up for coding.

11:56

But the quick switcher is only searching

11:58

through the file names.

11:59

What if I mention code

12:01

in the body of the note, not in the file name.

12:05

I'd open up the search pane here,

12:08

and then I would put coding.

12:10

It appears I've written about coding 148 times

12:13

but I could also say coding

12:15

or code, and that comes up a lot more.

12:18

So 1869 results.

12:21

This is also looking at end code though,

12:24

which is not something that I actually wanted.

12:26

So I could do it like this.

12:28

So I added double quotes and then a space before code.

12:32

That way things like encode,

12:34

or decode aren't going to turn up in the results.

12:37

So that's still 1363 results.

12:40

We could narrow this down further

12:42

by saying I don't want to see things that are

12:47

in a certain path.

12:48

Like I can see this is from a game,

12:50

so I don't want to bring up things from a game,

12:53

so I'm just going to exclude the TTRPGs folder,

12:58

and now it's 1353 results, and I could keep going like this.

13:01

Maybe I don't need to look through meetings.

13:04

Maybe I don't need to look

13:05

through people, because I'm looking for ideas.

13:08

So those are things when I already know kind of the key word

13:11

that I'm looking for, but what if I don't?

13:13

What if I don't have any topic in mind

13:15

and I'm just trying to identify topics in the first place?

13:18

Well, I do have something called lightning rods of thought.

Lightning Rods of Thought Using Dataview

13:21

So this is what it looks like in my Patreon vault.

13:24

I call it lightning rods of thought

13:26

because I kind of like the idea of a topic being

13:29

a lightning rod that's drawing electricity to it.

13:33

Kind of like how really good ideas just naturally

13:36

tend to draw in other notes

13:39

because if it's a good idea, then you're interested in it,

13:42

then you probably have built

13:43

up this kind of electrical field

13:46

around that idea where you're just naturally drawn to it.

13:50

So to be able to identify them,

13:52

there are four Dataview queries that I've got here.

13:54

First is a list of notes by the number of outgoing links.

13:58

This is identifying notes that have a lot

14:00

of things that it's linking to.

14:03

So when I click on this,

14:04

it's not going to be as relevant here

14:06

for the Patreon one because this is really more

14:09

of a structure rather than anything with real content.

14:13

This is what it looks like in my vault,

14:16

and I am looking at the top 50,

14:18

and I'm also adding a bunch of things to the query here.

14:22

So I'm not just looking at the number

14:24

of links that are going out of the page.

14:27

I'm also removing some file paths because I don't,

14:30

for example, want to bring in people or meetings here,

14:34

so I'm excluding the private folder.

14:36

I don't want like video ideas showing up here,

14:39

so I'm removing system and things

14:41

like that.

14:42

Identify what some people call MOC,

14:45

or a map of content.

14:46

A map of content is really just a page

14:49

on a topic, and because it is is a general topic,

14:52

it often has other things that you're linking to it from.

14:56

For example, if we go down the list,

14:58

a lot of these top ones are related to my work

15:00

because that forms a big part of what I like to work on.

15:05

So if I click on JMeter here,

15:08

you'll see that not only have I worked on this quite a bit,

15:11

and this was only after I moved this

15:14

to Obsidian because I know this is a pretty old note,

15:17

but it's also linking to a lot of other things.

15:20

JMeter is definitely worthy of being a map of content.

15:25

So this is something that I might want to have a look

15:27

at creating content for because I've already written a lot

15:30

about it and adjacent topics.

15:32

Another one here that's interesting is this one

15:35

for tools for publishing and distribution.

15:37

Maybe this is something that I should think about.

15:40

I've never written anything on this,

15:41

and yet I'm linking to a lot of tools,

15:45

and there's definitely a lot here that I could write about.

15:49

Even though I've never thought

15:51

about going and doing some research

15:52

for publishing for this in particular, I've just

15:56

kind of cobbled it together from me needing

15:59

to know tools that fulfill different parts of this.

16:02

It's interesting tabletop role playing games

16:04

is another thing.

16:05

I didn't really think about creating this page,

16:09

but it's just kind of evolved

16:10

over time to have a lot of things that are linking from it.

16:14

So that was notes by the number of outgoing links,

16:17

but incoming links is kind of interesting as well.

16:19

These are the pages that have a lot of things linking to it.

16:24

So this is trying to identify a different piece

16:27

of the puzzle.

16:27

This is identifying notes that already exist,

16:31

but maybe aren't quite fleshed out yet.

16:33

So for example, I'm talking a lot

16:36

about Dungeons and Dragons, and I do have a note on it,

16:41

but maybe this could still be fleshed out further, given

16:44

that 138 notes are linking to it, you know, maybe

16:48

I should think about actually bringing those in a bit more.

16:54

Like there's obviously a lot of rule stuff here.

16:57

Maybe I should have a section here for rules.

17:00

Maybe that's something that I should create content

17:02

about or write a little bit more about.

17:05

The third part here is I'm embedding a search for a keyword.

17:08

This is also a Dataview query,

17:10

so I am looking for a single line that has the two words

17:13

observability and tracing in the same line.

17:16

I'm trying to see how often I've said both

17:20

of those words in the same sentence,

17:22

and these are the things that it returns.

17:25

So this is interesting because I can go through

17:27

and try to maybe create a note on observability and tracing

17:31

because it seems like I've written some things about it.

17:36

So there obviously is a connection,

17:38

but maybe not a super strong one.

17:40

So this might be a prompt to flesh

17:42

out that connection a little bit more.

17:45

And then the last one in this page is orphans.

17:48

These are notes that aren't linked to anything.

17:50

Why aren't they linked to anything?

17:52

Well, that's an interesting question.

17:54

For example, I have a page on accents,

17:56

and apparently I think I created this for D&D,

18:01

so I have some videos

18:03

so that I can kind of remember

18:05

what certain accents sound like,

18:07

'cause I like accents, and maybe I need to put this

18:12

in a D&D or role playing note, or maybe put some text

18:15

around it to say what the purpose of this page is.

18:19

This is another thing too where I'm analyzing metrics

18:23

on K6 Cloud

18:24

and yet it's not linked to pages that I know exist,

18:28

like the one on load testing metrics,

18:30

or K6, or K6 cloud, or load testing.

18:33

I mean this is just a good practice

18:35

to regularly review this list

18:38

and kind of think what could it be related to?

18:41

'Cause these notes already exist.

18:43

I'm just never going to be able to find them

18:46

if they're not linked to anything else.

Exploring Your Notes Using ExcaliBrain

18:48

Another way to find notes is by using ExcaliBrain.

18:52

ExcaliBrain is a really awesome plugin that I have talked

18:55

about quite a bit.

18:58

I have made videos on ExcaliBrain

19:00

and I've also interviewed the developer, Zsolt Viczian.

19:05

So let's go ahead and look at that clean code note,

19:07

and in ExcaliBrain, this is what that looks like.

19:12

These are the notes that I already created,

19:14

but it's also showing the relationships there.

19:18

So it's got related, and the date of course.

19:21

And then it's saying

19:22

that clean code is a child of software development.

19:26

So let's look into software development.

19:28

Okay, so this is software development,

19:30

and I really like ExcaliBrain

19:32

because it uses the metadata that I set

19:35

within the notes,

19:37

and it also has an option which I've turned

19:39

on here to show notes that don't exist.

19:42

For example, I was talking about clean code,

19:45

but I also apparently have linked to expressive code,

19:49

but that is not something that exists.

19:53

Maybe I should look at creating it

19:55

and seeing what the linkages are

19:57

between expressive code and clean code.

20:00

And there's some here that do already exist,

20:02

like software testing.

20:04

Hey, maybe software testing is also a way

20:07

to apply clean code.

20:09

So maybe I could talk about how clean code can be applied

20:12

to software testing because tests can be code as well.

20:15

Or maybe I can talk about sublime text or which IDEs

20:19

are best for creating clean and expressive code?

20:23

It's interesting to see things like separation of concerns.

20:26

So what is the relationship

20:28

between clean code and a separation of concerns?

20:31

It seems like separation

20:33

of concerns should be a characteristic that clean code has,

20:36

and I can kind of explore things as I go and see,

20:40

it's linked to the principle of ethnicity here.

20:42

So I can click on each of these and then the view changes,

20:46

and it sometimes takes me to interesting places.

20:49

Now when I look at principle of ethnicity,

20:52

we're looking at technical writing as well

20:55

as service-oriented architecture.

20:57

What does it mean to have clean code

20:58

in the context of note taking?

21:00

Clicking on things

21:01

in ExcaliBrain is something that I have done and could do

21:04

for hours because it's just exploring your own vault.

21:08

Sometimes it's interesting because it shows connections

21:12

that maybe you might not have made.

21:14

Other ways that you can find your notes are through folders.

21:17

This is more traditional.

21:18

Some people like the more than others.

21:20

Personally, I like to have fewer folders,

21:22

and this is not really a way that I discover in new notes.

21:26

It's more just I just pretty much like

21:29

to have most of my notes outside

21:32

of the folder structure really, but some people like those.

21:35

I've been really liking bookmarks.

21:38

Bookmarks are kind of a compromise between folders,

21:41

links, and sort of tags,

21:43

because you can have one page and multiple bookmark groups.

21:47

I also like to put things

21:50

on here that I want to remind myself

21:52

of, so this is a good place to go

21:54

if I'm wanting to find a note later on.

21:57

There's also tags,

21:58

which I'm not as intentional about, but some people are.

22:02

You could definitely tag different notes

22:05

and find them here that way.

22:07

One thing I do do is, for example,

22:09

when people give me feedback

22:11

on my videos or my work in general, I do link them here

22:15

and I try to categorize them based

22:18

on whether they're plugins or based on learning,

22:21

or things like that.

22:22

Then of course there's links from other notes,

22:25

so when I'm thinking about that clean code note example,

22:29

maybe I could have that

22:31

as a link in the software development note.

22:34

How funny,

22:35

I actually just noticed I had already created a link to it.

22:39

Even though that note didn't exist until just now;

22:43

that's probably a good sign that I linked it

22:46

to the right page.

22:48

Another thing I like to do is use randomness

22:51

to discover things.

22:52

So back to my Patreon vault,

22:54

this is an example of a daily note,

22:57

although I haven't put anything in it.

22:59

So this is effectively the template

23:01

just with the Templates replaced,

23:03

and I have a random note here

23:05

that shows me a note that has the tag inbox,

23:09

and this is a way of resurfacing notes that maybe

23:12

I haven't thought about in a very long time.

23:14

So those are the two ways that I like to facilitate

23:16

emergent note taking.

Learn in Public

23:18

A third kind of bonus tip though is to learn in public.

23:22

I've talked about this a little bit, but in general, I think

23:25

that being able to put your notes out there or just talking

23:29

in public about what you are learning and being a little bit

23:32

more open about the learning process rather

23:34

than the learning product, I think is very useful

23:39

for other people.

23:40

Myself included, I love seeing everybody else's work

23:44

in progress.

23:45

When there's a culture of learning in public

23:47

in a community in general,

23:49

I think it really helps to encourage the emergence

23:52

of new ideas because there's just more out there

23:55

that can be stumbled upon by other people.

23:58

I think learning in public is one

24:00

of the ways that we can contribute back

24:02

to a community and also learn from the community

24:06

because it's encouraging other people to do the same.

24:09

Emergent note taking is a fundamentally subversive activity.

24:12

It's about throwing away the idea that you need to know

24:15

in advance what you're going to write or learn about,

24:17

and instead throwing yourself wholeheartedly

24:20

into the passion of learning,

24:22

the passion of writing, and seeing what sticks.

24:25

It's not for everyone and it's not for all circumstances,

24:29

but when it does work, it can be hugely rewarding.

24:32

If you'd like to learn more

24:34

about how to apply these techniques, then check

24:36

out this video where I go through a presentation

24:40

but also talk about how I came

24:42

up with things for that presentation.

24:45

Kind of a meta video.

24:46

Thank you for watching.

24:48

(Nicole speaking Spanish)

References