Atomic Notes

When writing notes, a written note should be indivisible. A single concept that can then be composed into more complex thoughts that may spark new ideas or connections which hadn't been seen before. Ideally, the concept it explores should be a relationship (Prefer notes that describe a relationship).

This concept of atomic notes is heavily prevalent in zettelkasten-style notes

When a new concept presents itself out of the confluence of other notes, create a new note based on this new idea.

Backlinks

• Outline: Writing with outlines
  • [^1]](./start-with-notes.md)
• Compounding Notes
  • Within a note-taking system, when a few ideas come together to form a new one, this should be represented by the creation of a new note which represents the new concept.
• Start with notes
  • Rather than starting an outline when you want to create a writing project, start with a new note and add it to speculative outlines. Over time, they'll accrue points and build themselves. Ultimately, notes should be the composable pieces in your system.
• Compose notes
  • Atomic Notes
• Evergreen notes should be atomic
  • A shared idea. A note should only be about a single concept. It should try and capture the whole of that concept if it can. This revolves around finding a sweet spot for creating links between notes. There's a trade-off between being too granular and too course. Too granular and connections become noisey and hard to find. Too course and connections are muddy and unclear as to what they're about.
• Use writing to spur action, action to spur writing
  • At some point, the writing starts to form itself into atomic concepts and I start to understand more about what I need to do. Organically, almost. Over time. This often becomes a will to act.