Take Notes!

For years, I took notes like most other people: I jotted things down. A few words on a piece of paper, a screen shot, snippets of information meant to jog my memory down the line. Although, the notes themselves were disposable, and by the time we crossed paths I had usually forgotten their significance, I still took these kinds of notes regularly. Shelves of Moleskins of varying sizes (always unlined, my personal preference), teeming with thoughts and commentary. Most of their contents irretrievable, unindexed, and difficult to make good use of. To be honest, despite periodically marveling with pride at my collection of filled notebooks, their track record for helping me get stuff done had been hit or miss.

The notes I recorded in these journals are what people in the note-taking world call “fleeting notes,” which, as the name implies, are intended to be quick, ephemeral, and impermanent. Like a Tinder date pre-Covid. For mundane activities—reminding yourself to move the car, call the gas company, or bring the burnt offerings for Santa Muerte to the cemetery—these kinds of notes usually suffice. But, for creative people wanting to produce work, there is more to a note than jogging the memory. Good notes—well thought out, clearly written and contextualized; notes that will never leave you hanging with creative block, never allow you to forget their relevance—and a system for storing and retrieving said notes will absolutely revolutionize your creative output.

Note-Taking Is a Practice

There are a number of ways people in the productivity world break down the process of taking notes for creative output, most of their systems overlapping in various ways. There’s the Getting Things Done (GTD) method popularized by David Allen. There’s Tiago Forte’s Building a Second Brain, which utilizes his P.A.R.A. and C.O.D.E. systems. There’s Niklas Luhmann’s Zettelkasten, , and Andy Matuschak’s more recent Evergreen Notes. Since the creative process is inherently unique to each of us, each of these methods builds and expands off of one another, offering minor (and sometimes major) tweaks. And so, I have done the same in my own practice. After working with and dissecting each of these systems, I have come to realize that the process from note to creative output can be divided into five steps:

1. Capturing ideas and thoughts on paper or in an app (taking notes)
   
2. Refining these captures into comprehensible notes (editing notes)
   
3. Importing these notes into a database, linking them to other notes (storing notes)
   
4. Sifting through my database for connected ideas (searching through notes)
   
5. Manifesting my creative output (first cool mil)
   

C.R.I.S.M. → Capturing. Refining. Importing. Sifting. Manifesting.

The first three steps have to do with how we capture ideas and then organize our notes into a database (digital or physical) for retrieval. The last two steps relate to how we work with our notes and how that work seamlessly transforms into creative output.

Most of us probably do some or all of these steps without even knowing it, which is in part why I think getting into this material can be so useful. Much of it is intuitive. However, when we remain unaware of what we are doing and for what purpose problems can arise. I saw this in my own creative process, which would often burn out for what appeared to be unknown reasons. I now know that my lack of awareness as to what part of the creative process (where in the CRISM) I was engaged in at any given time, combined with the absence of a searchable database of my own arguments, concepts, and thoughts left me stranded. Like a Tinder date pre-Covid. 🌴