Note-taking as System Design

While journaling is a recent endeavour for me, the practice of jotting down notes has been a constant throughout the year.

While going through the notes I collected over the last few months and trying to get some answers, the first revelation that struck me was the intricate process of note-taking itself.

The more I thought about it, the more it looked like a system design problem 🙂 Following are the insights I had (Engineers will relate more):

1. Like any robust system, effective note-taking begins with the end in mind. Understand how you'll interact with your notes in the future - is it a one-off reference or a piece of a larger knowledge puzzle?
2. Journal entries aren't just timestamps of our lives. They're data points that can reveal patterns and insights. Write not just to remember, but to analyse and learn about yourself over time.
3. Choose your note-taking tools with the same care as selecting a framework for system design and development. Your choice should align with your methods of use, integration with other notes, and long-term scalability.
4. A haphazard approach leads to the same chaos as a poorly architected system. Cleanliness, reorganisation, and easy retrieval should be baked into your note-taking from the start. Otherwise it will also have its own debt, which is not easy or very time-consuming to clear, i.e. just like any technical debt 😛
5. Break down your notes into modular components for easy navigation. Think microservices architecture for your thoughts - independent yet interconnected.
6. Just like logs in system design, notes should be structured for automation and machine parsing, enabling efficient review and trend analysis.
7. Start with a format that can evolve. Migrating notes into a new structure is as tedious as refactoring poorly written code.

Note-taking, when approached with the methodology of system design, transforms from a passive activity into a dynamic system that enhances productivity and clarity.

Think about the following questions next time you take notes:

• Are your notes designed for your future self?
• Does your current method make data retrieval seamless?

If you are not sure where to start, I have two simple tips that I started using with my note taking recently.

1. Notes should have relevant tags so first filtering can be done on tags.
2. For journalling, write as you feel it! Don’t sugarcoat. If you are feeling sad, happy, annoyed, irritate etc. use those words. Though AI can do sentiment analysis from content, giving it direction helps.

#NoteTaking #SystemDesign #Productivity #KnowledgeManagement #Journaling #SoftwareDevelopment