I think I was wrong about notes

A few weeks back I wrote, somewhat skeptically, asking if I should be taking notes while reading. I asked if doing so would ever be worth the investment. Well, to be precise, I said:

I have a job, and a human body, and a marriage to maintain. I do not have the time to make notes. I would not enjoy making notes. What would I do them for? Nobody has ever asked me about teleology. Not even once.

Since then, I have picked up Sönke Ahren's "How to Take Smart Notes" - a oft-cited, compact book filled with opinions about what "good" note-taking practice looks like. I think I picked it up because I was wondering at my own incredulity: are people really advocating for these sprawling "digital gardens" of notes? Other than hawking a course, what do people get out of this ?

I found that I didn't really understanding note taking, which might be obvious to you if you read through my earlier-quoted post. This was quite an exciting revelation - I learned that I had made a straw man argument against a practice that isn't really being advocated for. Or at least, isn't being advocated for in good faith.

One of Ahren's core messages is that making notes should be a force for understanding. Understanding the core idea, without immediately caveating it with nuance, its source, its strength, or its counters. These latter things matter (a lot), but only in addition to, or in the context of, that original point.

This comes hand-in-hand with the argument that writing is a tool for thinking, more than a means of making text. I have been writing posts for some version of this blog for almost six years. I started my first blog during my postgrad studies eleven years ago. I understand that writing is useful.

What's worse is that I enjoy writing now (much the same as anyone who "enjoys" writing enjoys it: writing is awful, having written is wonderful.)

Looking back on my note-taking practice, I often fell into notes which re-created or stored lists, or statistics, or acronyms. Or I simply underlined passages in text. These practices aren't oriented around the idea of extracting more abstract ideas from specific texts - they're about remembering specific texts.

I was making notes on a certain source (a book, or paper), and wasn't taking a step back.

As an example, it's important to me and my job to understand the systems that build and maintain software systems. For a long time, I have understood these through the lenses of "lean" and "agile" processes. I have been a strong proponent of these ideas for several years, and have used some of the specialist vocabulary (e.g. "value stream", "failure demand", "feedback loop") in my workplace to justify decisions or understand problems. I think I've used them effectively to build things well.

Fortunately (?) a lot of software engineering professionals rely almost exclusively on their intuitive feelings and their own experience. By doing even a small amount of reading and research (quite literally reading a book did this for me), I've been able to adopt the authority of a pre-existing (and quite well respect in the field) system of thinking.

What I had done, in retrospect, was take one person's experience and opinion, and made it my own. Luckily that author had done the hard work, and I adopted some pretty good opinions.

Looking back, I was adopting the language and posturing of someone who understood the ideas. This isn't the same as understanding. Being generous, I could say this this is part of learning: learning just enough to become intolerably opinionated. Being pessimistic, I could say that it's a good thing I didn't have to interact with someone who actually did understand these ideas.

When I asked, enraged at a reality I had invented, what I would even do with notes, I was reading like an early explorer: plucking words and ideas up from their natural habitat, and putting them in cases and on display, without any real coherent order. I was putting examples of ancient writing together: an accounting ledger, a love letter, and a legal code. They went together because they look, externally, like the same thing.

What I was failing to do was examine them. I had mistaken having a lot of seemingly (but not actually) organised ideas in a collection that I could draw up, like a trump card, for learning and understanding.

It is frankly baffling to get this far (and this qualified) in my life and career and just to realise that now. I think I've been pulled through by a brain that's just good enough at synthesising these things in the background, with just enough recall to use the right vocabulary. Heaven knows I wouldn't have these spare resources if I had more urgent things to worry about.

It's almost like it's functionally impossible to assess for "real" understanding in education and work. So long as you're doing the motions, you'll go un-noticed. And these motions look (to the unconcerned) like understanding.

Even worse: I tricked myself into thinking that I was doing it, and that to do even more would be an unfruitful waste of effort.