20180114181843 Taxonomy of Notes

tags: #notetaking

Aims

To remember (externalize remembering)
- Remember other people’s ideas
- Remember your own ideas
- A mixture of your and others people’s ideas
Sense-making (make new relationships between ideas in writing)
To support production of new artifacts (writing)

Types of notes:

Extracts
- What: Pieces of information from sources, either directly copied or as a paraphrase.
- Usage: For reference when creating new documents or artifacts. Also for long-term retention of useful information.
Collections and Lists
- References (not in prose) to other things
- Usage:
  - Quick reference
  - Leads to more detailed information for usage for some specific purpose
  - To template some action
- Types of Lists
  - Actionable items
  - Tasks
  - References (in bullet form)
Records and Logs
- For records
- To derive insight
Templates
- To provide place holders to execute some tasks or action
- To serve as reminders for gathering new information
  - Examlpe: Medical note template
Summary/Overview
- Higher level documents that bring together lower level (more specific) information. Topical notes that serves to structure and explain discrete information.
  - See [[20181007150300]] Structure Notes

Not all these go into the ZK. Template and Logs should stay out. Collections and Lists probably also don’t need to be in the ZK, although I don’t see why they couldn’t.

Types of Notes Coming from Reference Sources

General

I want to distinguish notes that are commenting on a source and those that are my original ideas.

For the latter, I have the tag

#original_thought (my own thoughts that aren’t a response to something)
#idea (some new idea that emerges from things in the ZK)
- For writing ideas or other things, I keep those in my nvALT. I’m still trying to make the boundary between the ZK and my nvALT

Papers

For individual zettels

#result
#background
#approach
#analysis
#fact
#method
#argument
#hypothesis
#question
#conclusion
#critique
#figure
#model
#quote (direct quotes)
#code (code example)
#application
#action_point (especially for how-to and technical books. I want the action points)

For each paper, I want to make one summary note that compiles all the individual zettels from a paper and also let’s me write my thoughts. It would be nice to have a single summary. Also, in this way, I can add tags to the summary that let’s me essentially tag papers without having to tag the original PDF.

How do I identify the source? Well, each note should have a citekey. I think the citekey can be the identifier.

Books

Depending on the type of book, similar types can be used.

#result
#fact
#method
#argument
#hypothesis
#question
#conclusion
#critique
#figure
#quote (direct quotes)
#code (code example)
#application
#model
#table
#action_point (especially for how-to and technical books. I want the action points)

For #overview notes from books, types include:

#overview
#action_list
- [[20181029193103]] Making Actionable Notes from Books - Pick The Brain
#outline (of the book)

Similar to papers, I want one summary note for a book that essentially becomes an outline of the book, but comprised of modular zettels.

For many books, what I really want are the action points. I want actionable knowledge. I care about the source and the evidence, but truly I just want to key points.

Those key points will then go into a checklist-style cheat sheet that I can use to template my own actions.

Thus, when I’m making notes, I don’t need to copy everything verbatim. Perhaps it’s useful to get the original zettels with their quote, but I want my summary. I need breadcrumbs to the details.

For example, if I’m taking code notes, I don’t need to copy all the detail. I really need the entry points back to the detail. The details are all over many resources (PDFs, ebooks, websites,etc.). What I need is a meta-document that tells me where to get the details.

Recent additions (2019)

External information

Factual information
- Ex. MOA of NSAIDs
Knowledge from books, video, seminar, etc.
- Principles of Antibiotic Usage
- How to write For loops in Python
Personal info
- Phone numbers
- Addressses
- Passwords

Internally generated

Idea
Response to external information
- Comment
- Critique
- Question
- Emotion
Intention/Plan
- Task/To-do
- Goal
- Plan
Externalization of thinking
- Listing information
- Relating information (e.g. what I am doing right now. I’m externalizing my thoughts)
Internal state
- Emotion/Feeling
Response to stimulus
- Feeling/emotion
- Effect on me
Observation
- Noting something you see
Recording/Logging
- Accomplishments
- Tasks completed
- Progress toward goals
- Work performed
- Resources used
- States/status
  - Health
  - Emotion
- Events
  - That something occurred.
  - Example: “Went to store.” or “Took a shower”. Also “Priscilla met me at school.”
  - What was said or done during the event (e.g. meeting notes)
Processes/Protocols
- Steps/methods for performing actions (prospective)
- Record of organic processes performed
  - Ex. I keep a list of software I installed on the Gereau Lab Ubuntu with notes to how and why I did it. I have this so I can do it again in the future.
  - Lab Notebook: Record of what was done and what happened. Documentation.
- Documentation for usage
  - For oneself and for others

ideas

Ideas from my Zettelkasten