Welcome to Digital Smart Notes in Obsidian Part 3. In Part 2, I covered creating Literature Notes. This article will cover how to develop Permanent Notes from multiple Literature Notes.

As a quick refresher, I follow a workflow adapted from How to Take Smart Notes by Sönke Ahrens. The high-level tasks described in the book are:

• Make fleeting notes
• Make literature notes
• Make permanent notes

I take fleeting notes as I highlight sources. Those fleeting notes are synced with Readwise, which is synced with Obsidian using the Readwise Community Plugin. Then, I create literature notes in Obsidian using the method that I discussed in "Digital Smart Notes in Obsidian Part 2." Finally, we have arrived at creating permanent notes.

I know that it has taken a while to release this part of my series, but I'm glad that I have waited. I have incorporated some powerful new tools and workflows to streamline the permanent note creation process. I think you will be happy with the results.

Plugins Used In This Article

Here is the list of community plugins that I utilize for my permanent note creation process.

• Dataview (Particularly the dataviewjs functionality).
• Workbench (For collecting my Literature Notes and thoughts)
• QuickAdd (New addition to my workflow for quickly filling in the Permanent Note Template)

Permanent Note Creation Process

When I create a new permanent note, I use three basic workflows.

• Gather literature notes and main thoughts.
• Create a permanent note with QuickAdd.
• File permanent note to slipbox.

I use the Obsidian workspaces feature to switch my layout to the task I am performing during these three workflows.

Gathering My Thoughts

The first thing I do is gather literature notes that I feel are related. I will use these notes in the permanent note that I am creating. For this, I open my Literature Notes page and my Workbench page from the Workbench plugin. I also open the Workbench page in preview mode in the right sidebar to see what I add to it quickly.

Literature Notes Page

The Literature Notes page uses the Dataview Plugin with a dataviewjs query to create a table that sorts my literature notes by tag frequency. This sorting allows me to see where I have tag clusters forming quickly. When I have many literature notes forming around a particular tag, there's a good chance that those literature notes are good candidates for inclusion in one or more new permanent notes.

Dataviewjs lets you execute javascript code as part of a dataview query. This script execution allows powerful table visualizations that may not otherwise be available in the regular dataview queries. I have always said that one of the best things about Obsidian is the community. The dataviewjs query below proves that. I asked a question in the Obsidian forum about how to go about this particular query, and Christian Badger Bach Houmann, the creator of the QuickAdd plugin that I will discuss later in the article, suggested the below dataviewjs query.

```dataviewjs
// Get all pages with tag #litnote
const pages = dv.pages("#litnote and -#processed");

// Instantiate object. Target format is "Tag": File[]
const s = {};

// Iterate all pages
pages.forEach(p => {
    // Get all tags for page except #litnote 
    const tags = p.file.etags.filter(t => t !== "#litnote");
    
    // Push each tag to the 's' object with the file
    tags.forEach(tag => {
        if (!s[tag]) s[tag] = [];
        s[tag].push(p.file.link);
    });
});
// Create a table
const sorted = Object.keys(s).sort((a, b) => s[b].length - s[a].length);
dv.table(["Tag", "Files"], sorted.map(i => [i, s[i].map(p => p)]));
```

This query produces the results seen in the Literature Notes page in preview mode.

Workbench Page

Once I can view my literature notes by tag frequency, I look down the page at the notes and use the following steps to start thinking about my permanent note.

• As I see notes related, I use CMD-ALT-CLICK to open the note in a new pane and automatically add an embedded link to the note on the Workbench page. The workbench plugin provides this functionality.
• Once I have selected two or more literature notes, I can close the Literature Notes page.
• I add a "processed" tag to each of the literature notes that I have used so that Dataview will filter them out of my dataviewjs query the next time I create a permanent note.

My screen now looks like the following screenshot.

I can now close the literature notes that I have opened and give the Workbench page my full attention to finish the rest of my thought process. The Workbench is open in preview mode on the right sidebar to easily see the embedded literature notes.

Use the area under the embedded literature notes to clarify your thoughts on the permanent note.

You are now ready to create the permanent note.

Using QuickAdd to Create a Permanent Note

QuickAdd is a new plugin that I am using to automate the capturing and creating of notes. It has a built-in GUI for creating QuickAdd scripts to aid in note capture. Many of my QuickAdd workflows are now replacing Templater scripts in my vault. QuickAdd is found in the Community Plugins. Once installed, create a "capture" choice with the following options (you can change them to suit your use case and folder structure).

• File Name: 3.Resources/Zettelkasten/Permanent Notes/{{DATE:YYMMDD}} - {{VALUE:TITLE}}
• Create a file if it doesn't exist, should be toggled ON.
• Capture format should be toggled on.
• Finally, to make it easy to call the Permanent Note Creation QuickAdd choice from the command palette, I toggle the lightning bolt next to the choice name in the main QuickAdd Settings section.

I use the following capture format for my permanent note.

---
notetype: "Permanent Note"
cssclass: permanent-note
---
**{{VALUE:TITLE}}**

***
#permnote | {{VALUE: Tags-Space Delimited}}
***
# Relevant Notes:

# Notes:
{{VALUE: Notes}}

# Literature Notes:\n
```js quickadd
return await this.quickAddApi.utility.getClipboard();
```

In the settings and capture format, you will see a few QuickAdd formats.

• {{VALUE: <Variable Name}} : This is a named variable that is used to bring up a user input modal. The value that the user inputs will be stored and output to the note.
• {{DATE:YYMMDD}} : This will input the date in the following format YYMMDD. I use this as part of the identifier on Permanent Notes.
• jsquickadd: The js quickadd section runs a bit of javascript to capture the clipboard and output that value to the note when it is created.

You can find further details on using QuickAdd at the QuickAdd Git Repository.

The permanent note has a few sections.

• YAML frontmatter that defines the note type and cssclass for styling.
• Tag section: Includes the "permnote" tag for search and any other domain-specific tags that you want to define.
• Relevant Notes: This section is where you would link any other permanent notes that you feel are relevant to this permanent note.
• Notes: This is the brief notes section of the permanent note.
• Literature Notes: This is where the embedded literature notes that make up the permanent note will go.

When you are ready, perform the following:

• Highlight the embedded literature notes from the workbench page and use copy or cut to get them in your clipboard (I prefer cut because it clears the workbench, leaving only my thoughts).
• Bring up the command palette with CMD-P.
• Type in the name of your QuickAdd choice for permanent note creation and hit enter.

QuickAdd will present you with several modals for data entry corresponding to each user-defined section in the permanent note.

You can now delete the contents of the Workbench note if you would like.

Filing the Permanent Note to the Slipbox Page

I have created a slipbox page in my vault that has various main topic headings nested with other topics beneath them. Once I make a new permanent note, I find a space on that page under a heading or create a new heading for the permanent note.

File the permanent note by following these steps:

• Open the Slipbox page. A section called Not Processed at the bottom of my Slipbox page uses a Dataview query to create a table of unprocessed notes. I use this to open the newly constructed permanent note quickly.
• Open the new permanent note. You'll notice in preview mode that the literature notes are all transcluded into the note.
• Find a heading/subheading or new heading that fits the permanent note. You can use the outline view in the right sidebar (Outline is a core plugin that needs to be enabled) to easily navigate the slipbox headings and get a good overview of the Slipbox page.

In this case, I will start a new heading for Philosophy (Philosophy -> Stoicism -> Dealing with Emotions) because I want to keep it as a separate domain. If you didn't care as much about the label of Philosophy and wanted to concentrate on the Personal Growth aspect of the note, you could file it under the existing Personal Growth heading.

Note: Here is the Dataview query used at the Bottom of the Slipbox page.

```dataview
TABLE rows.file.link AS "Note", rows.file.cday AS "Date"

FROM !outgoing([[Slipbox]])

WHERE notetype="Permanent Note"

GROUP BY file.link

sort date ASCENDING
```

At this point, you could also explore more of your Slipbox and see if there were any relevant notes that you would like to link under the Relevant Notes section in the new permanent note.

Conclusion

We have now journeyed through the three main parts of the Digital Smart Notes process. We read and highlighted, taking fleeting notes along the way. Then we turned those highlights and fleeting insights into literature notes. Finally, we created permanent notes from our related literature notes. The best part comes next. It's up to you to decide how you will utilize your permanent notes. I use them to write and discuss topics that spark passion. What will you create?

Welcome to Digital Smart Notes in Obsidian Part 2. In Part 1, I covered syncing your Readwise reference notes to Obsidian with the Readwise Community Plugin. This article will cover how to create Literature Notes in Obsidian from those highlights you carefully curated during your reading.

As a quick refresher, I follow a workflow adapted from How to Take Smart Notes by Sönke Ahrens. These are the high-level tasks described in the book:

• Make fleeting notes
• Make literature notes
• Make permanent notes

Literature Note Structure

When creating a Literature Note, I like to use just enough structure to organize. I don't want too much metadata getting in the way of the note itself. I have found a good balance of metadata and content for me with the format demonstrated below.

Title

I repeat the title (without the date stamp) in bold as the first line in the note preview. The title repetition is to help when I display the embedded note inside a Permanent Note.

Tag Section

The tag section is a single line at the top. This tag section is further broken down into two categories, with a | separating these categories.

• Main Tag: This tag denotes the type of note that I am creating. I use #litnote for this.
• Secondary Tags: These are the general related topic areas that I consider when creating the note.

Note, Quote, Source

I call the next section the NQS section or Note, Quote, Source.

• Notes: This is the Literature Note (in my own words) derived from the highlight(s) of the Reference Note.
• Quotes: These are embedded highlights from the Reference Note imported from Readwise. A block embed takes this form of ![[<Note Title>#^<block-id>]] For example, you can create this by starting to type ![[How to Take Smart Notes#^<Select the line from the note or start typing to search>]]. Once you find the line you are looking for, hit enter, and the embed will be complete.
• Source: This is the source material. In this example, the note is derived from the book "How to Take Smart Notes."

That's it for content. I like to keep the note as straightforward as possible while allowing for querying.

Hidden Metadata: YAML Front Matter

Let's take a look at the same Literature Note in edit mode.

There is an extra bit of information at the top of the note that does not show in preview mode. The extra information is called YAML Front Matter. I use this section to give the note additional properties that I don't want to show in preview mode. These properties make it easier for me to search the note later. I also use the cssclass YAML property specifically to style the note separately from my other general notes. In this example, I can treat literature-noteas a regular CSS class to target elements for styling on a note with the cssclass: literature-note front matter.

Literature Notes Section on the Reference Note

If you are using the Dataview plugin that was suggested in part 1 of this series, the new Literature Note will show up in the Dataview table in preview mode on the Reference Note page. This table view is why we created that Dataview section under the # Literature Notes heading. As a reminder, the code for this Dataview query looks like this:

```dataview
TABLE rows.file.link AS "Literature Note", rows.file.cday AS "Date"

FROM #litnote AND [[How to Take Smart Notes]]

GROUP BY file.link

sort date ASCENDING
```

Every time a new Literature Note is added and linked back to the original Reference Note, it will show up in this table.

Automating the Process

Everything you need to create a Literature Note can be accomplished by following the structure outlined in this article. If you want to automate the processes to make it easier to capture your thoughts without worrying too much about the structure, then keep reading.

I use the fantastic community plugin called Templater for most of my automation in Obsidian. You can find setup and configuration for Templater in the documentation site for the plugin. There is also an excellent video from GitMurf about setting up your first Templater JS script. For my Literature Notes creation workflow, I use two different Templater scripts.

• copy.blockref: This script creates a block reference and copies the embed code from that block reference to my clipboard, making it ready to paste into the Literature Note. I tie this to a keyboard shortcut using the Hotkeys for Templates plugin.
• T-Literature Note: This script prompts several items in the Literature Note and then creates a new note with the structure in place. The cursor is placed where you would need to paste the first block reference from your Readwise highlights.

The contents of the two scripts are below.

copy.blockref

<%*
function createBlockHash() {
    let result = '';
    var characters = 'abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz0123456789';
    var charactersLength = characters.length;
    for ( var i = 0; i < 7; i++ ) {
        result += characters.charAt(Math.floor(Math.random() * charactersLength));
    }
    return result;
}
let id = createBlockHash();
let blockRef;

blockRef = `![[${tp.file.title}#^${id}]]`.split("\n").join("");
tR = tp.file.selection() + ` ^${id}`.split("\n").join("");
selectedText = blockRef;

navigator.clipboard.writeText(blockRef).then(text => text);
-%>

T-Literature Note

<%*
// show a prompt to enter a note title
const promptNoteTitle = await tp.system.prompt("Note title:");
// show a prompt to enter notes
const promptNotes = await tp.system.prompt("Notes:");
// show a prompt to enter tags
const promptTags = await tp.system.prompt("Tags: Space Delimited");
// choose the Reference Source
const referenceNote = await tp.system.suggester((item) => item.path, this.app.vault.getMarkdownFiles(), false);
// Take the inputted name and prefix with a date
const title = await tp.date.now("YYMMDD") + " - " + promptNoteTitle;
// rename the note with the title defined above and move to proper folder
await tp.file.move("3.Resources/Zettelkasten/Literature Notes/" + title);
-%>
---
<% tp.file.include("[[YFM.NoteType.LiteratureNote]]") -%>
<% tp.file.include("[[YFM.CSSClass.LiteratureNote]]") %>
---
**<%*tR += promptNoteTitle %>**
***
#litnote | <%* tR += promptTags %>
***

# Notes:
<%* tR += promptNotes -%>

## Quote(s):
<% tp.file.cursor() %>
# Source:
[[<%* tR += referenceNote.basename %>]]

Note: The tp.file.include statements that are in the "T-Literature Note" Templater script are pointing to files that are read and included as part of the script processing. In this case, I am filling in the YAML front matter with these two statements. The contents of the files are:

• notetype: "Literature Note"
• cssclass: literature-note

To use the copy.blockref script, put the cursor at the end of the line you want to reference, then either Insert Templater Template from the command palette or use the hotkey you have assigned to the script. It will leave a block reference id similar to the one shown below.

You can create a new Literature Note by choosing Templater: Create new note from templatefrom the Obsidian command palette. Choose your Literature Note template (T-Literature Note in this case). After you choose, a modal should pop up, and you can follow the prompts to create the Literature Note.

Once you have finished filling in the details and choosing the Reference Note, the script will create a new note structured to be a Literature Note.

Conclusion

Creating a Literature Note doesn't have to be daunting. It's a note tied to a Reference Note highlight that resonates with you in your own words. In this article, we created a Literature Note with "just enough" structure to aid with search-ability and discoverability. We even automated the processes to concentrate on the note's content rather than the structure. The next article in this series will discuss creating a Permanent Note from several Literature Notes.

I recently started learning Obsidian. I learn best by tying my learning to a particular project. One of the first things I started tackling in Obsidian was my Digital Smart Notes or Zettelkasten system. This article series will take a similar path for those familiar with my Digital Smart Notes Series for Roam Research.

I'm not looking to replicate the exact methodology I used in Roam because Obsidian is a different tool. However, many of the workflows, concepts, and collection methodologies will apply. This article will assume familiarity with various tools available for digital highlight collecting and Readwise for highlight aggregation. If you want to learn more about how I will be using it in this series, please read part 1 of the original Digital Smart Notes series.

UPDATE [[2021-05-25]]- I have started using native Obsidian {{ title }} template variable in the template instead of the Templater <% tp.file.title %> as it works a little more reliably when a new page is created from the Readwise import. This change is reflected in the template sections.

A note on plugins

The work that you will produce by using this methodology can be accomplished with or without plugins. I will be utilizing community plugins in this series as a way to augment the workflows. They add tremendous value, but they aren't required to do the work. Here are the plugins that we will use in this series:

This Article

• Readwise Community
• Dataview
• Templater- Make sure to turn on "Trigger Templater on New File Creation" as this will allow Templater to fill in Readwise header details when a new file is created or moved into the vault.

Future Articles

• Incremental Writing

Installing a Community Plugin

All the plugins that I will be using are in the community plugin repository. That means that we can install them within the Obsidian UI. Open Settings -> Community Plugins . Then Turn off Safe Mode to enable plugins. You can now browse the Community Plugins Repository by clicking on Browse.

Importing From Readwise

To start using our Readwise highlights, we need to import them into Obsidian. While I will be utilizing the Readwise Community plugin, I feel that it works best when you manually import all your highlights first. Then, you can use the Readwise Community plugin to import new highlights. New highlights to existing sources will append to a source that you have imported manually as long as the source name remains the same.

To get started, follow these steps:

• Log into your Readwise account.
• On the top menu click Connect & Sync -> Export Highlights
• Choose Export on the Markdown Export option.

There are a few options here that you can turn on:

• Include Highlight Location- This option allows you to include your highlight locations as part of your highlight. The highlight location works for sources that have location information, such as a Kindle book. If you click the location link, it will open kindle on your device and go right to the highlight.
• Use Custom Formatting- This option allows you to adjust the template used for the incoming highlights. We will use this to add text to the Readwise export template.

After you have adjusted the options, you can download the highlights.

Here is what the Page Metadata template should look like to get you started:

#refnote
***
{% if image_url -%}
![]({{image_url}})

{% endif -%}
### Metadata

- Author: [[{{author}}]]
- Full Title: {{full_title}}
- Category: #{{category}}
{% if url %}- URL: {{url}}{% endif %}

### Literature Notes
```dataview
TABLE rows.file.link AS "Literature Note", rows.file.cday AS "Date"

FROM #litnote AND [[{{ title }}]]

GROUP BY file.link

sort date ASCENDING
```

The part that I added was at the bottom starting with ### Literature Notes

The dataview code fence combines the Dataview plugin with the Templater plugin to display any notes tagged with #litnote and the reference note title (imported Readwise note). We will explore this functionality in a future article. We are adding it here so that we can use it when we start to process Literature Notes.

After your zip file downloads, you can extract the files, separated by category (book, article, podcast, etc.). One of the things I like best about Obsidian is that it stores the notes as markdown files. Once your Readwise files download, you can place them in a folder of your choosing inside your Obsidian vault. I have chosen to keep my Readwise highlights in 3.Resources/Zettelkasten/Reference Notes/.

If you want to continue manually importing your Readwise highlights, you can stop here and periodically import them using the method outlined here. If you're going to automate the addition of new highlights more, there is more work to do.

Automating Import with the Readwise Community Plugin

Once you install the Readwise Community Plugin, there is a setup that you need to do. Follow these steps.

• Install the Readwise Community Plugin
• Click on the Readwise Community Plugin Settings under Plugin Options
• Paste your Readwise API token from the link provided in the settings
• Select sync on startup if you'd like
• Set sync on interval (this is in hours)
• Set your highlight storage path to be the same path as your initial import from Readwise. In my case, I used 3.Resources/Zettelkasten/Reference Notes/
• Set your custom header template path (this is a note that we will use as a custom header template for the import). Here I used !System/Tempalate-Snippets/Readwise.Import.Header
• Set your custom highlight template path (this is a note that we will use as a custom highlight template for the import). Here I used !System/Template-Snippets/Readwise.Import.Highlights
• Disable notifications if you'd like.

You can take a look at the Readwise Community Plugin GitHub page to learn more about template options. Here are the templates that I use.

Readwise Community Header Template

# {{ title }}
#refnote 
***
### Metadata
- Author: [[{{ author }}]]
- Full Title: {{ title }}
- Category: #{{ category }}
- URL: {{ source_url }}

### Literature Notes
```dataview
TABLE rows.file.link AS "Literature Note", rows.file.cday AS "Date"

FROM #litnote AND [[{{ title }}]]

GROUP BY file.link

sort date ASCENDING
```
### Highlights

Readwise Community Import Template

- {{ text }} %% highlight_id: {{ id }} %%
    - {%- if note %}
    - Note: {{ note }}
    - {%- endif %}

When you add new highlights to Readwise from your collection sources, they will match the existing highlights you have imported.

Conclusion

This article is the first in a series of articles that I plan on doing for taking Digital Smart Notes in Obsidian. With your Reference Notes importing to your Obsidian vault from Readwise, you are all set to start creating Literature Notes. I will cover this and my use of Templater to create those notes in more detail in the next article.

A little less than a year ago, I started using a note-taking tool called Roam Research. It completely changed how I think about knowledge work and introduced me to "How to Take Smart Notes," by Sönke Ahrens. I am immensely thankful for the mental models that Roam has given me. They will stay with me forever. However, I feel it is time to try something new. For now, I will be giving Obsidian a spin.

Trust and Ownership

For a while, the iterative, wherever the wind blows, development approach of Roam was exciting. New features would be released surreptitiously, with notification coming from Twitter. Learning about some unknown or hidden feature made it feel like I was part of an insiders club.

I have known about Obsidian for a while but never gave it a fair shot because Roam seemed so revolutionary. The more I used Roam, the more valuable my notes became. This increase in value made me realize that I needed a little more trust in the developers' approach to release management. It wasn't always clear how changes would affect my workflow. With Obsidian, I can choose to have complete control over my notes.

The final catalyst for me to seriously explore Obsidian was a perceived trend of elitist interactions in the Roam community. For some, there is no room for any other than Roam. That's fine, but that was no longer working for me.

A Kick-Ass Community and A Markdown-Centric Approach

Since Obsidian is based on Markdown text files, this offers some unique advantages over Roam.

• Portability: Markdown files are just text files. I prefer to stay in Obsidian for most of my workflow, but nothing says I need to do so. For example, creating and publishing a blog draft in Roam required copying, pasting, formatting, and editing. Since this page is a text file, I can open it in Ulysses for some final tweaks and publish it to my blog from there.
• Trust: I trust myself with my notes more than anyone else. While there is an optional sync service (or sync via dropbox or a myriad of other options), I don't need to use it or depend on a server for note-taking. As for the development of Obsidian, the developers are very approachable and share a public roadmap.
• Interoperability: Quite simply, anything that can open, edit, manipulate, or view a markdown text file can be a potential note endpoint or UI. I have already set up some workflows that use Zapier to send new notes with a specific tag from Evernote to Obsidian while converting them to markdown along the way. I can programmatically manipulate or automate my note workflows very quickly. Full regex is also supported since I'm working with text files.
• Community: I cannot say enough good things about the Obsidian community. From the moment I reached out for tips on Twitter, the Obsidian users met me with enthusiasm and genuine willingness to help. The official Obsidian Discord and Forums are just as welcoming and filled with a flurry of awesome activity. For a deeper dive, I highly recommend Roamhacker's thread review of the community on Twitter.

Finding My Flow

Had I tried to learn Obsidian before developing the mental models and workflows that came with Roam, I don't think I would have had as much luck or insight into what I wanted. With that in mind, I set out to approach learning Obsidian by framing its capabilities within some critical features of Roam that I used heavily. While I use and appreciate community extensions and plugins, these make the experience click for me.

• Daily Notes Page: This was a must for me because I trained myself to use the daily notes page in Roam almost exclusively. Thankfully, Obsidian offers the option to create a Daily Notes Page upon opening each day.
• Block References: Obsidian can do this too. It's not as feature-rich as Roam's implementation, but I am happy to have the option.
• Transclusion: The ability to embed block references or entire pages within other pages was a game-changer for me in Roam. This feature is available in Obsidian as well. The implementation is different in Obsidian due to its page-centric nature, but it is still beneficial.

Pages Versus Blocks

I love the granularity of blocks in Roam Research, and I don't think Obsidian's implementation is as feature-rich. I can reference certain lines of text (or blocks) in Obsidian, but I cannot (yet) drag them around to place them anywhere within my system. This UX is something that I do miss from Roam, but I'm finding that adapting to Obsidian is more manageable than I initially thought it would be.

After reading Robert Haisfield's excellent write-up on how he is adapting to Obsidian as a former Roam user, I find that I am missing blocks less than when I started with Obsidian. This post in that same thread resonated with me:

https://forum.obsidian.md/t/using-daily-notes-as-a-convert-from-roam/15393/6

The post author explains that in Roam (at least the way I was using it), everything links out from the Daily Notes Page. In Obsidian, your day's work links back into the Daily Notes Page. This distinction made it easier to grasp how I would work with Obsidian. I would work on my pages and link them back to the Daily Notes Page to have a record of what I worked on that day.

Easy Wins for Obsidian

• Long-Form Writing: This is hands-down a much better experience in Obsidian. The text flows smoothly, the interface is snappy, and moving from draft to published is nearly seamless. Obsidian's markdown-centric approach wins here.
• Style and Formatting: I was pleasantly surprised by how Obsidian handles styling the UI elements. There are community themes that you can enable. For more minor UI tweaks, Obsidian employs a CSS snippet system that allows you to store CSS snippets in a folder. The snippets in the folder can be turned on or off with a toggle in Obsidian appearance settings. Compared to the chaotic nature of handling CSS in Roam, this was a welcome feature.
• The Graph Display: Quite simply, it's beautiful! I can easily filter what is shown based on any search that I can perform in Obsidian. I can also group-specific notes by color (again with searches). These capabilities mean that, unlike with Roam's native graph display, I can glean helpful information.

Conclusion

I am just getting started with Obsidian, but I love it so far. I miss some features from Roam, but I'm not finding the switch nearly as daunting as I initially thought it would be. I may do deeper dives into some of the features as I am learning them. For example, I am in the process of working out my Zettelkasten / Smart Notes system in Obsidian. I may write it up once I establish a permanent workflow. For now, I am happy to have landed here. I love the community, the developers, and the product. I'm looking forward to the journey.

In Part 2 of this series, I discussed how you could use block references in Roam Research to create a navigation framework for your database. In this article, I will discuss Roam native templates and TODO item queries. Templates will build out specific pages faster. TODO item queries will allow you to maintain focus while working with TODO items.

TODO Queries and Context Switching

In building a system for information consumption and processing, I have focused on one goal above all else. I want to avoid context switching... Digital Smart Notes Part 1

If you have read my Digital Smart Notes article series, remember that in part one, a driving concept behind building out my smart note-taking system was to avoid context switching. I want my attention to stay focused on the task I'm doing at the moment. With that in mind, I tend to remain in the Roam Daily Notes Page (DNP) for most of my work in Roam.

When I want to add a TODO item to my database, I will add the item with appropriate tagging and let queries resurface them. Let's see what this looks like in practice by adding some TODO query sections to the block reference navigation we have been building in part 1 and part 2 of this series.

Adding Work TODOs to Your Navigation Structure

Follow these steps to add the Work TODO structure:

• Create a page called "Work Tasks" and navigate to that page.
• Open your "Life" page in the right sidebar.
• Copy the #Work block reference to the first block under the "Work Tasks" page

Building Out Work Tasks with Queries

I use two main tags for any TODO item: #LiveList, #WaitingFor. The "LiveList" tag is for TODO items that need my attention soon. The "WaitingFor" tag is for TODO items that require an action or communication from someone else. I also use the concept of a "Backlog" of TODO items that are not tagged with either "LiveList" or "TODO."

With that in mind, let's create some sections in the "Work Tasks" page to place queries by following these steps:

• Create three highlighted sections as siblings to the #Work block reference block. They should be ^^LIVE LIST^^, ^^WAITING FOR^^, and ^^BACKLOG^^.
• Create an AND, NOT, OR query indented under the "LIVE LIST" block. It should look like this: {{[[query]]: {and: [[Work]] [[TODO]] [[LiveList]] {not: {or: [[query]]}}}}} The reason to add the NOT, OR is to filter out actual queries themselves that may contain the page references that are being queried. As a rule of thumb, I always use OR if I need to add another exclusion in the future quickly.
• Create an AND, NOT, OR query indented under the "WAITING FOR" block. It should look like this:{{[[query]]: {and: [[Work]] [[TODO]] [[WaitingFor]] {not: {or: [[query]]}}}}}
• Finally, create an AND, NOT, OR query indented under the "BACKLOG" block. It should look like this: {{[[query]]: {and: [[Work]] [[TODO]]{not: {or: [[query]] [[WaitingFor]] [[LiveList]]}}}}}

Creating and Navigating New Work Tasks

With proper tagging, you can surface TODOs with these queries. Let's test it out by creating a TODO on the Daily Notes Page using the following steps:

• Open the "Life" page in the right sidebar.
• Open the Daily Notes Page in the main area.
• In an empty block on the Daily Notes Page, hit Ctrl(Cmd on Mac)-Enter to toggle a TODO item.
• Type the following: Some important work task I need to do soon. #Work, #LiveList
• Hit enter to go to the next block, then type the following: Some important work task that I need input on. #Work, #WaitingFor
• Finally, hit enter to go to the next block, then type the following: Some work task that I will get to eventually. #Work

You should now have three TODO item blocks on your Daily Notes Page. Since they are properly tagged, they will also resurface with the appropriate query.

Navigate to the queries that we just created in the "Work Tasks" page with the following steps:

• Click on the inline-block reference number to the right of the #Work block.
• Click on the words "Work Tasks" that appear.
• You will see the "Work Tasks" page structure that you created.
• Expand the "LIVE LIST" section to see the query results.
• Expand the "WAITING FOR" section to see the query results.
• Expand the "BACKLOG" section to see the query results.

When you surface your TODO items with queries, you can avoid context switching by simply tagging them as you create them in the Daily Notes Page. By adding some simple navigation under the "Life" page, you can trust that you will easily find the items later.

Projects, TODOs, and Meetings

Often, your TODOs will be project-related and not just work-related. You can also track projects and their TODOs in the navigation framework you are setting up by following this article series. I like to track projects by creating a new page for each project. The naming convention of that page is "P-. On that page, I place a project structure for my project notes and TODO items.

I use the following highlighted sections:

• Keywords- The "Projects" tag is listed here by default. I'll separate any others that I think are necessary with a comma. The keywords make querying easier should I need to do so in the future.
• Due Date- The due date, if known, for a project. By default, I use a "TBD" tag.
• Goals- Goals for the project.
• Project Todos- Query for project-specific TODO items.
• Deliverables / Files / Links- Important links, files, or other deliverable for the project.
• Meetings- Query for project-specific meetings. I will detail the structure that I use for meetings in the next article in this series.

You can set up this page structure very quickly by using a Roam Native Template. Templates in Roam are a feature that lets you type ";;" and bring up a list of templates that, upon selecting one, will automatically fill in the structure in the template. To create a template, use the following steps:

• Create a new page called roam/templates.
• In the first block on the new "roam/templates" page, type the template's name. For this example, let's use Project Page.
• Then, indented under the "Project Page" block, type out the rest of the page structure. You will need to adjust the queries so that they are AND, NOT, OR queries to exclude the "roam/templates" page and any queries themselves.

To see how this works, let's create a new project page by using the following steps:

• Create a new project page called "P-Test Project 2."
• Copy the "P-Test Project 2" page title text so that you will be able to paste it once the template builds out.
• On the first block in the page, type ";;" to bring up the list of templates and select the "Project Page" option.
• The rest of the page will build out.
• Finally, replace the "P-ProjectName" text in the queries with the actual project name.

Work Projects Navigation

Now that you have created a project page structure, you can easily bolt the navigation structure for those pages into your "Life" page navigation. To do this, use the following steps:

• Create a page called "Work Projects."
• Copy the #Work block reference from your "Life" page into the first block of the "Work Projects" page.
• Under the #Work block reference block on the "Work Projects" page, embed each project page that you create by typing the following (P-Test Project example): {{[[embed]]: [[P-Test Project]]}}

You can now discover the projects through navigation. To see it in action, open the Daily Notes Page on the main screen and open the "Life" page in the sidebar. Take the following steps:

• In the next empty block, create a new TODO item and tag it with "Work" and the project name.
• Click on the inline-block reference number to the right of the "Work" block under the "Life" page.
• Click on the "Work Projects" text to expand the new "Work Projects" page structure.
• Click on the bar to the left of the "P-Test Project" page to expand the "P-Test Project" page.
• You will see the entire project page and the newly created task under the "Project Todos" query.

Conclusion

We covered a lot of ground in this article. The structures you are putting in place now for "Work" can be implemented in the same way for the "Personal" section of the navigation framework.

Part 1 of this series on building out Roam Research discussed the relationship between page references and linked page references. We used page references in the form of a tag (#Questions) to track open and answered questions by utilizing "linked references" and filtering. If you haven't read Part 1 yet, please go ahead and check it out. This article builds upon the previous discussion.

While "linked references" are immediately helpful, I believe there is a better way to visualize and track open questions or anything else you may want to track in your Roam database. Let's build upon what we have created so far. As promised in the previous article, I will discuss why we created the "Open Questions" and "Answered Questions" blocks on the Questions page.

Finding Blocks with Queries

The "Open Questions" and "Answered Questions" blocks on the Questions page would serve as headers for a couple of queries that we will use to surface our questions (open or answered).

Basic AND Query

This article is not a comprehensive lesson on queries.

To begin, we will use a basic "AND" query by indenting a block under the "Open Questions" block and typing /query, and selecting the "Query (and)" option.

An example query will show up in the block. Replace it with the following:

• {{[[query]]: {and: [[TODO]] [[Questions]]}}}

When you click outside the block, Roam should present you with any blocks that are a "TODO" AND have the "Questions" tag.

Next, construct a similar query for "Answered Questions" and place the block indented under the "Answered Questions" section. The query should read:

• {{[[query]]: {and: [[DONE]] [[Questions]]}}}

If you tick the checkbox next to any question, Roam will now surface the block in the "Answered Questions" section of your "Questions" page.

It does not matter where you write the question in your database. If it is a "TODO" that has the "Questions" tag, it will surface on your "Questions" page with these queries.

Navigating With Block References

In the previous article in this series, I discussed blocks as the most crucial element in Roam. The block's flexibility and power will become evident when you create your first block reference.

Creating a Block Reference

The easiest way to create a block reference is to right-click on the block you would like to reference and select "copy block ref" from the context menu.

You can paste the block reference anywhere else you would like. For this example, I will paste the block reference as the first bullet in a page titled "Block Reference Test." When you first paste it, you will see a block ID generated. If you click outside the block, you will see that it references the original block.

When the contents of the original block change, any reference to that block also changes. This functionality allows you to have a single source of truth for the content while referencing the same content anywhere in your Roam database.

You will also notice a number appear to the right of the original block. This number shows how many times you reference that particular block in your Roam database. If you click on that number, it will show you where the block reference location is in your database. You can then expand the reference for more details. This functionality is called an "inline block reference."

Exploiting Inline Block References for Navigation

Inline block references remind me of a collapsable context menu. We will take advantage of that fact and build a simple navigation structure in our "Life" page to navigate to our "Open Questions" and "Answered Questions." Follow these steps to create the "inline block reference" navigation menu.

• Open the "Life" page in the right sidebar by shift-clicking the "Life" page reference under "Shortcuts" in the left sidebar. You can also start typing "Life" in the "Find or Create Page" search bar and shift-click on the "Life" item.
• Open the "Questions" page in the main window by searching for "Questions" in the "Find or Create Page" search bar.
• In the "Life" page in the right sidebar, right-click the "Questions" tag block and select "copy block ref" from the menu.
• Paste the block reference so that it is indented directly under "Open Questions" and "Answered Questions" on the Questions Page. You can also use alt(cmd for mac)-drag the block to the desired location to create a block reference in that location.

Now, as you work in your "Daily Notes" page, if you keep the "Life" page in the right sidebar, you can access your "Open Questions" and "Answered Questions" by clicking the number for the "inline block references" next to "Questions" under the "Life" page. After the "inline block references" open, you will click the "Open Questions" or "Answered Questions" depending on what you want to see.

Conclusion

This article discussed using queries to find what you need in your database and block references to reference any block anywhere in your database. Then, we added a simple navigational structure to our Roam database by utilizing the block reference functionality. I hope that you will see the flexibility and power of blocks in Roam from this small exercise. Using the block reference navigational framework shown here, you can build out your navigation while hiding the complexity when you don't need it. The next article in this series will build upon the navigation by adding some templates for projects and meetings.

When I first started to use Roam Research in the Summer of 2020, top-down thinking was still my operation mode. I have learned over the several months that I have been using Roam that I only need a little structure to make my Roam database work for me.

I'm also the type to try out every add-on, widget, gizmo, and integration with a new piece of software. This experimentation helped me in some areas and hurt in others.

I'm building out a new Roam for this article series to focus on my lessons learned and show how I would structure it from the very beginning. This series will be a slow burn, focusing on one or two key concepts at a time. I'll add just enough structure along the way to organize and let Roam do what it does best. Let's call it "organized chaos."

The Block is THE Thing

When you first log into Roam after signing up, a help menu and (once you close the help menu) a blank page with a date at the top greet you. Feel free to check out the menus and buttons. Most of them are pretty self-explanatory, and I will only focus on those essential to this first article.

There is a particular page in Roam called the "DAILY NOTES" page. Roam creates a fresh "DAILY NOTES" page each day. This page is where I, eventually, learned to write all of my notes. We will come back to the "DAILY NOTES" page later in this article. Right now, know that it exists and that a new one is created for you every day.

You can create a new page by typing anywhere in Roam with double brackets, typing in some text, and pressing enter.

If you want the page to look more like a hashtag, you can also create a page by typing something like #[[I AM A PAGE]]. You'll notice that the page now shows up in a different color, like a traditional hashtag. If you click on the text, you will still go to the page titled "I AM A PAGE."

You can also create a new page by using the search box in the top right. Just start typing. You'll either find an existing page or create a new one by pressing enter after you type in the name.

That's enough about pages for now. Here is the ONE thing that I wish I had known when I first started using Roam Research. The block is the essential thing in Roam Research.

A bullet is a block, and a block is a bullet. I will forgive you for thinking that it was less important than a page. After all, it's smaller, and it goes under a giant page title.

But, the block is the thing. Roam is built on the block. It's the solid foundation for your thinking and notes in Roam. Roam wants you to think bottom-up, not top-down. That is what I struggled with in the beginning. It's what I hope to show you so that you don't work as hard as I did.

If you embrace some of the "organized chaos" that is Roam Research, you will begin to create amazing things with it. I learn best while doing, so that is where we will proceed from here. First, let's put a little structure into place.

Building Out Your Roam Life, Block by Block

When I approach a new productivity tool, it is usually to help some aspect of my life. Whether that is organizing, tasks, scheduling, journaling, notes, etc., Roam can tackle all of those tasks. I would suggest approaching it iteratively by building as you learn. You will be much better off than if you tried to tackle everything all at once. This article will show you how to build out a straightforward page structure. You can take the page structure wherever you'd like after that.

Creating Your First Real Page

Let's build out the structure by following these steps:

• Create a page called "Life."
• On the Life page, you will create three blocks that will end up being pages themselves.
• #[[Work]], #[[Personal]], #[[Questions]]
• Create a shortcut to the Life page, if you would like, by clicking the start in the top right.

You will eventually build out all three of those pages. For now, I will focus on the Questions page. Go ahead and click on the #[[Questions]] page link.

On the "Questions" page, you will notice a "Linked References" section. These linked references are what make Roam so powerful. Whenever you reference the "Questions" page by either typing [[Questions]] or #[[Questions]], the reference with the page will show up under linked references. It is showing here because you typed that reference in a block on the "Life" page.

For simplicity, there are only two types of questions that I will track in Roam. Let's create a block for each of them. The two blocks should read "Open Questions" and "Answered Questions." To make them stand out a little, type them with a highlight in markup (^^Open Questions^^ and ^^Answered Questions^^)

Tracking Questions

Head back to the "DAILY NOTES" page by clicking on it in the left sidebar. Let's track our first question by following this process:

• In an empty block, type "How can linked references help me?"
• At the end of this text, type #[[Questions]] or #Questions
• Keep your cursor focused in the block, and hit Ctrl-Enter on Windows or Cmd-Enter on a Mac. This keyboard shortcut toggles the block into a TODO item in Roam. If you keep hitting Ctrl-Enter or Cmd-Enter, you will toggle through the options of TODO, DONE, and plain text.
• When you hit Enter or click outside the block, you will now notice a checkbox to the left of the text. The block becomes a TODO item.

If you go back to the "Questions" page, you will now see a linked reference from the "DAILY NOTES" page for the question that you just typed. This reference appears because you typed a page reference at the end of the question (#[[Questions]], #Questions, or [[Questions]])

To the right of the linked references section is a filter button. You can use this to filter out anything that you do not want to see. For example, we don't necessarily want to see the #Questions reference under the "Life" page. We only want to see the actual questions.

You can filter an item by using Shift-Click to remove an item from the list or clicking on an item only to include it. I prefer to remove unwanted items, so I'll Shift-Click on "Life" to remove it.

The filter button turns red to indicate that a filter is active on the page.

Once you have checked off a TODO item, you can use the filter button to remove "DONE" items from the view.

The "Questions" page is proving itself to be useful already. Whenever you type a question and include the #[[Questions]] reference, it will show up as a reference under linked references. You can begin to see the power of Roam by tracking your open questions here.

Conclusion

So far, we have created an immediate use case for our new Roam database to track questions that we may have. Along the way, we learned about pages and, most importantly, blocks. We also learned about the power of linked references.

The next article in this series will dive deeper into the "Open Questions" and "Answered Questions" blocks and why we created them. I will also discuss block references and how you can use them to visualize and deeply link your content in Roam.

Welcome to the final article in my Digital Smart Notes series. If you have not read the others, I would suggest going back now and having a look. As a refresher, this series has been discussing my workflow for creating digital smart notes using the methodology outlined in "How to Take Smart Notes" by Sönke Ahrens.

• Part 1 and Part 2 discussed my digital capture toolkit for highlights, creating fleeting notes, and exporting those highlights and notes into Roam Research.
• Part 3 discussed creating literature notes in Roam Research using the exported highlights from Readwise.
• Part 4 summarized my process for creating permanent notes derived from the literature notes created in Roam Research.

I put a lot of time into my digital smart notes system. While the work is intrinsically rewarding to me, I do not merely curate a collection of notes. The real value for me reveals itself when I sit down to write. My goal for this entire endeavor is to retain knowledge. One of the best ways that I can do that is to write publicly. My notes make up the most considerable portion of the mental effort required for my writing. So, much of the work is complete by the time a blank screen confronts me.

Creating New Content

When I think of a new article idea, it is likely because I am reading something related to a note that I already have in my slipbox. This process happens organically because of the habit I have formed from creating smart notes. When that idea strikes, I act quickly to capture it.

New Article Template

The first thing I do in Roam Research when I get an idea for a new article is to create a new page. The title will follow the format of "Article: <Article Title>." I want to capture the gist of the article. I can change the actual title of the article later. Next, I create the article structure using a roam template. It looks like this:

Type:: #[[Article Idea]], #Seed
Summary:: 
Published URL::
**Related Notes and Sources:**
	-  
**Body / Outline:**
	- **Introduction / Problem**
    	-  
   	- **Proposed Solution**
    	-  
    - **Solution Implementation**
        -  
**Draft** {{word-count}}
    -

I frame many of my articles as a problem that I am trying to solve. It helps me think about it in three different sections (Problem, Proposed Solution, Solution Implementation). The word count function next to "Draft" gives me a running tally of the article word count. For those articles that do not take this form, I adjust the sections. For the example here, I will be using one of the first articles that I wrote on this site, "Packaging Your Thoughts Using Roam Research."

Filling in the Outline Details

After my article structure is in place, I'll make sure the article page that I have created is in the main window of Roam Research. I will open my slipbox page in the right sidebar.

I will then explore the contents of the slipbox page and any inline-block references.

As I find relevant information (a permanent note, a note block, etc.) I will alt-drag the block to a section in my outline. These block references, combined with any new text that they may prompt, will make up the structure of things that I would like to discuss in the article. As I do this, I may also create page references to the literature, permanent, or reference notes that are the parents of the blocks I have used in the "Related Notes and Sources" section of my article page.

Now I have a solid outline of what I would like to discuss in the article. This method makes the next step much more effortless.

Writing the Article

My slipbox full of notes has enabled me to connect ideas, re-mix my thoughts, and create an outline for new content. All that is left is to write the article. Here is my process for the actual writing:

• Shift-click on the "Body / Outline" section of the article page to focus on that block in the right sidebar.
• Click on the "Draft" block to focus on it in the main window.
• Write the first draft of the article by using the outline in the right sidebar as a reference.

The key for me is to get the first draft knocked out as quickly as possible. If I think of anything to add or something to look up along the way, I'll add a TODO item right inline while I'm writing in Roam. This way, I can track what I need to do without interrupting my flow too much. The TODO items can be checked off and removed later.

Conclusion

I hope you have enjoyed reading this series as much as I have enjoyed writing it. Reading "How to Take Smart Notes" has changed my learning, thinking, and writing in profound ways. Putting the methodology discussed in the book into practice using Roam Research has been a gift. I've discussed article writing here, but I believe you can apply the methods I have outlined to multiple forms of creative endeavors (Twitter threads, screenplays, novels, etc.). The important part is that the process works for you so that you enjoy note-taking. The rest will fall into place. Thank you so much for following along with me on this journey.

This is an important milestone in my "Digital Smart Notes" article series. Here, I will show you how to plant an idea for your future self to grow. If you need a refresher, I have discussed the following so far in the series:

• Part 1: Creating a capture system for all of your media consumption using Readwise.
• Part 2: Exporting your Readwise highlights and notes to Roam Research.
• Part 3: Creating literature notes in Roam Research from the notes and highlights that have been imported.

I am following the process of note-taking that was discussed in "How to Take Smart Notes," by Sönke Ahrens:

• Make fleeting notes
• Make literature notes
• Make permanent notes

In this article, we have finally arrived at making a permanent note. This is the knowledge seed that you will leave for your future self to nurture and grow.

Planting a seed of knowledge

...the audience here consists of our future selves, which will very soon have reached the same state of ignorance as someone who never had access to what we have written about. -Sönke Ahrens, "How to Take Smart Notes

A permanent note is an attempt at crystalizing a thought from multiple literature notes from a related topic or topic. To find those literature notes that are related, I use an invaluable chrome extension called Roam Portal. It allows me to search through my Roam Research database for literature notes that I will use to create my permanent notes. The overall process is:

• Make sure that I am viewing any Roam research page.
• Open the Roam Portal extension.
• In the "Linked Page" section of the search, enter "Literature Notes"
• Open advance search parameters by clicking the carrot in the top right.
• In the mentions of page, enter "Reference." This narrows down the search to actual literature notes and maybe your Roam native template if you use it.
• In the bottom section of the advanced search, click on "References." This will show other referenced tags on the literature note and the number of times the referenced tag has occurred. As you create more literature notes, you will notice clusters of tags.
• Identify the tag that you want to work on. In our example, we will use "Writing."

Assembling the Literature Notes

Once I have an idea of the tag that I want to pull from, I run a Roam Research query to surface those literature notes relevant to the tag. I do this by having a space open in the main area and in the right sidebar. In my case, I have created a page called "🏰 Mind Palace" that I use for this purpose. I open it in the main area, focusing on a block called "Permanent Note Creation" in the right sidebar.

On the main page, I run a query for my literature notes that looks like this:

{{[[query]]: {and: [[Literature Notes]] [[Writing]] {not: {or: [[Permanent Notes]] [[🏰 Mind Palace]][[📨 Writing Inbox]]}}}}}

This looks complicated, but all it is really doing is performing an "and, not, or" query for Pages with "Literature Notes" and "Writing" but not "Permanent Notes," "🏰 Mind Palace," or "📨 Writing Inbox." While I must filter these out of my results, you will need to play around with the query to develop your desired outcome.

As I glance down the list of literature notes surfaced by the query, I can see the ones that have not been processed into permanent notes. They do not have the literature note page title repeated below them. If you follow the process outlined in this article, you will have a similar view.

You may return to previously processed literature notes at some point. But, for now, we will be sticking with un-processed literature notes. What I do now is glance down the results, and if I start to notice literature notes of interest to me or I think might be related, I create a page reference to the note under the "Permanent Note Creation" block. This will just be a holding place for the notes that I want to process into a permanent note.

Once you have picked the literature notes you will use to create the permanent note, take some time to read over them and process them as follows:

• Open each literature note in the right sidebar so you can view all of them at once. As you start to read and process the notes, a permanent note idea will begin to solidify in your mind.
• Starting with the first literature note, underneath the page title, create a block with the page reference for that page repeated. So if your literature note page is called "Surround yourself with people that will help you accurately judge your work," then the page reference will read the same.
• Once that is done, indent everything else underneath the page reference on the first block. Do this for each literature note that you will be using to create your permanent note.

Creating the Permanent Note

The rest of my process for creating a "Permanent Note" is one that I have modified from an insanely creative process that I learned from Beau Haan. I would highly encourage you to take a look at his Roam Tour with Robert Haisfield to get a sense of where I am coming from in this process.

I love how Beau's method creates a way to navigate your Roam slip-box of permanent notes in a way that makes a conversation. One of the significant ways that I differ from what was shown in the video is that I have spent quite a bit of time creating atomic notes that can be used, mixed, and re-mixed into whatever I'm thinking about. I did not want to disrupt that structure. I also wanted a permanent note to consist of multiple literature notes described in "How to take Smart Notes."

I created a page called "Slipbox" inside of my Roam Research database. On that page, I have a conversation of permanent notes, similar to what is seen using Beau Haan's method. I have top-level topics. Under those top-level topics, I may have related topics that follow the conversation.

With the "Slipbox" page open in the right sidebar and the "Daily Notes" page open in the main window, I create a permanent note using the following process:

• Look where the new permanent note might fit in and create a reference point in the form of a hashtag for the conversation that resonates with you. In the example here, I will use "Finding My People" as that entry point. It is related to "Connecting With Your Audience," so I will insert the hashtag indented under that point.
• On the same block line, use double brackets to create the new permanent note title. In this case, I decided on "Find people that you can be vulnerable with to help you create your unique work" as my note title.
• Now open the newly created page in the right sidebar. It should show up above your slip-box.
• Using a roam template, I create the permanent note structure, then just fill in the details.

Filling in the Permanent Note Structure

This next step is where you can begin to really see Roam Research's power by utilizing block references/block embeds. Fill out the permanent note structure using the following method:

• Create a page reference to the permanent note page right under the permanent note title. Everything else should be indented under this. So if your permanent note page title is "Find people that you can be vulnerable with to help you create your unique work," your page reference on this block should read, "Find people that you can be vulnerable with to help you create your unique work"
• Starting with Literature Notes, copy the block reference to the title of the literature note page reference that I had you insert into each literature note to make up this permanent note. These block references are to be indented under the "Literature Notes" section of the permanent note page. The reason for the page reference in the literature note and the indentation underneath will become clear now.
• Click each literature note block reference text and replace it with a block embed using the menu. This allows the entire block and any indentions under it to be embedded into the permanent note.
• After this is complete, continue filling out any other details about the permanent note (Type, Notes, any additional tags you want to add, etc.).

Creating the Daily Note Entry for the Permanent Note

Here is the final step to creating a permanent note and seeing all of your hard work pay off. As I stated earlier in this article, I loved how Beau Haan explained his process for creating permanent notes. The way that it creates a navigation-friendly structure for a bottom-up conversation with each permanent note is impressive. The one thing that did not work for me was connecting a single reference to a single permanent note. My permanent notes consist of multiple literature notes that may come from numerous sources. This is by design. So, my solution was to create the permanent note so that the literature notes and their richness were embedded into the permanent note to make the same conversation-like effect when traversing the slip-box in Roam Research.

With your Daily Notes page still on the left and your slip-box page on the right, use the following process to create your permanent note entry.

• Create a note entry structure (using a roam native template if you'd like) for your note entry.
• Starting at the top, fill in the appropriate note entry details, beginning with a timestamp.
• Indent under the time stamp. This block should read “#[[Relevant Notes}} <index point in your slipbox>. The index point is the page reference form of the hashtag you used when creating the permanent note slip-box entry.
• Indented under "Relevant Notes" are each of the relevant permanent notes that you want to connect to this permanent note. Think about conversations and connections that you may want to make with your future self. In this case, I will use the note next to "Idea Generation," "Incorporating Feedback," and "Tribalism." I'll create block references to these permanent notes in the slip-box by alt-dragging them to a block indented under "Relevant Notes."
• The last entry under "Relevant Notes" should be the page reference to the permanent note that you just created in the previous steps. This should read #[[Permanent Notes]] <page reference to permanent note here>
• Finally, you will alt-drag the block reference to the permanent note title block to a location indented under the "Permanent Notes" block. Replace that block reference with a block embed so that everything under the permanent note (sources, literature notes, etc.) is visible.
• This is all very quickly done in action.

Having a Conversation With Your Future Self

Over time, these slip-box entries will start to gain critical mass, and you can begin to have exciting conversations with yourself, making connections to the farthest locations of your slip-box. You can see this in action by looking at the inline-block references that now show up beside each entry in your slip-box. You can now explore the slip-box by using the following method:

• Click the number beside the slip-box entry to open the inline references. You are presented with references for each time you used a block reference for "Relevant Notes" in a daily page permanent note entry.
• In this case, we will look at the inline references beside "Incorporating Feedback."
• You can view "Incorporating Feedback" and "Idea Generation," "Constraints," or "Finding My People."
• If you click on the "Relevant Notes" hashtag beside each permanent note page reference, you can drill down further into the context of the permanent note entry.

You have now constructed the literature notes from highlights, and permanent notes from literature notes block embeds. Finally, a block embed of the permanent note has allowed you to see the full context from the bottom up. When you are ready to write, you now have all of this rich content, in context, to pick and choose from.

Conclusion

Thank you if you have come this far with me in the article series on digital smart notes. So far, we have:

• Collected highlights from many different sources using Readwise
• Exported those highlights to Roam Research
• Created literature notes from those highlights using Roam Research
• Finally, here, we have created permanent notes from multiple literature notes using Roam Research

As the goal of taking notes in this manner is to produce content and learn, the final article in this series will discuss how I use the permanent notes in my Roam Research slip-box to create content. Since I have followed the "How to Take Smart Notes method, much of the work has already been done. I just have to take atomic pieces of my notes and re-organize them into content to publish.

This article is part 3 of my series discussing how I capture, process, and use digital "smart notes" based on the methodology outlined in Sönke Ahrens' "How to Take Smart Notes."

As a refresher, here are the high-level tasks described in "How to Take Smart Notes."

• Make fleeting notes.
• Make literature notes.
• Make permanent notes.

In Part 1, I described how to collect highlights and fleeting notes from many different sources using Readwise. In Part 2, I explained how to set up Readwise to export the highlights and notes you have captured into Roam Research. Now that the highlights and fleeting notes are in Roam Research, we can process them into literature notes.

Please note that this article assumes that you have some familiarity with Roam Research. If you're just getting started, I would recommend checking out the following resources that have helped me.

• Roam Research: From Beginner to Super User by Anonym.s
• Roam Research Course: A Complete Guide by Shu Omi
• Roam Brain Introduction Section

Literature Notes

...the literature notes will be stored within the reference system together with the bibliographic details, separate from the slip-box, but still close to the context of the original text, they are already written with an eye towards the lines of thoughts within the slip-box. -Sönke Ahrens, "How to Take Smart Notes"

When this system was analog, a physical slip-box contained your notes. In digital format, the slip-box exists as a concept. The next article in this series will go into more detail about the slip-box and permanent notes.

While literature notes are written with an eye towards "lines of thought," or permanent notes, their scope remains related to the media piece from which they are derived. My literature notes are almost always a declarative statement that sums up, in my own words, the idea that the author was trying to portray. Multiple literature notes on the same topic or concept will then be used as sources to create a permanent note.

Creating a Literature Note in Roam Research

If you followed the instructions in part 2 of this series, you would have a new page in Roam Research for each media piece you captured with Readwise. You create literature notes by going through your highlights and notes that Readwise imported and starting a new page for each note under the "Literature Notes" section of the media page. By the time you finish a media piece, you will have accumulated one or more literature notes related to the media. We will use the "How to Take Smart Notes" page for this example.

The following is the process that I use for creating each literature note.

• Focus on and open the "Literature Notes" section of the Readwise media page in the right sidebar of Roam Research by shift-clicking the bullet next to "Literature Notes."
• Focus on the block of the highlights group you are working on by clicking the bullet next to the text that reads "Highlights first synced by #Readwise ..."
• Now work your way down the highlights, creating literature note pages indented under the "Literature Notes" section that you have opened in the right sidebar. You can do this by typing "double brackets" and filling in the literature note's title in between the brackets.
• Shift-click the newly created "literature note page reference" to open it in the right sidebar. You can fill in all of the literature note details to give it some structure that will enhance search and discovery when you need to refer to it later. For example, when you need to create a permanent note.

The Components of the Literature Note

I use a modified literature note structure derived from Zakk Fleischman's article "Implementing Zettelkasten in Roam." The components of the literature note are all attributes. They will be followed with two colons except for "Notes:" at the end. Their descriptions are as follows:

• The note itself- Page Name
• Tags- These are the tags I have assigned to the literature note to make it more searchable in Roam. At a minimum, I use "#[[Literature Notes]]" and "#Reference" This indicates that the page is a literature note that belongs in my system as a "Reference."
• Source- This is a page reference that is derived from the media piece page.
• Quote- These are the specific highlights or fleeting notes that sparked the idea for the literature note. I use block references here by alt-dragging them under the "Quote" section or right-clicking on the block bullet and selecting "copy block reference." One particular advantage to using block references here is that you will be able to tell which highlights have already been referenced by looking at the number located to the right of the highlight block.
• Projects- I reference any related projects that might apply to this note.
• Notes- This section has a brief expansion of the original literature note title statement.

Roam Templates

Roam Research has a templating capability, so you will not have to type out all of these sections every time you want to fill out a new literature note. The process for this is as follows:

• Create a new page called "roam/templates"
• The initial block on that page will be the title for your template. In this case, we will call it "Literature Note."
• Indent a block under the "Literature Note" block and copy the structure for your literature note template under the "Literature Note" block.

Now when you type two semi-colons (;;) you can choose from a list of templates to use for auto-completion. Select the appropriate template, and then the text will be auto-completed for you.

Writing Begins with the First Note Taken

They struggle because they believe, as they are made to believe, that writing starts with a blank page. -Sönke Ahrens, "How to Take Smart Notes"

"Writing begins with the first note taken" is one of my literature notes. I thought it essential to capture as a reminder of why I'm doing all of this note-taking. My objective is to learn. I believe one of the best ways to learn is by writing. The notes are an integral part of that process.

By doing the requisite work, we can get closer to crystalizing and packaging our thoughts. The next article in this series will detail how to crystalize literature notes into permanent notes further. Then, we can begin to unlock the superpowers that taking smart notes provides for us.

In this continuation of my "Digital Smart Notes" series, I will discuss exporting the notes in Readwise to Roam Research for further processing. If you haven't read Part 1, I would suggest that you start there. This article assumes that you are already using Readwise to collect notes and highlights across different media formats and that you have a Roam Research account for processing the notes that you collect.

In "How to Take Smart Notes," author Sönke Ahrens outlines the high-level steps for this note-taking system that will help you to become a more prolific and thorough writer.

• Make fleeting notes.
• Make literature notes.
• Make permanent notes.

Fleeting notes are refined into literature notes. A literature note's scope is on the particular article, book, podcast, video, tweet, etc., that you are processing. From multiple literature notes in the same knowledge domain, you create permanent notes. Literature notes further crystalize your knowledge and thoughts on a topic in your own words. A collection of literature notes and permanent notes might become the scaffolding for an article, paper, or book.

This article will discuss the process that sits between making fleeing notes (what you have imported into Readwise) and creating literature notes. To create literature notes, you need a reliable system in which to process your fleeting notes. That system, for me, is Roam Research. Let's dive right into integrating Readwise and Roam Research.

Integration and Template Setup

Once you have your fleeting notes and highlights captured into Readwise, you can export them to several services. This article will discuss exporting them to Roam Research for further processing. The first step is heading over to your Readwise account dashboard on a desktop browser. Then follow these steps to set up the initial integration:

• Under "Connect & Sync," choose Export.
• Select Roam, and Readwise will present you with a prompt to log in to Roam Research.
• Go ahead and log in to Roam Research and choose the graph you'd like to use for the Readwise export.
• Once you have logged in, Readwise will present you with some options for your export.

Integration Options

After you initially log in to Roam Research with the Readwise integration, you will be presented with the following options to toggle on or off:

• Export Automatically- This option will automatically export new highlights as you collect and import them to Readwise. I leave this turned on.
• Include Highlight Locations- This option will show, if available, a highlight location or page number along with the highlight. This is very useful for opening the highlight, in context, in the Kindle App on your desktop, for example. I leave this turned on.
• Use Custom Formatting- This option will allow you to format your Roam Research export using Readwise Templates. I turn this on and use a customized template to control what information gets exported into Roam Research.

Readwise Template

Readwise allows you to customize the presentation of highlights and notes when exported to Roam Research. It does this by using the Jinja 2 Templating Language. This article is not a primer on Jinja 2, but the option to customize the template exists if you want to dive into the documentation. I will show you my template to get you started on processing your smart notes in Roam Research. Full documentation on customizing these templates are in the Readwise Templates Help Article.

Readwise templates contain four sections. They are Page Title, Page Metadata, Highlights Header, and Sync Notification. There is a preview of the expected output of the Readwise template on the right side of the Readwise Roam Export setup page. I use a modified version of Kyle Stratis' Readwise Template.

Page Title

When Readwise exports the highlights and notes from a book, article, tweet, podcast, video, etc., it creates a Roam Research page. This section of the Readwise template will determine the title of that page. I like to keep it simple. I use the title of the piece of media and the text "(highlights)." This way, I know it is referring to a highlight import from Readwise.

{{title}} (highlights)

Page Metadata

The page metadata is the data that appears at the top of the page for each imported media piece. Here is where I define whatever metadata is relevant to me. I would recommend, at a minimum, the following.

• Type
• Author
• Full Title
• Link

I also add the following to help with processing the notes and highlights later.

• Recommended By- Useful if I want to circle back with the person/site that recommended the media piece to me.
• Status- I use either Waiting or Processed here to let me know if I have processed this piece of media.
• Tags- I use a default tag of Readwise here to keep everything organized on a Readwise page. I may add other tags from time to time to the imported highlights.

I add a Literature Notes section at the bottom to collect the literature notes that I might take while processing the piece of media. I also use a bit of "if...then" logic to define categories for media selection. This logic is especially useful for videos since Readwise does not have a pre-defined category for videos yet.

Finally, I added some questions that I sometimes use to dig further into the piece of media adapted from "How to Read a Book" by Mortimer J. Adler and Charles Van Doren and the Galaxy Brain course by @cortexfutura.

Metadata::
    Type:: #{% if 'youtube' in url %}Video{% elif category == "articles" %}Article{% elif category == "books" %}Book{% elif category == "tweets" %}Tweet{% else %}{{category}}{% endif %} 
    Author:: [[{{author}}]] 
    Recommended By:: 
    Full Title:: {{full_title}} 
    Status:: #Waiting 
    Tags:: #Readwise 
    {% if url %}Link:: {{url}}{% endif %} 
    {% if image_url %}![]({{image_url}}){% endif %}
    Summary:: 
# [[Inspectional Summary]] - (Book)
   {{"What is this book about?"|indent(first=True)}}
   {{"Does this book look at the topic through a single narrative or different facets?"|indent(first=True)}}
   {{"What sub-topics does the book cover?"|indent(first=True)}}
# [[Inspectional Summary]] - (Article / Paper / Video)
   {{"What is this article/paper/video about?"|indent(first=True)}}
   {{"What is the research question?"|indent(first=True)}}
   {{"What is the finding?"|indent(first=True)}}
   {{"What type of study is this?"|indent(first=True)}}
   {{"Which literature is this building on?"|indent(first=True)}}
# [[Analytical Summary]]
   {{"Abstract / Unity"|indent(first=True)}}
   {{"Structure"|indent(first=True)}}
   {{"Important Concepts"|indent(first=True)}}
   {{"Propositions"|indent(first=True)}}
   {{"Argument"|indent(first=True)}}
# [[📚 Literature Notes]]
{{"Create New Notes Here!"|indent(first=True)}}

Highlights Header

The highlights header is the text that appears above each set of synced highlights. Here, I want to know two pieces of information.

• If this is a new piece of media, when was the first sync?
• If this is an existing piece of media, when were the latest set of highlights synced?

{% if is_new_page %}
Highlights first synced by #Readwise [[{{date}}]]
{% elif has_new_highlights %}
New highlights added [[{{date}}]] at {{time}}
{% endif %}

Sync Notification

Finally, the sync notification section places text inside the newly created Readwise page when you start the Readwise to Roam Research export process.

On [[{{date}}]] at {{time}} Readwise synced {{num_highlights}} highlight{{num_highlights|pluralize}} from {{num_books}} book{{num_books|pluralize}}.

Items to Sync

Once you have set up your template, you can choose the items to sync. By default, Readwise will set only the first ten media items to sync. You can check off more individually, or there are several options in the dropdown menu.

I would recommend only choosing a couple of items to begin so that you can see what they will look like after the export to your Roam Research database (graph) completes.

Roam Research Import Results

Once you complete the setup, you will see several new items in your Roam Research database. The first thing to take a look at is the newly created Readwise page.

You can see a running list of sync notifications. If you go to the bottom of the Readwise page and take a look at the "Linked References," you will see the pages for each piece of media.

If you click into one of the pages listed in "Linked References," you will see a page laid out like the template you configured on the Readwise site. Here is the page for "How to Take Smart Notes." I have already taken some literature notes on this particular book.

If you dig in a little further, you can see the imported set of highlights.

Conclusion

You now have everything set up to export your highlights and notes from Readwise to Roam Research. Readwise templates allow each page and highlight to remain consistent. The next article in this series will discuss how to process your highlights and notes into literature notes using Roam Research.

If your goal is a true understanding of a particular topic or area of interest, you will need to process the information you consume. For this, you will need an external system to help you along. Deep thinking cannot be accomplished without one.

In "How to Take Smart Notes," author Sönke Ahrens discusses a methodology for processing what you read for better understanding. I have adopted this methodology for my own purposes and expanded it to include text, video, and audio material. This article will be part 1 of an ongoing series that details the tools and methods that I use for digital smart notes capture and processing. You cannot process without first capturing. That is what I will discuss in part 1.

Assembling a Capture Toolkit

Consuming information in 2021 means that we are gathering from many different sources. Though not exhaustive, this may include books, articles, pdfs, tweets, video, and audio. Over the years of utilizing digital tools, I have learned that stand-alone tools can be useful. However, integration is the key to building a truly robust system.

Context Switching

In building a system for information consumption and processing, I have focused on one goal above all else. I want to avoid context switching or switching my focus to many different apps as I process information. Context switching is a form of time confetti. Ashley Whillans discusses this phenomenon in more detail in her article "Time Confetti and the Broken Promise of Leisure."

Each event in itself is mundane and takes only seconds. But collectively, they create two negative effects. The first is the sheer volume of time they take away from your hour ... The second, more invasive effect of time confetti is the way it fragments the hour of leisure. It's most likely that these interruptions are randomly distributed throughout the hour.- Ashley Whillans

With this goal in mind, I use a service called Readwise as the central hub for all of my capture activities. All of my notes, highlights, transcripts, snippets, etc., are captured into Readwise for later processing in Roam Research. Think of Readwise as the information funnel that fills my knowledge base, Roam Research.

The Capture Tools and Their Usage

I'll briefly go over each tool in the capture toolkit in this article. If there is interest, I will create more in-depth guides for each tool in the future.

Written Material

Most of what I capture is still written material in books, articles, and pdfs. Let's take a look at the tools I use for each.

Books

I read most of my non-fiction books on a Kindle device or by using the Kindle app on my phone or laptop. Kindle offers me several advantages over physical books.

• I can highlight the text while I read.
• I can take digital notes on highlighted passages while I read.
• Readwise can import highlights and notes right from my Kindle highlights and notes so that I can avoid transcribing anything later.

Articles

For longer-form articles that I find while browsing the web, Facebook, Twitter, or otherwise, I use a read later service called Instapaper. Instapaper allows me to save articles to read later in the Instapaper app or on the web at the Instapaper site. Similar to Kindle, Instapaper enables me to do the following:

• Highlight the text in an article while I read.
• Take digital notes on highlighted passages while I read.
• Readwise can import highlights and notes from Instapaper as well so that I can process them later.

You can sign up for Instapaper here: https://instapaper.com. Instapaper has apps for both Android and iOS. You can also access it via a web browser.

PDFs and Other Web

Sometimes, I will still need to read a pdf or something on the web that is not exactly an article. For PDFs and other web material, I use a service called Hypothesis. Hypothesis allows me to:

• Highlight the text in a pdf or other website.
• Take digital notes on highlighted passages while I read.
• Readwise import highlights and notes from Hypothesis so that I can process them later.

You can sign up for Hypothesis at https://web.hypothes.is/. Also, make sure you grab the Chrome Hypothesis Extension if you are using Chrome. There are bookmarklets for other browsers.

A Note About Using Locally-saved PDFs with Hypothesis

To use locally saved PDFs with Hypothesis, you need to open the PDF with your browser first. If you are using the Chrome Hypothesis Extension, you will need to permit it to access local file URLs first by following the steps here: https://web.hypothes.is/help/annotating-locally-saved-pdfs/.

Bonus: Capturing While You Browse on Your iOS Device

Sometimes, I will start reading an article before saving it to Instapaper. I have recently started using the Command Browser while on my iPhone to capture something quickly while I read. Command Browser

The Command Browser allows me to:

• Highlight the text of the website I am reading.
• Take digital notes on the highlighted passages while I read.
• Readwise can import highlights and notes from the Command Browser so that I can process them later.

You can find Command Browser in the Apple app store for iOS.

Tweets

Occasionally, I will come across a tweet or tweet thread that is worth saving and processing later. Twitter is full of fleeting moments of wisdom or insight if you are following the right people. For capturing tweets, I use the Readwise Twitter integration.

Audio and Video

I'm starting to branch out into more audio and video material. As I have added more of this content to my workflow, I have needed to find tools to capture notes for these media types.

Podcasts

For capturing relevant passages in a podcast, I use a podcast app called Airr. Airr allows me to:

• Take snippets that are transcribed into text while I listen to a podcast.
• Take notes to go along with the snippets that I capture.
• Readwise can import these snippets and transcripts for later processing.

Airr is currently iOS only, but they do have an Android waiting list sign-up.

Video

To take notes while watching a video on YouTube or Vimeo, I use a Chrome extension and service called ReClipped. ReClipped allows me to:

• Take notes along with video timestamps while I'm watching a video.
• Upload offline video files for use with the service as well.
• Readwise can import the snippets and notes for later processing.
• The ReClipped chrome extension also enables an overlay to videos that I watch on YouTube to view and take notes without ever having to leave the video. After you have created the snippets, the overlay lets you view those snippet points and notes when you revisit the same video.

You can sign up for ReClipped at: https://reclipped.com.

Bringing It All Together With Readwise

Even the best tools won't make much of a difference if they are used in isolation. Only if they are embedded in a well-conceived working process can the tools play out their strengths. There is no point in having great tools if they don't fit together. - Sönke Ahrens, "How to Take Smart Notes."

Context switching kills productivity. It also makes it more difficult to connect ideas and themes from the various sources we consume. Before Readwise, I might have browsed through each of the apps in my capture toolkit, trying to remember what I have captured to make connections.

With Readwise, I can store the highlights and notes from these different apps in one location. From there, I have several options to export them in a standard format. I happen to use Roam Research for processing my highlights and notes. I think of Readwise as a repository for my fleeting notes and highlights.

You can sign up for Readwise at https://readwise.io.

• Once you have signed up, you can add each of the services that I have mentioned in this article by clicking on "Connect and Sync -> Import."
• From this page, you can click on any of the services listed to connect them to Readwise and start importing. Just follow the directions for each service. Soon, you will see highlights and notes populating for the categories that Readwise offers.
  

Bonus: Syncing Digital Highlights from Physical Books and Articles

If you install the Readwise iOS app, you can use it to capture highlights from physical reading material. It has OCR scanning functionality built right into the app.

Conclusion

In summary, I use the following tools for digital highlight and notes capturing:

• Books: Kindle Highlights and Notes
• Articles: Instapaper
• PDF and Web: Hypothesis
• Mobile Browsing: Command Browser
• Videos: ReClipped
• Podcasts: Airr

Finally, I bring it all together in a single repository with Readwise.

Over the past few months, I have expanded the smart notes methodology that I learned in Sönke Ahrens' book to include different media types that I consume. Readwise has become an invaluable piece of my smart notes toolkit. Readwise allows me to collect, browse, and recall my various notes and highlights all in a single location. Should I choose, I can export the content from Readwise into various other note-taking apps. The next article in this series will discuss my workflow's processing portion by showing how I integrate Readwise with my note-taking/processing service of choice, Roam Research.

I believe that learning in public can be a powerful way to achieve frictionless career networking and create opportunities for yourself. Writing, creating, and thinking in a public space creates a feedback loop that cannot be replicated with typical in-person networking events. Since we are in a pandemic and I'm an introvert, this form of networking works particularly well.

One of the fundamental building blocks for personal growth is to routinely challenge your values. One of the best ways to test my values is to write for the public. It provides a natural feedback loop that can combat confirmation bias and solidify my thought process over time.

The problem is fear. As an introvert, I can tell you that self-doubt is a daily occurrence. Sometimes the doubt comes from truly not appreciating my early work as a stepping stone to more interesting projects.

Sometimes the doubt comes from a healthy dose of impostor syndrome. I will think that surely, someday, someone will find out that I'm a fraud. Maybe it will happen today after you read this.

So, what is an introvert to do? I have found that one of the best ways to eliminate fear is to gain confidence through reading. However, for this to work, the reading must be intentional.

Intellectual Junk Food

Your mind is trained through your experiences and through what you read. Even if you cannot recall the content that you are reading, the experience of reading, along with the mental models that are formed from it, stay in your mind. It is the creation of mental models that builds confidence. If you have rock-solid mental models that you rely on daily, your confidence will soar. You may forget the content, but you likely won't forget the intent of what you read.

When we are fearful or stressed, we tend to want easy to digest content that plays into our own confirmation bias. It's human nature. I call this "intellectual junk food." It's the snack that you reach for when you need comfort. It's also a personal growth blocker.

Conspiracy Theories

A steady diet of "intellectual junk food" may cause you to stagnate, but it can be dangerous when it becomes the norm for an aggregate population. I'm talking about a form of "intellectual junk food" called conspiracy theories. They are seductive, their points are easily repeatable, and 2020 seems to have been the year of disinformation.

In an article that Farhad Manjoo of the New York Times wrote, he interviewed Dr. Joan Donovan, an Adjunct Lecturer in Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School. Dr. Donovan stated that two factors contribute to the proliferation of conspiracy theories and their peddlers in 2020. These are social isolation and QAnon. I'll take it a step further and interpret the second factor as the internet mobilization that QAnon has been able to achieve due to their strategic targeting of trends on social media.

These reasons make sense. Due to social isolation, people have been separated from a potentially diverse group of friends and loved ones that could temper their reactions to conspiracy theories. The isolated people look to Facebook groups and other outlets for answers and social interaction. Before you know it, what used to be considered fringe is now a trend.

Conspiracy theorists thrive on the "intellectual junk food" that is found on social media. The reading is light, the images are visceral, and the message is easy to trend with a hashtag. Plus, we know that Facebook's algorithms are designed to trigger a fast response when disagreement occurs. Instead of writing their own ideas, people just parrot the talking points. It's the perfect storm of personal growth stagnation.

Conspiracy theories have become an "intellectual junk food" epidemic. They have stifled the personal growth of entire populations of people. Fear and stress keep people reaching for answers in the form of conspiracy theories. They, in turn, feed into people's natural confirmation bias. This causes more fear and keeps people looking to conspiracy theories for explanations. The result? Zero personal growth and thousands of people arguing over nonsense on the internet. This cycle can be stopped.

Deliberate Reading

I believe that we should strive to be deliberate with our reading. Try to find a narrative thread in non-fiction that you read. Read with a pen in hand (analog or digital) to take notes.

While you cannot get rid of "intellectual junk food" altogether, you can deliberately read. Set aside time to indulge in this type of content, knowing that it is merely "empty calories." If you don't practice reading this type of content, you may have a harder time spotting it. It's human nature to crave it. Just know what you are consuming and treat it accordingly.

Ideally, the rich content will outweigh the "intellectual junk food" in your life. When you do read content that will help you learn and grow, write about it. Write about your own ideas about what you have learned. Test your values in public. You'll be well on your way to developing your own confidence-building mental models.

Personal Growth Maintenance

To keep perspective and build upon your mental models, you should revisit important books at different points in your life. If you've been learning in public, you should revisit your early writing as well. Think of this as personal growth maintenance.

The books will mean something different to you after having had different experiences and established different mental models. Your writing will take on new meaning as well. It will become an invaluable tool for showing your rate of change. If you want to knock out self-doubt, you must gain confidence. There is no better way to gain confidence than focusing on constant, iterative improvement.

Revisit some of your older work. You'll glean new insights, realize that you have outgrown some older ones, and gain confidence in the process. Most importantly, you will have stepped outside of your comfort zone.

Conclusion

I firmly believe that personal growth is needed to improve the world. Systemic problems will not go away unless people change from within. Imagine if, instead of conspiracy theories fueled by an "intellectual junk food" diet, people spread their personal ideas about the content they are learning. Those ideas can then be packaged and re-mixed with other well-informed ideas.

It's a lofty goal, to be sure. However, the motivation to achieve it is rooted in individual growth. That's just might be selfish enough to work.

I am a hypocrite. I realize that is an odd way to start an article if I'm trying to convince you to trust me. Maybe it is because I have admitted this, seemingly distasteful, flaw that I will, ultimately, gain your trust. Regardless, I said it and I believe it.

I cannot remember where I heard it, but the following words stuck with me. Perhaps the people who speak the most about a subject are those who are trying to learn more about it themselves. After hearing that, a whole world opened up to me and the idea of learning in public was not so scary. I know that I do not fully embrace everything that I discuss. I discuss it so that I can learn to embrace it more fully. I am a hypocrite until I learn enough that I am no longer one. I am okay with that.

I am also learning that sometimes I am long-winded. So I'll get to my point. I believe we are all hypocrites in certain aspects of our lives. The key is to realize this and try not to willfully embrace the role of the hypocrite. I believe the best way to do this is to face our own ideas carefully and thoughtfully before we respond to others we may not agree with. Those who know me, know that I absolutely do not always do this. I'm willing to try harder though.

Fundamental Attribution Error, Tribalism, and Empathy

When I make a mistake, I tend to think about all the reasons why it happened. When someone else makes a mistake, I tend to think about the person causing the mistake instead of what may have happened to cause the mistake. This, in essence, is the Fundamental Attribution Error. I do it all the time. I am learning not to.

I believe that the Fundamental Attribution Error, in part, can fuel tribalism. Tribalism is defined as a preference for those who look, think, and act like us. At its most insidious, it also causes us to want those who are different from us to be treated badly. Tribalism is also a part of human nature.

An NPR article that I read recently even mentioned that in a University of Toronto study, infants as young as six months old showed a preference in the form of racial bias. Though tribalism is a part of human nature and the Fundamental Attribution Error can make make the effects of tribalism worse by removing empathy when we witness mistakes being made, I believe we can teach ourselves to better understand our fellow humans and "walk in their shoes."

GIFs, and Rapid Response

The Oxford English Dictionary defines a GIF as "a lossless format for image files that supports both animated and static images." I have witnessed, as I suspect most of us have, that a GIF is much more in practice. A single GIF can convey complex responses or ideas in a matter of seconds to the right audience. It is what makes the impulse to use them so seductive.

At work, my team is responsible for creating and managing content for a global event that typically happens in person. Due to COVID, this year, we pivoted to a "follow-the-sun" online format with live sessions for several geographic regions. This meant that many of us were up and monitoring the event at unusual hours. In my small team Slack channel, I replied to a comment with a GIF and this started a barrage of GIFs being exchanged in response. This GIF storm was a meaningful bonding experience and was even labelled as such by one of my teammates. It made us laugh, it woke us up, and it kept us more engaged than we would have been otherwise. It's an exchange that I can't quite wrap my head around, but I know it had an impact. It also cannot be duplicated with traditional words. The meaning is lost. This, I believe, is very powerful in the right context.

GIFs can, just as easily, convey negative messages. Nowhere is this more evident than social media. Facebook, for example, is tribalism codified. Specialty groups, friends lists, and algorithms all work to establish tribes in Facebook for the sole purpose of maintaining audience engagement in order sell targeted ads. Part of that engagement relies on the rapid response to a post or comment when you receive a trigger to respond in your brain. If you are not responding, you are not engaged. If you are not engaged, then you can't view targeted ads. This is no big secret. It's just the way it works.

GIFs are an incredibly efficient and engaging method to respond rapidly online. They require only surface-level thought, they are convenient, and they are typically humorous. This is the part where I remind you that , as previously stated, I am a hypocrite. I often use GIFs in this way.

While great in the example of team bonding that I mentioned earlier, they have turned me, at times, into somewhat of a jerk when I choose to deploy them on Facebook. They are usually sarcastic in nature and a response to something I don't agree with. I often look back later and wish I hadn’t wasted the time to respond at all. Not only is time wasted by responding, time is then wasted responding to any follow up or reactions to my initial response. The quick dopamine hit from a “like” or a disagreement is, often, too much to ignore.

With conspiracy theories and theorists run amok, disinformation, and tribalism at an all time high online, it is tempting to respond rapidly with a GIF. While the frustration with people online is quite real, the need to respond is not always warranted. I think there may be a better way, though it will take some practice.

Slowing Down, Backstories, and Empathy

No human being is responsible for his genes or his upbringing, yet we have every reason to believe that these factors determine his character. - Sam Harris, Free Will

In his article "Fundamental Attribution Error: Why You Make Terrible Life Choices," Nir Eyal suggests that in order to alleviate the effect of the Fundamental Attribution Error, it may be beneficial to focus your attention on the circumstances that caused the person to behave in a certain way. In other words, create a backstory. The purpose of the backstory is not to work out an actual reason, but to get you to pause for a moment and think about the person in question as a fellow human with a history and flaws. Even if the explanation may seem implausible, you may think about something relatable. If so, congratulations, you have just taken an imaginary "walk in their shoes" and perhaps even shown some empathy in the process.

I definitely need to practice this. It is a skill that I absolutely think is worth pursuing because it will help me to foster patience in other areas of my life. Another benefit is that it slows my thinking before I respond to a post on Facebook. Just a split second is all that may be needed to stop my brain from sending the impulse to my thumbs to search for a GIF in response to something I have deemed questionable or outright wrong.

A Better Response

I think it is worth exploring whether to respond to a post at all. I know that it is really difficult to resist the temptation to respond. That's all according to plan. Social media and the algorithms that run it are designed to get you to respond. It's fairly insidious. As a realist, I know people will, sometimes, respond. I know that I will respond sometimes. I believe the trick is not to stop the response, but to slow it.

The next time you feel the urge to respond to something you disagree with on Facebook with a GIF (most likely a sarcastic one), bookmark, save, or screenshot the post. You can even have the GIF ready to go and screenshot it as part of your response. Give yourself five minutes to think about why you chose that particular GIF. Ask yourself, what was the message you were trying to convey? Get to the core of it. Maybe even try to package the thought.

If, at the end of the five minutes, you still want to respond, then do so, but do it with the core thought or idea that you have come up with instead of the GIF. Much of the time, you will probably lose interest and not respond. Over time, you may even start to realize that the five minutes you spent thinking about why and how you want to respond is far less time than the time you would have, inevitably, spent on following up on the "likes" and other reactions to your "clever" GIF. That's my hypothesis, anyway.

Conclusion

We are all hypocrites until we are not. Don't let that get in the way of learning. Social media is tribalism on rocket fuel and there is no end to it in sight. We could try to quit social media, cold turkey. It's easier said than done and I know many of us, myself included, won't do it. I know because I have tried.

I believe the best that many of us can do for now is know the rules so that we can break them. If the Facebook algorithms expect a rapid response, don't give them one. Step outside your tribe for a moment, think it through, then respond if you still feel you must. Save the GIFs for team building and laughing with friends.

I know that I will start practicing this today. My hope is that it will help me with empathy, kindness, and thoughtfulness. The next time someone makes a mistake, my first thought might just be "what circumstances led them to do this." I hope that someone will think the same for me when I mess up.

I believe the ability to curate, organize, and share your atomic thoughts or thought models will become an invaluable skill in the future. While automation will continue to tackle routine tasks, skillsets will need to shift towards thinking and making connections between concepts.

The most unique thing that we can offer to the world are our thoughts. They might be the same general theme as someone else's thoughts, but they come from a unique perspective. This makes them extremely valuable when they are presented well.

The problem is that this unique perspective, based on our own cultural, economic, and social background, is both a boon and a hindrance when it is time to convey the thoughts to another human. Someone else's own background gives them a unique lens through which they view your message. So, we must be diligent in our efforts to ensure that our thoughts are useful to the recipient and the intended meaning is conveyed.

Packaging Our Thoughts

Before thoughts are delivered or made public, I believe it helps if they are first packaged and bundled to maximize their impact. Picking out the important bits of information in anything you read, listen to, or view is an important skill to develop. By packaging your thoughts before presenting them (especially in text), you can help the recipient focus on your core message or idea.

There are two important elements that I consider when I package a thought:

• First, the thought must be atomic. It must stand alone and be useful even without a lot of context surrounding it. Context may add additional layers of richness, but a person should be able to get the gist without it.
• Second, the thought must be distilled into your own words, but universally understandable. You should know your topic well enough to be able to explain the thought or concept without relying on repetition or paraphrasing of someone else. This will take deliberate practice, but if you distill the thought down to the core idea, it should be closer to becoming universally understandable.

Let's use an example of a thought that I recently had while processing my Smart Notes.

Networking can be supercharged by learning in public

Right away, this thought does not pass the first test. While the thought is atomic, it cannot be easily understood without more context. I can understand it because I have the proper context in my mind while I read the thought statement.

Immediately, I can focus on two separate topics in this statement. Networking and “learning in public.” If I were reading this as an IT professional I might think of “Networking” as it applies to technology. This is not the case. What I am actually referring to is “Career Networking,” or making connections to help further your career or create opportunities. Let's change the thought statement a bit to reveal this particular context.

Career networking can be supercharged by learning in public

This is a little better now. Now my audience knows that I am referring to the topic of “Career Networking.” However, the audience still may not know what “learning in public” means without proper context.

When I refer to “learning in public,” I am talking about sharing the knowledge and skills that I am learning with others while in the process of learning. I know this because I have the requisite context in my mind from my reading and experience. My audience will not have access to that same context. Let's change the statement a bit more.

Career networking can be supercharged by sharing what you are learning as you learn it

This attempt does pass the first test. It is atomic and it doesn't require "as much" context. There is still a problem. “Supercharged” might not be a good adjective here. It may be meaningless if the audience has not heard it used in multiple contexts. It's also superfluous language and doesn't really have a clear meaning.

Sharing what you are in the process of learning publicly is one of the best ways to career network today

This statement could probably be improved even more, but it is definitely superior to the original in clarity and atomicity. The two topics, "sharing what you are learning" and "career networking" are linked into a single, atomic thought. The statement can also be understood without the need for extra context. At this point you can feel free to add context around this statement to enrich the thought, but pre-requisite context is not needed by the audience to understand the thought.

Not only are thoughts that are packaged in this way easier to understand, they can be combined with other packaged thoughts to create something completely new. A model for collecting, curating, and re-mixing thoughts in this way opens up a vast array of opportunities for innovation in every aspect of our lives.

Roam Research: A Tool for Packaging Our Thoughts

We need a reliable and simple external structure to think in that compensates for the limitations of our brains - Sönke Ahrens, How to Take Smart Notes

This is one of my favorite insights from “How to Take Smart Notes” because it resonates so well with how my thinking has changed since discovering Roam Research

While the process outlined in this next section can be done in pretty much any note-taking app or even paper, I believe that Roam Research is one of the best tools for the job. If you haven't used Roam Research and are interested, I recommend taking the trial for a spin at https://roamresearch.com and see how it can help you to improve your thinking process.

Following the advice in “How to Take Smart Notes,” I will need two things to better clarify and package my thought.

• A clean space to write down my thought.
• Some prompts to help me process my thought into something that more closely resembles the ideal package.

Next, I'm going to add some prompts at the top of the page to help when thinking through the process of packaging my thought. The prompts should be related to the two elements mentioned earlier in the article.

• First, the thought must be atomic. It must stand alone and be useful even without a lot of context surrounding it. Context may add additional layers of richness, but a person should be able to get the gist without it.
• Second, the thought must be distilled into your own words, but universally understandable. You should know your topic well enough to be able to explain the thought or concept without relying on repetition or paraphrasing of someone else. This will take deliberate practice, but if you distill the thought down to the core idea, it should be closer to becoming universally understandable.

When complete, my prompts will be structured like a flow chart.

Let's step through the process with the example from earlier in the post.

The first thing we will do is write our thought under our prompts.

Next, we will work through our prompts one by one. To make it easier in Roam Research, I will use block references, which are just a reference to a particular bullet that is written.

I will copy each block reference one by one while working through my prompts by right clicking the bullet and selecting copy block ref

In this case we already explored the fact that the thought would need additional context to be useful. Let’s think through that.

-Now we can further refine the thought by stepping through the prompts and repeating the exercise until we are satisfied.

We have essentially just created and stepped through an algorithm of thought used for packaging a thought for public consumption.

Conclusion

Our thoughts truly are the most unique asset that we can offer the world. They are valuable in their own right. When we package them for atomicity and universality using our own words, they become exponentially more useful. They can be shared, re-mixed, and combined to create even greater ideas.

The next time you have a thought write it out and package it by running it through the prompts you have learned in this article or similar prompts of your own. You will begin to think with increased clarity and just might share something awesome with the world.