0020: Collecting Good Ideas
Smart Notes in 8 Steps
“Your job is to collect good ideas. The more good ideas you collect, the more you can choose to be influenced by them” - Austin Kleon , Steal Like an Artist”
An Engine for Creative Output
Smart note-taking transforms passive consumption into active creation by providing a structured method to collect, process, and combine ideas.1
This practice enhances creativity through the combination of discrete thoughts and cures the habit of mindless consumption by promoting purposeful engagement with information. The result is a self-reinforcing cycle of learning, idea generation, and creative output.
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Turn information consumption into an engine for creative output.
Here's a concise summary of the 8 Steps of Taking Smart Notes:
1. Make fleeting notes: Quick, informal notes on any thought or idea.
2. Make literature notes: Capture main points from reading, using your own words.
3. Make permanent notes: Develop ideas from fleeting and literature notes into well-formulated thoughts.
4. Add permanent notes to the slip-box: File notes behind related ones, creating links and indexes.
5. Develop topics bottom-up: Use the slip-box to identify gaps and questions for further research.
6. Choose writing topics from the slip-box: Let your notes guide your writing projects.
7. Turn notes into a rough draft: Transform your collected notes into a coherent argument.
8. Edit and proofread the manuscript: Refine the draft until it's ready for publication.
Side Project
I’m using these steps to produce a manuscript; tentatively called ’The Manual for taking Time for your Creative Practice’, I’m writing this as a gift for my free newsletter subscribers.
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https://fortelabs.com/blog/how-to-take-smart-notes/