Notes should be written for the person who has forgotten everything
💎CORE ARGUMENT
The person who will read this note is a stranger who happens to have my handwriting. She has not read the book, was not in the meeting and does not remember why any of it seemed important.
I keep writing for a different reader: me, tomorrow, with everything still warm. That reader never turns up. Forgetting is steepest in the first days, so by the time I need a note the context I was relying on has already gone. In 2023 I read thirty-one books and can account for four. Nothing was wrong with my memory. I had left the notes addressed to someone with total recall.
So the working rule is to assume I have forgotten everything, and write down what that person would need:
- what the thing is, in a full sentence
- why I cared on the day
- what I concluded
- where to go next
That sounds like more work and is, by about two minutes a note. Against that, an unusable note costs the whole time I spent reading.
It also changes what I leave out. The stranger does not need my excitement, the three adjectives, or the reminder to think about this more. She needs nouns.
Where it breaks down: written strictly for a stranger, a note can turn into a small encyclopaedia entry with nothing of me left in it. The stranger still has my taste. I can leave out why Rotterdam mattered to the product, but not what it was like to stand on that floor at ten to nine. And some notes are meant to expire. A shopping list addressed to posterity is a waste of a Saturday.
The short version: future me is a stranger with my handwriting.
🧱BUILT FROM
🌍WHY IT MATTERS
Full sentences, no private abbreviations, a date on anything that will age. I no longer write see above or as discussed. Nobody will remember the discussion, including me.
☑️NEXT STEPS
- Strip private abbreviations from the lecture notes of the spring module
- Put a date on every note that will age
- Read one April note cold in December and mark what I could not follow
📖 Ebbinghaus on forgetting for the shape of the loss: steep at first, then slow. 📖 Matuschak on evergreen notes for the instruction to write notes for a reader, even when the only reader is yourself.
💎 A note is finished when it can be read without its source is the same test stated about the note. This one is stated about the reader. 💎 Forgetting is fastest right after learning is the two-sentence reason.
Context decays faster than the note does. A note written for the warm, present me depends on memory that will be gone before the note is next opened. Writing for someone who knows nothing puts the context on the page, which is the one place it survives.
A journal is the honest exception. The daily note is written for tonight and half its value is that it does not explain itself. Explaining would turn it into a performance.
For lectures, 🧪 Spaced review of lecture notes. For everything else, the line in Rules for this vault that says a literature note is written within a week of finishing or not at all.