My relationship with note-taking started in elementary school, where we filled school-grade notebooks with different “knowledge clippings”, from vocabulary, to math concepts, to history details and more.
These days, web clippers and copy-and-pasting make it easy to store information. However, there’s a downside, and that’s the fact that it’s also easy to hoard information: information you will leave in a Notion database or Evernote notebook, and then never look at ever again. Maybe you didn’t even look at it in the first place, and the ease of clicking the “clip page” button on the extension toolbar has made it into your muscle memory.
If every note is important, then no notes are.
So… active note-taking it is, right?
Styles of Note-Taking
Active note-taking is when instead of copying word by word (e.g. from a boring lecture), you are paraphrasing the concepts into your own words, and distilling them in a way you can understand.
There are three main types of note-taking:
- The architect.
- The gardener.
- The librarian.
Web clipping falls into the “librarian” category. Evernote was—and I suppose, still is—great for this, as its OCR and tagging features are top-notch. Architects may like the structured, block-based Notion. Whereas gardeners are the variety who like to grow their ideas through bi-directional linking. I’m currently typing the draft of this post using Obsidian, a tool that has risen in recent years to be one such tool.
All three styles might land you into the “hoarding” pitfall. I’ve used a few note-taking apps over the past few years: starting with Evernote, moving to OneNote for my studies (importing PowerPoint presentation slides and then annotating them adapted well to my workflow), and then settling on Google Keep, Notion, and now Obsidian. Each one of them had different uses and advantages
Currently, out of all of these, I use Obsidian the most. I loved the structure that Notion provides, and still do, with its database functions being one of the best ways to organize information.
But as a note-taking app? It isn’t the best out there for everyone.
I’m not going to say Obsidian is the perfect note-taking app either. It being essentially a collection of Markdown files greatly simplifies the note-taking process, and allows it to be a local-first solution. But having an immense library of plugins can be a double-edged sword, and Markdown tables? They are going to be limited because of the nature of the Markdown.
But what Obsidian has taught me is that it can be simple. At the core of it, it’s a collection of Markdown files. Each one takes minimal space on my hard drive, but still takes a bit of space, making me conscious of what I’m putting into my vault. And it made me start taking notes more intentionally, and allow me the grace of making what I call (and is known as) living documents.
What Are Living Documents?
Living documents are also called “dynamic” or “evergreen” documents. In the context of a blog, an “evergreen” article are posts that remain relevant for a long period of time, rather than being relevant to a certain point in time. For example, most news would not be evergreen, whereas “top ten productivity tips” is not tied to a year or date.
While an article like “best tips for running an Instagram page” may seem like an evergreen article, it is actually a better example of a living document. As the Instagram algorithm changes, parts of that article may no longer be relevant. However, the article can be updated with a year in the title.
That’s the key to living documents: they can be updated for relevancy.
Living documents are flexible. They are continually edited and updated when required. New processes may be adopted, things may change throughout a project, dates may shift, new laws could come into enactment, and new research or discoveries may shift mindsets.
And while none of these might apply to you, what you can use and adapt to your own note-taking workflow is the idea that documents evolve to grow with you.
Advantages & Disadvantages
Living documents help reduce friction. By focusing less on making each note perfect, it also increases focus, as it leaves more time to think about the most important takeaway for each note—which may be what you refer to later, anyway. The idea is that this allows you to make less notes, with higher quality to each.
There is also less pressure at making the note “complete”, as it is always open for new additions and changes down the line. Not only does it make the note more relevant, the future me who updates it may be wiser, having learned something else during this time that can elevate my understanding of the contents.
Where living documents may not work is when time is important to the soul of the note. Sometimes, capturing what you felt in a certain moment is what makes the note what it is, such as journal entries, because the context surrounding it is the most important thing. Or you’re writing a book, and while you might decide not to use a concept anymore, you may decide to revisit it later, or rework it into a different project. For situations like these, keeping different copies or version history is one way to preserve ideas at a certain point in time.
Get Started with Living Documents
Ready to get started? Here are some considerations to make the best use of this format, no matter if you’re an architect, gardener, or librarian:
- As living documents will change over time, some sort of version history, as aforementioned, can be useful.
- Notes should have somewhat descriptive titles or keywords so that it’s easily searchable, especially when contexts change.
- Each note should have an indication of relevancy, by tying it to a date and time in the body or the title. This could be a note in the content, e.g. “Last modified 2024-01-01”, or a unique identifier such as those employed by Zettelkasten systems (e.g. “202401012345”).
What does your note-taking workflow look like? Leave a comment below and let us know.
