Status:: Tags:: Links:: [[Module - Connect]] # Methods For Growing Notes You have collected some information in your system. **Now it's time to grow it.** Here's what we will talk about in this lesson: - When you should grow notes - Methods for growing your notes - Growing small sets of notes - Freewriting - The Four Gs Of Notemaking - The Idea Compass - Summarizing - Growing notes large scale - Zooming Out ### When Should You Grow Your Notes? The only question that remains is when you should grow your notes. The answer is it depends. Generally, I only grow notes when I open them again for some reason. In effect, the most interesting notes grow over time where as the notes I don't go back to fall into the dark abyss of Obsidian. Don't worry notes don't have feelings. Sometimes, however I will set forth dedicated time to grow notes. I might be processing my input notes to create idea notes out of. A test might be coming up and I want to spend some time going back through and growing them. Or I have some extra time and want to go through my [[My School]] and process some of the notes with the to process tag. Whatever the case, these are the methods I use for growing my notes. # Methods For Growing Notes ### Freewriting Freewriting involves opening up a new note or existing note and letting your thoughts flow. There is no judgement. You freely write. After some amount of time, 30 seconds, two minutes, five minutes you go back through your freewriting and create new notes out of the gold nuggets. You might take some of the surrounding text into this new note and start the whole freewriting process over again. Freewriting is probably the most common method of growing notes that I use and the most versatile. There are many different kinds of freewriting you can use as well depending on what type of spice you are looking for in a certain day: - Simple Freewriting: Set up a timer and follow the flow of thought without any extra constraints. - Brain dump Freewriting: This variation is exactly like the simple freewriting, but no timer required. - Extreme freewriting: like braindump freewriting but there is no stopping or erasing. - Triggered Freewriting: Use a question or an observation as prompt to kickstart your freewriting process. - The prompt can be anything: - An idea - A question - Your feelings - Your physical sensations - A situation you want to think about - Something you are currently looking at - Prompted Freewriting: this is like triggered freewriting but every time you get stuck you come back to the original prompt and ask the question, "what else can I think about?" Just be careful not to come back too soon. Once you have created notes from your freewriting I find the Obsidian Local Graph view, unlinked mentions view, and strange new worlds plug in super helpful for finding new relevant connections I might be able to put inside of my the new or old note. ### 🥜The Four Gs of Notemaking As mentioned earlier, The Four Gs of Notetaking are four of the highest leverage questions you can ask yourself to give insight into how to grow your notes. I personally call these the four questions of peanut butter godhood but John told me that wasn't marketable so The Four Gs of Notemaking it is. 1. "What does this remind me of?" 2. "What is this similar to?" 3. "How is this different from?" 4. "This is interesting because?" ### Connecting Notes With The Idea Compass If peanut butter isn't your thing, the idea compass is a another method for connecting notes. I first heard it from [Vicky Zhao and Fei Ling Tseng on a Linking Your Thinking Workshop video.](https://youtu.be/-7r9t9T9Aww) Essentially, it works by asking yourself one of the four main questions below or sub questions to think about how to connect a note. All the questions are framed around the analogy of a compass. If you were a boy scout like me you will appreciate this: ![[3FDF4F27-6035-421A-B4CF-2415A05C2870.jpeg]] ### Summarizing Summarizing as a method is exactly what you think it is. You summarize the main arguments, insights, or whatever you want at the top of a note. This makes it easier for your future self to quickly uncover what a note is about when they see it. ## Zooming Out All of the methods for growing your notes mentioned earlier have been focused on small scale notemaking. Zooming out is a method for large scale notemaking. It works through generalization. Generalizing works by taking a set of lower order notes and integrating them into higher order notes. There are two types of generalization: 1. Generalization by grouping 2. Generalization by emergence ### Generalization By Grouping Works by taking a series of notes with related characteristics and bringing them together. For example, taking all of your notes on the flow state, happiness, or the Psychology of relationships and bringing them together into one larger note. This larger note is what most people in the PKM community call a Map of Content (MOC) and it's the subject of what the next lesson will be on. ### Generalization By Emergence Works by taking a series of notes and creating a new emergent idea out of them. For example, the human body as a thing (and idea) only exists because all its cells relate to each other in very specific ways. If the ways how the cells interact significantly changes then “human body” ceases to exist. A person is able to speak, but a cell, a tissue, an organ, or any of the parts of the human body alone do not have that property. The same idea is reflected in generalization by emergence. **You're creating new knowledge by taking a series of notes and creating a new idea out of them!**