Overview

I have a database and an database.

Sources

My database contains entires for...

• Books I read
• Particularly good articles
• Classes I take
• Any other source of nonfiction, temporally open notes

Each entry contains my notes from that source written in the body of the page. These notes are then atomized into their constituent parts - and turned into proper “Notes” entires into the Notes database.

Notes

My database contains Atomic Notes, which are also Permanent Notes (see Note Types) that...

• Are between 1 sentence and ~2 paragraphs in length
• Are typically bound to 1 or more sources
• Are NOT context-dependent on any other information
• Are NOT bound to a Project
• Are NOT “logs” of events and transactions
• May contain examples
• May be updated/refined/added to over time
• Are linked together using “at mentions” and direct links
• Infrequently point out to external resources
• Tagged with one of ~20 topics, which I let grow naturally

My Own Words

All of my notes in both the Sources and Notes databases are written by me. I do not import whole articles. I do not copy/paste large chunks of text, to be parsed later. If it is in these databases, it has passed an initial filter. It has been deemed important enough to actually write down. This keeps the “search” functionality free of unprocessed thoughts and other people’s writing.

Linking

Now that Notion supports automatic back-linking, I am thinking the Related Notes section need not contain duplicate links to things in the page themselves. Related notes can become “Other Related Notes”.

Related Notes

GoodNotes 5 + Notion

Note Types