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The Tyranny of the Note Taking Industrial Complex
And other notes on notes
There’s been a lot of critique going on lately about notes. My friend Rick and I talked about it a few months ago, and I’d been copying and pasting the links down in an Airtable record (Haha — not kidding though). I’ve written 1,000+ notecards at this point, at least 200 of which made it into this book and another 200 will make it into a future one, and I’ve really enjoyed the process. I want to summarize and respond the old web 2.0 way, at this blog (although you’ll probably read the thread on Twitter):
The Note-Taking Bullshit Industrial Complex
Okay firstly, this is something that’s been bugging me, which Max Nussenbaum summarizes well, “An entire digital ecosystem has sprung up of productivity gurus who claim that taking notes on what you read and organizing your ideas the way they do is the secret to supercharging your creative output.” A beautiful summary.
I recently saw the merchant of one of these courses — who shall remain nameless out of courtesy, because I don’t actually have a problem with them, and to keep this piece smoke-free — take a photo announcing that he’d started taking paper notes.
This same merchant had constantly announced how successful their course had sold (I…
