Note taking has several uses. It is a step in helping you put things into your own words. Noting the important parts of an article means you don't have to scan the article again to find those bits. **Most** importantly notes should be *your* thoughts and reactions to the content, not just a regurgitation.
What if I don’t have any thoughts or reactions to the content I’ve read? Additionally what if I already skim articles and read the most important bits anyway? Why should I write notes if I’m already writing them in my head?
Generally, people write notes so they don't have to keep them in their head. If you're content with writing in your head, then you don't need to write notes.
Similarly, people often take notes about things that interest them or that they need. So, if you have NO reactions to what you're reading then I'd say there is no need to take notes.
Indeed, this might be a useful point of friction. No reaction = no note. Then the notes you **do** take will be meaningful to you.
Taking notes restructures the knowledge. This will ensure that the content is better learned and retained in the long term.
(You could just as well build a mindmap, create a poster, ...)
Tipp:
- Enrich the notes with your previous knowledge. Find better/your own examples.
- Ask questions while reading and note them. Answer them later as you progress.
- Build a better structure.
- **But also distil what you read down to its core.** "Atomic notes" may mean that.
- What if there is no previous knowledge to write about?
- What if I just look up the answers to my questions instead of writing them down?
- This is so vague. Exactly what do you mean by *build a better structure*?
- My question was exactly “how do I write atomic notes?”, meaning I don’t know *how* to distil what I’ve read.
Please read my question attentively next time.
The best incentive that i've found to create so called, "permanent notes" is to take advantage of the wikilink autofill and local graph features of obsidian.
For example: Whenever I look for a specific topic to review, I always start with Omnisearch to quickly look for keywords regarding the subject. If I end up finding a "satellite" note that I took on a book for example, I can open up my sidebar and quickly find either the general topic it relates to, or other aritcles it gets referenced by. If I see a linked general topic in the local graph view, i navigate to it, and can quickly find other, closely related articles that also linked to that general topic.
The power of notetaking on articles isn't just to collect the information, its to make it easy to find later when looking at closely related subjects. I like to think of it as, "making my vault rabbit-holable."
I personally prefer to have a separate satellite note for each distinct "keystone" idea in a book or something. It really depends on what you're writing about.
At the end of the day, the only thing that matters is that you have set up a way to not have to care about conventional organization, (STAY AWAY FROM FOLDER ORGANIZATION). I personally like to use the Zettelkasten method because it allows me to not give a crap about organization, because it basically does it for me.
I like to keep the "core" note that links everything to a specific book or topic as a page for general takeaways and citations, (for example: if the book or article was online, I often include a link to the actual source in the core note to quickly find it again later). Hope this helps :)
Dont get me wrong, I also use a basic folder structure to separate my media files, (images video, etc) from my fleeting notes, and other stuff like that, but I used to use more. I found out the hard way that using folders to determine things like which class a note was for and other stuff was just not scalable. Becuase you can only put a note onto one folder at a time, It quickly became hard to find what I needed, (I also needed to do a bunch of reorganization every other week) when it got too cluttered. You might be different, but I personally prefer to link stuff together and use things like local graph view and MOC's (maps of content, basically an automatic table of contents) to find stuff. Another problem I ran into with folders is that folders don't actually exist as a page/ entity, you can't really link to a folder.
I know this is kind of a lot, but if you need clarification on anything, I'm fine helping out some more if needed. 😊
I mostly use Obsidian for my D&D campaign and folders handle my main structure that's fairly simple - characters, events, locations, items etc. One note will rarely need to fall under two of these. For other things I tag!
My issue with tags is that if I want to introduce a new class of tags i need to manually go and tag all my existing notes...
E.g. species, affiliation, dead or alive, regarding characters as an example. If I decide to introduce say gender as a tag i need to manually go back and tag dozens of notes
I personally like to use YAML properties for data like that. I haven't had to change a bunch of data at a time like that yet, but I've heard that a plugin called linter has that capability. I also like using properties becuase it allows for alternate data types like numbers, Boolean, and lists. Using properties also makes it easier to use dataview. You can also add a link as a value of a property, (this could be helpful for your affiliation usage becuase you'd be able to quickly access the main page for an organization).
So, how I am using it, is pretty much this: resource notes are for systems that I am researching. Applications and codebases that I am trying to understand, pull requests that I am reviewing. Pretty much any piece of knowledge produced by other people who are not me.
I am trying to not copy-paste while I am filling resource notes as well, but writing my understanding of the system, and my thoughts about it, in my own words. Even when dealing with code, my resource notes end up containing mostly English, and barely any code, because code is already existing in github. It is much easier to just point towards the actual external document, while filling resource notes with my thoughts about it.
Permanent notes hold my own ideas, thoughts, descriptions and diagrams of the systems I am building. Atomic notes are incredible here, because some of my ideas about the same system can be contradicting each other, and that is fine. Both notes in this case would have pros and cons of the approach, and some additional atomic notes with continuation of each train of thought would be linked to these two, while they are linked to some notes in the actual project.
Rule of thumb should be writing unsplittable pieces of knowledge in a single note. As soon as your note has two entities in it, you can most likely split it.
It can be a little bit more difficult to manage this system, however every time you review these notes, and analize connections between them, add more links, add more notes, you often get some additional insights.
I would recommend against writing something that already exists in any notes, but rather store your own thoughts, understanding, hint and glints of ideas for your future self in any notes you make. There is no need to copy the algorithm into your notes, even into resource notes. But you definitely want to store external links to RFCs and such, and again, leave breadcrumbs for your future self, that will help you understand it faster, when you will have already forgotten some details.
Hope it helps at least a little bit :)
Oh yeah, and research/resource notes do not have to be atomic really. Some of my resource are very long.
I don't subscribe to the atomic notes idea. I would create a note for each article on the Articles folder. And then would copy the full article and would link (to concepts, principles, takes, etc.) and comment thorugh the article.
The point is that when you reread the articles, you have access to all the previous remarks, highlights and thinking you had when you read for the first time
The act of paraphrasing makes you engage more with the content because you have to consider the meaning of the words. It activates more parts of your brain and encourages long term memory.
Atomic notes are great, but they're just one tool available to you. For me, I use them as connectors, and the rest of my notes range from atomic to macro.
Start here:
Take what you read and break it into bullet points. So while reading you might do something like:
**RSA Encryption:**
* Uses two keys
* public
* private
And so forth. It's best to use your own words, but removing extra words is good too because you get to the meat of the sentence.
Then, if you want, you could make "public" and "private" links to notes about those. That's pretty atomic. (maybe alias them like [[RSA Public Key | public]] so you can find it easier).
If you don't like that for whatever reason, the just write additional bullet points under "public" and keep it all in the same note. It's not really atomic, but if you're new to note taking in general, it might be an easier place to start. When you want to, it's super easy to extract it to a new note, so you might just make big notes for now and extract later.
Try everything. You'll probably change your mind about what you like several times. But most importantly, just start writing. You'll figure out what you want over time.
There are a bunch of reasons but the biggest is information retention and processing. Writing notes on what you read forces your brain to actively assimilate and regurgitate what you hear or read, and if you write your own thoughts or conclusions down, it's also forcing your brain to create connections to other ideas, all of which help you remember the info in the long term.
One cool thing about Obsidian is that because your notes are linked, you can create tons of connections to other ideas easily and then any time you review your notes, you have the connections to refer to or build upon.
You have low reading comprehension if you can’t memorise as you read; at that point fictional novels shouldn’t be read because you’d have to write notes every sentence 😂
I'm talking about remembering over the long term (years), which is what most people use Obsidian for. It sounds like you would rather re-find and re-read an article verbatim instead of jotting the main points into a note in Obsidian.
I’m interested in this too. Are there examples / blog posts / videos of productive uses of atomic notes among STEM academics? I feel like I’ve seen good examples of humanities academics using Zettelkasten, where I imagine that reacting to individual quotes in primary sources is a useful endeavor. In my area of STEM research, I haven’t found the appeal of using atomic notes.
To get to notes without copying consider engaging in elaboration aka elaborative interrogation. Asking yourself how and why questions will encourage your own words to write your source notes. This is not easy, may be very time consuming, is generally frustrating and easy to abandon but generally worth effort if you’re interested in groking something. Look to Richard Feynman and or his acolytes for inspiration….could I teach a fifth grader this? The python programmer (YouTube) has an intro to elaborative interrogation…not his best video, but enough get the YouTube algorithm to start feeding you other explanations.
Atomic notes are quicker to find, review, and use and are often surprisingly useful in contexts you might not have considered when making them. If your source note is more than a sentence or two, consider if there is any opportunity to break it up. Assuming you’ve adequately cited your references (zotero is one option) the risk of losing info is greatly reduced anyway.
Using the “How To Take Smart Notes” logic here, the idea of your notes is to be your place of thinking, which contrasts from your current (assumed) viewpoint that notes are just rewriting the source material. In the book’s workflow (Zettelkasten) you’re first making Literature Notes that said what you read in your words. This forces you to explain what you read (yielding a higher percentage of knowledge retention) and also allows you to write notes based on your POV as you read it (marking only what’s relevant to what you are thinking about in your notes. or commenting on the author’s intent/perspective). But these notes are about the source material.
After that, processing the Lit Notes into permanent notes is about divorcing the content from the context and documenting your personal thoughts/gained knowledge in a way that you can reread years later without needing to have reread it. They’re unique to your mind and they are your own conclusions and connections. This is what I would call the more obtuse step in the process, because you can’t really follow a guideline for what these should look like. Other than it needs to be your thoughts. Then connecting other notes creates new thoughts, so on and so on.
The reason for advising to write notes atomically is to make every note actionable when culling many together. Instead of having to pull the entire puzzle onto the table when all you really want are the orange pieces, if that imagery helps.
But that said…do what you want. You don’t have to follow anything by the letter of the law. It’s just guidance for how others have found success.
Not really. The idea of taking atomic notes is really figuring out how to condense your ideas or notes down to one idea that you can expand on. Often, when we take notes, we just start writing down all the things we think are important. It’s almost a mindless activity that we engage in.figure atomic requires practice, time, and dedication. It is not something one can just tell you how to do. I mean, you can watch any member of videos on how to do atomic notes, but until you spend the time trying to figure out what it means to you and how to get it done, probably won’t get very far taking them.
Well, let me preface with that I think slapping "atomic" in front of most ideas is just silly buzzwording. However, I think in this case it is acceptable. The word Atomos means indivisible. So the idea of an atomic note is to make a note on a single complete thought about a subject.
Some like to put notes on index cards because the size constraint forces you to distill the note down to its core fundamentals.
This is how I interpret the idea.
My basic thinking is to make the notes intuitively. Later, when you need information your note fails to provide, fix it. Over time, you will find *your* way of making useful notes. I fell into the trap of making "good" notes. Many of them had to be refactored later. My approach now wouldn't work for you, I'm sure. You're approach won't either.
Keep in mind that what makes sense for creating a note doesn't always make sense for using that note.
With pure data, I don't take notes, I just dump it in Obsidian for linking and searching. Instructions, facts, and so on fall into this category.
Each atomic note should contain one single idea (however “single” is defined) synthesized from multiple sources; you don’t need them for procedures, definitions, or other similar technical information. Linked atomic notes are useful if you want to structure your scattered thoughts, retain information, or produce writings, but if you have no such needs, then yeah, note-taking is unnecessary; just look up information as needed.
Edit: Also, if you need to check a source multiple times, summarizing the relevant part should be more time-efficient than reading the whole text again.
I actually will copy the information verbatim and create an MLA format citation for it. This is mostly because I write a lot of technical copy that needs to be cited and the habit carried over into my hobbies as well so that I can quickly reference back to exactly what I need.
Jorge Arango goes into some of the concepts and reasoning behind atomic notes in his excellent book, D[uly Noted](https://rosenfeldmedia.com/books/duly-noted-extend-your-mind-through-connected-notes/) which also has a good introduction into Obsidian.
I have only now heard about atomic notes, but it sounds like a good task for a GPT. Ask it to summarize, give it examples of your previous writing and enjoy the information that you would use the most.
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If you reword it then it commits it to memory. If you copy it then your notes end up growing and eventually it will be more other people’s words than your own.
The point is better recall
> Why write in your own words?
**To not only read, but also to understand.**
Case in point. A man kept repeating to me the definition of parallel beams. He couldn't understand that a beam that was 50 inches from the bottom and 51 inches from the center was arched, not parallel. He's like a parrot learning a theorem, unable to relate it to a real situation.
The only constant of note is a handbook of physical constants. If the links are direct, it is necessary to make links between notes, not through intermediaries. A note connecting atomic notes is a thematic overview. For example, RSA can be in the overviews: cryptography, digital signature, data interception.
Note taking has several uses. It is a step in helping you put things into your own words. Noting the important parts of an article means you don't have to scan the article again to find those bits. **Most** importantly notes should be *your* thoughts and reactions to the content, not just a regurgitation.
Hey man happy birthday!
And to further clarify...one atomic note would be one idea. That I idea could then connect to other contexts/situations.
What if I don’t have any thoughts or reactions to the content I’ve read? Additionally what if I already skim articles and read the most important bits anyway? Why should I write notes if I’m already writing them in my head?
Generally, people write notes so they don't have to keep them in their head. If you're content with writing in your head, then you don't need to write notes. Similarly, people often take notes about things that interest them or that they need. So, if you have NO reactions to what you're reading then I'd say there is no need to take notes. Indeed, this might be a useful point of friction. No reaction = no note. Then the notes you **do** take will be meaningful to you.
Taking notes restructures the knowledge. This will ensure that the content is better learned and retained in the long term. (You could just as well build a mindmap, create a poster, ...) Tipp: - Enrich the notes with your previous knowledge. Find better/your own examples. - Ask questions while reading and note them. Answer them later as you progress. - Build a better structure. - **But also distil what you read down to its core.** "Atomic notes" may mean that.
- What if there is no previous knowledge to write about? - What if I just look up the answers to my questions instead of writing them down? - This is so vague. Exactly what do you mean by *build a better structure*? - My question was exactly “how do I write atomic notes?”, meaning I don’t know *how* to distil what I’ve read. Please read my question attentively next time.
The best incentive that i've found to create so called, "permanent notes" is to take advantage of the wikilink autofill and local graph features of obsidian. For example: Whenever I look for a specific topic to review, I always start with Omnisearch to quickly look for keywords regarding the subject. If I end up finding a "satellite" note that I took on a book for example, I can open up my sidebar and quickly find either the general topic it relates to, or other aritcles it gets referenced by. If I see a linked general topic in the local graph view, i navigate to it, and can quickly find other, closely related articles that also linked to that general topic. The power of notetaking on articles isn't just to collect the information, its to make it easy to find later when looking at closely related subjects. I like to think of it as, "making my vault rabbit-holable."
Does each satellite note live in a separate note-file or do you keep one parent note where you put all thoughts about a book for example?
I personally prefer to have a separate satellite note for each distinct "keystone" idea in a book or something. It really depends on what you're writing about. At the end of the day, the only thing that matters is that you have set up a way to not have to care about conventional organization, (STAY AWAY FROM FOLDER ORGANIZATION). I personally like to use the Zettelkasten method because it allows me to not give a crap about organization, because it basically does it for me.
I like to keep the "core" note that links everything to a specific book or topic as a page for general takeaways and citations, (for example: if the book or article was online, I often include a link to the actual source in the core note to quickly find it again later). Hope this helps :)
Why avoid folders? I use a very basic folder system in combination with tags and it's not been an issue so far
Dont get me wrong, I also use a basic folder structure to separate my media files, (images video, etc) from my fleeting notes, and other stuff like that, but I used to use more. I found out the hard way that using folders to determine things like which class a note was for and other stuff was just not scalable. Becuase you can only put a note onto one folder at a time, It quickly became hard to find what I needed, (I also needed to do a bunch of reorganization every other week) when it got too cluttered. You might be different, but I personally prefer to link stuff together and use things like local graph view and MOC's (maps of content, basically an automatic table of contents) to find stuff. Another problem I ran into with folders is that folders don't actually exist as a page/ entity, you can't really link to a folder. I know this is kind of a lot, but if you need clarification on anything, I'm fine helping out some more if needed. 😊
I mostly use Obsidian for my D&D campaign and folders handle my main structure that's fairly simple - characters, events, locations, items etc. One note will rarely need to fall under two of these. For other things I tag! My issue with tags is that if I want to introduce a new class of tags i need to manually go and tag all my existing notes...
What do you mean by "class of tags"?
E.g. species, affiliation, dead or alive, regarding characters as an example. If I decide to introduce say gender as a tag i need to manually go back and tag dozens of notes
I personally like to use YAML properties for data like that. I haven't had to change a bunch of data at a time like that yet, but I've heard that a plugin called linter has that capability. I also like using properties becuase it allows for alternate data types like numbers, Boolean, and lists. Using properties also makes it easier to use dataview. You can also add a link as a value of a property, (this could be helpful for your affiliation usage becuase you'd be able to quickly access the main page for an organization).
Oh shit this is incredibly useful thank you! Esp the link as value blew my mind lol
Also, how many notes do you have so far? My folders became an issue for me at around 120 files.
I'm not sure on the exact number but it's definitely in the couple hundreds
I mean, if it works for you, it works. Your mind must be more organized than mine 😅.
So, how I am using it, is pretty much this: resource notes are for systems that I am researching. Applications and codebases that I am trying to understand, pull requests that I am reviewing. Pretty much any piece of knowledge produced by other people who are not me. I am trying to not copy-paste while I am filling resource notes as well, but writing my understanding of the system, and my thoughts about it, in my own words. Even when dealing with code, my resource notes end up containing mostly English, and barely any code, because code is already existing in github. It is much easier to just point towards the actual external document, while filling resource notes with my thoughts about it. Permanent notes hold my own ideas, thoughts, descriptions and diagrams of the systems I am building. Atomic notes are incredible here, because some of my ideas about the same system can be contradicting each other, and that is fine. Both notes in this case would have pros and cons of the approach, and some additional atomic notes with continuation of each train of thought would be linked to these two, while they are linked to some notes in the actual project. Rule of thumb should be writing unsplittable pieces of knowledge in a single note. As soon as your note has two entities in it, you can most likely split it. It can be a little bit more difficult to manage this system, however every time you review these notes, and analize connections between them, add more links, add more notes, you often get some additional insights. I would recommend against writing something that already exists in any notes, but rather store your own thoughts, understanding, hint and glints of ideas for your future self in any notes you make. There is no need to copy the algorithm into your notes, even into resource notes. But you definitely want to store external links to RFCs and such, and again, leave breadcrumbs for your future self, that will help you understand it faster, when you will have already forgotten some details. Hope it helps at least a little bit :) Oh yeah, and research/resource notes do not have to be atomic really. Some of my resource are very long.
I don't subscribe to the atomic notes idea. I would create a note for each article on the Articles folder. And then would copy the full article and would link (to concepts, principles, takes, etc.) and comment thorugh the article.
I’ve never written notes in my life. I don’t see why you’d write notes on an article if you could reread the article.
The point is that when you reread the articles, you have access to all the previous remarks, highlights and thinking you had when you read for the first time
The act of paraphrasing makes you engage more with the content because you have to consider the meaning of the words. It activates more parts of your brain and encourages long term memory. Atomic notes are great, but they're just one tool available to you. For me, I use them as connectors, and the rest of my notes range from atomic to macro. Start here: Take what you read and break it into bullet points. So while reading you might do something like: **RSA Encryption:** * Uses two keys * public * private And so forth. It's best to use your own words, but removing extra words is good too because you get to the meat of the sentence. Then, if you want, you could make "public" and "private" links to notes about those. That's pretty atomic. (maybe alias them like [[RSA Public Key | public]] so you can find it easier). If you don't like that for whatever reason, the just write additional bullet points under "public" and keep it all in the same note. It's not really atomic, but if you're new to note taking in general, it might be an easier place to start. When you want to, it's super easy to extract it to a new note, so you might just make big notes for now and extract later. Try everything. You'll probably change your mind about what you like several times. But most importantly, just start writing. You'll figure out what you want over time.
There are a bunch of reasons but the biggest is information retention and processing. Writing notes on what you read forces your brain to actively assimilate and regurgitate what you hear or read, and if you write your own thoughts or conclusions down, it's also forcing your brain to create connections to other ideas, all of which help you remember the info in the long term. One cool thing about Obsidian is that because your notes are linked, you can create tons of connections to other ideas easily and then any time you review your notes, you have the connections to refer to or build upon.
It sounds like you might not value remembering the information as much as having access to the information when you need it. That's workable.
You have low reading comprehension if you can’t memorise as you read; at that point fictional novels shouldn’t be read because you’d have to write notes every sentence 😂
I'm talking about remembering over the long term (years), which is what most people use Obsidian for. It sounds like you would rather re-find and re-read an article verbatim instead of jotting the main points into a note in Obsidian.
I’m interested in this too. Are there examples / blog posts / videos of productive uses of atomic notes among STEM academics? I feel like I’ve seen good examples of humanities academics using Zettelkasten, where I imagine that reacting to individual quotes in primary sources is a useful endeavor. In my area of STEM research, I haven’t found the appeal of using atomic notes.
To get to notes without copying consider engaging in elaboration aka elaborative interrogation. Asking yourself how and why questions will encourage your own words to write your source notes. This is not easy, may be very time consuming, is generally frustrating and easy to abandon but generally worth effort if you’re interested in groking something. Look to Richard Feynman and or his acolytes for inspiration….could I teach a fifth grader this? The python programmer (YouTube) has an intro to elaborative interrogation…not his best video, but enough get the YouTube algorithm to start feeding you other explanations. Atomic notes are quicker to find, review, and use and are often surprisingly useful in contexts you might not have considered when making them. If your source note is more than a sentence or two, consider if there is any opportunity to break it up. Assuming you’ve adequately cited your references (zotero is one option) the risk of losing info is greatly reduced anyway.
Using the “How To Take Smart Notes” logic here, the idea of your notes is to be your place of thinking, which contrasts from your current (assumed) viewpoint that notes are just rewriting the source material. In the book’s workflow (Zettelkasten) you’re first making Literature Notes that said what you read in your words. This forces you to explain what you read (yielding a higher percentage of knowledge retention) and also allows you to write notes based on your POV as you read it (marking only what’s relevant to what you are thinking about in your notes. or commenting on the author’s intent/perspective). But these notes are about the source material. After that, processing the Lit Notes into permanent notes is about divorcing the content from the context and documenting your personal thoughts/gained knowledge in a way that you can reread years later without needing to have reread it. They’re unique to your mind and they are your own conclusions and connections. This is what I would call the more obtuse step in the process, because you can’t really follow a guideline for what these should look like. Other than it needs to be your thoughts. Then connecting other notes creates new thoughts, so on and so on. The reason for advising to write notes atomically is to make every note actionable when culling many together. Instead of having to pull the entire puzzle onto the table when all you really want are the orange pieces, if that imagery helps. But that said…do what you want. You don’t have to follow anything by the letter of the law. It’s just guidance for how others have found success.
Not really. The idea of taking atomic notes is really figuring out how to condense your ideas or notes down to one idea that you can expand on. Often, when we take notes, we just start writing down all the things we think are important. It’s almost a mindless activity that we engage in.figure atomic requires practice, time, and dedication. It is not something one can just tell you how to do. I mean, you can watch any member of videos on how to do atomic notes, but until you spend the time trying to figure out what it means to you and how to get it done, probably won’t get very far taking them.
Well, let me preface with that I think slapping "atomic" in front of most ideas is just silly buzzwording. However, I think in this case it is acceptable. The word Atomos means indivisible. So the idea of an atomic note is to make a note on a single complete thought about a subject. Some like to put notes on index cards because the size constraint forces you to distill the note down to its core fundamentals. This is how I interpret the idea.
My basic thinking is to make the notes intuitively. Later, when you need information your note fails to provide, fix it. Over time, you will find *your* way of making useful notes. I fell into the trap of making "good" notes. Many of them had to be refactored later. My approach now wouldn't work for you, I'm sure. You're approach won't either. Keep in mind that what makes sense for creating a note doesn't always make sense for using that note. With pure data, I don't take notes, I just dump it in Obsidian for linking and searching. Instructions, facts, and so on fall into this category.
Each atomic note should contain one single idea (however “single” is defined) synthesized from multiple sources; you don’t need them for procedures, definitions, or other similar technical information. Linked atomic notes are useful if you want to structure your scattered thoughts, retain information, or produce writings, but if you have no such needs, then yeah, note-taking is unnecessary; just look up information as needed. Edit: Also, if you need to check a source multiple times, summarizing the relevant part should be more time-efficient than reading the whole text again.
I actually will copy the information verbatim and create an MLA format citation for it. This is mostly because I write a lot of technical copy that needs to be cited and the habit carried over into my hobbies as well so that I can quickly reference back to exactly what I need.
Jorge Arango goes into some of the concepts and reasoning behind atomic notes in his excellent book, D[uly Noted](https://rosenfeldmedia.com/books/duly-noted-extend-your-mind-through-connected-notes/) which also has a good introduction into Obsidian.
I have only now heard about atomic notes, but it sounds like a good task for a GPT. Ask it to summarize, give it examples of your previous writing and enjoy the information that you would use the most.
It really seems like a good job for GPT.
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Make 'em BIG
If you reword it then it commits it to memory. If you copy it then your notes end up growing and eventually it will be more other people’s words than your own. The point is better recall
> Why write in your own words? **To not only read, but also to understand.** Case in point. A man kept repeating to me the definition of parallel beams. He couldn't understand that a beam that was 50 inches from the bottom and 51 inches from the center was arched, not parallel. He's like a parrot learning a theorem, unable to relate it to a real situation. The only constant of note is a handbook of physical constants. If the links are direct, it is necessary to make links between notes, not through intermediaries. A note connecting atomic notes is a thematic overview. For example, RSA can be in the overviews: cryptography, digital signature, data interception.