Duly Noted by Jorge Arango
I recently finished Duly Noted: Extend Your Mind Through Connected Notes, by Jorge Arango, an experienced information architect.
(I spent most of the book drooling over Arango’s information processing approach, which uses several Mac-only tools, like DEVONthink and Tinderbox. Will my next computer be a Mac?)
In some ways, it felt reassuring that much of the book seemed straightforward enough to me. After not having a proper note-taking system for much of my life, I now feel well enough set up in Obsidian and satisfied with my approach, even if I don’t focus on linking my notes to form an “information garden.”
Still, there were a few important takeaways.
Arango writes:
In Seeing What Others Don’t, Gary Klein provides a working definition of insight: “an unexpected shift to a better story.” Klein is referring to causal stories: how we explain to ourselves how things happened or may happen; the cause-effect relationships between concepts.
And it was here that I realized why I was reading this book all along. I loved the redefinition of insight as a shift to a better story. I always care about story shapes, about the stories we tell ourselves about who we are and where we’re going, and the possibilities that always exist before us to shift to other stories. To reframe. To re-model.
Arango seems to be on the same page with me about this.
He writes:
You solve the puzzle by gaining a new understanding of the relationships between elements. You experience a creative breakthrough after reframing a problem. You understand the concept after finding an analogy that allows you to integrate it into your existing knowledge. Yes, I’m talking again about models.
While I’m not convinced that maintaining linked notes is the only way to do this, I do feel like we need to explicitly and purposefully create opportunities in our life to see ideas in different contexts, to make new analogies that open up new ways of looking at situations, and to reframe (literally re-frame, change the context of) our problems. Yes, this is talking about models.
Arango quotes computer scientist Alan Kay:
All creativity is an extended form of a joke. Most creativity is a transition from one context into another where things are more surprising.
Finally, I loved what Arango had to say about what it means to produce a book:
Producing a major work like a book entails revealing a curated path through a space of ideas. You can imagine it as a network of related concepts, stories, principles, etc. Your job is to guide the reader through one slice of this space.
There was a diagram shown here, of a web of interconnected ideas, with a single path through them highlighted.
I loved this image, this reminder that the path through any nonfiction book is not inevitable or comprehensive, but rather a curated slice of a larger web of ideas. Arango also expresses the importance of understanding the reader’s needs here:
As author, you decide what to emphasize and when. Highlighting one possible path among many in an idea space. Which is to say, to communicate effectively, you must understand your readers’ needs: what they care about, what they know and don’t know, why they’re engaging with the material, etc. Then you can choose which of many possible configurations works best.
Interestingly, after finishing this book last week, I encountered it again, this time on the website of Write Useful Books, a resource for approaching the writing of nonfiction books by designing them for maximum recommendability. It includes a tool called “Help This Book,” which can be used to compile beta reader feedback to ensure that your book is designed and configured to best meet your readers’ needs. So, Arango seems to have some direct experience with thinking through his readers’ needs and configuring his book accordingly.
Ultimately, Arango’s book boils down to “three simple rules”:
- Make short notes.
- Connect your notes.
- Nurture your notes.
I liked the way he contextualized digital note-taking as something that “enables you to organize ideas freely so you can find multiple, different paths to knowledge.”
While I left the book with a more thorough understanding of this approach to linked notes, and more clarity about how I might go about creating a system similar to Arango’s, I did feel less convinced that this was the only or best way to look at ideas in various contexts or to see a way to guide a reader through one particular path. I think it is the best way for some people.
But any good writer needs to be able to link ideas together, see their interconnections, place ideas in new contexts, and ultimately choose one path among many to guide the reader through.
What are the alternative options for how to do this? How might one design another approach, or discern what’s best for them personally?