# Stop classifying notes Shared by [[Matt Giaro]] - Usual process - Find a valuable idea - Open your note app - Write it down - Classify it (tag or folders) - Repeat - We're used to classifying everything - Because that's important in our daily lives - Because we are taught so since we're kids - Classifying makes us interact with the world helps us make sense of it - So it seems like the sensible thing to do with our notes - But it does not necessarily makes us more creative - Classifying helps with retrieval and to prevent chaos - But is it the real purpose of ideas? - Are we only looking to retrieve ideas? - Or are we taking notes to later sparkle our creativity? - Content creators need to sparkle creativity, not just find things back - Creativity is all about connecting the dots, linking seemingly unrelated ideas together - Great ideas are a combination of different ideas; it's a patchwork. - [[Ideas are not created from thin air, but combinations of other ideas]] - [[Creativity is just connecting things. When you ask creative people how they did something, they feel a little guilty because they didn't really do it, they just saw something]] - So the role of ideas is not to be discovered, but to be combined, because that's where their value lies - Retrieval should not be the main focus - The main focus should be linking ideas together - Tagging helps, but limits ideas to the "boxes" you've put those in using tags - Collecting alone won't make us any smarter - By linking ideas together, you'll create more collisions - It may give a sense of chaos, but that's how our brain works - In our brains, neurons are all in a single box, and the connections between neurons are nothing else than the links between them - Think of your note-taking system as your brain - Think of every note as a neuron - Use links to connect between your notes - Focus less on categorizing, and more about associating - When you capture ideas, think about what you can associate those with. This will spark new ideas ## References - https://mattgiaro.medium.com/why-i-stopped-classifying-my-notes-and-why-you-should-do-the-same-d8ab0b5d04fe ## Related - [[How to connect ideas]] - [[Why and how to tag notes in your PKM]]