This week we have one more issue dedicated to the 6 skills of Personal Knowledge Management. If you lost the previous issues, read them here:

• ​6 PKM skills​
• ​Active note-taking​
• ​Active reading​
• ​Idea Management​

Hello Reader,

​In the last issue, I mentioned how hard it is to find an idea in a pile of notes. This is still the case if you have the same idea spread around multiple notes with enigmatic names.

As a solution, I suggested we organise ideas rather than documents. That way, to find a specific idea we only need to search for the note about that particular idea.

But this suggestion invites a question:

What is an idea?

And this is what we will explore today.

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Ideas are not words or concepts that “exist out there”. Instead, ideas are created by us, individually, within our minds and bodies.

Our words are one way to express and communicate those ideas (what we do when taking active notes). Then, when it is time to organise our notes, we can do so by identifying and organising our ideas instead.

The organisation of notes (as ideas) becomes a form of sensemaking.

But if ideas are neither words nor concepts, what are they?

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Ideas are Objects of Attention

Object of attention is an idea I have been developing for the last 3 years. It encompasses how we make sense of the world, grow new ideas, and, on the practical side, organise our notes.

I like to explain it with an analogy to photography.

When taking pictures, we control what is in focus. What is in focus is sharper and clearer, and what is not in focus becomes blurred and faded.

When observing something (image, audio, or even our thoughts), we can also control what the focus of our attention is. The focus of our attention gets sharper whereas the rest gets a bit vague.

When considering a single snapshot, like in the picture above, we can say:

• what is definitely the focus of our attention (e.g. the central part of the right daisy),
• what is definitely not the focus of our attention (e.g. those blurred parts far from the daisies), and
• the boundary between in-focus and out-of-focus is hard to identify (e.g. we don’t know which specific pixels around the daisies make the boundaries).

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Objects of attention are the parts of the landscape that "we choose" to be the focus of our attention.

What are ideas then?

• The focus of our attention is the idea we are focusing on.
• The blurred parts are other ideas that are still present but “tuned down”. They are there just to provide context to the idea in focus. They provide enough contrast so we can better “see” (and focus on) the main idea.

In research, objects of attention come to be our "objects of study" at each point in time.

So, now that we have a feeling of what objects of attention are, how do they influence how we organise our notes?

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Idea notes versus Atomic notes

The common solution to the documents vs ideas form or organisation is what the PKM community calls an "atomic note".

Atomic notes are said to “contain” a single idea.

I believe it is impossible for an idea to be contained. It is hard (if not impossible) to establish the exact boundaries of every single idea we want to write about.

Also, other ideas help us build our objects of attention by providing enough contrast. So it is not only nearly impossible to “get rid” of them, but also unproductive.

Last, by “containing” only a single idea, atomic notes set a precedent for some weird rules I see mentioned from time to time, such as:

• atomic notes must be small (as to eliminate all other ideas). They can be and they tend to be, but why do they “must be”?
• notes contain the “smallest unit of thought” (if such a thing even exists!)

Because I want to avoid all misunderstandings that people attribute to atomic notes, and I have no interest in engaging in PKM wars, I decided to call my notes “idea notes” instead.

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Idea notes focus on a single idea.

As these notes focus on a single idea (rather than "contain" a single idea), that means other ideas are still present but tuned down.

So there is no need to worry (or freak out) every time you are writing a note. Instead, express yourself, do your best, and when you notice that two ideas are fighting for attention within a single note, then break them apart into their own respective notes.

The more you make sense of your thoughts, and write notes about them, the clearer you will differentiate between ideas.

That’s it!

There are methods to make this process much easier (that's what I teach, after all), but there is no "secret mystery". At the end of the day, it all comes down to making sense of what you are trying to say.

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So, that’s it!

Read the notes you took when doing active note-taking, identify ideas you haven’t noticed when first expressing yourself, give each idea a name, and play with your thoughts.

Play with your thoughts!

Organisation should not be a form of procrastination, but a form of sensemaking. But that is only the case if you are organising your ideas, not your documents.

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Talk to you soon. If you have any questions before then, please let me know by answering this email.

Until then, take care.

Bianca

P.S.: This issue is one day late. Why? I was solo parenting for a couple of days and there isn't a better attention thief than a cute toddler 😊 Hm.. but that is not what I want to talk about. I want to ask you:

Do you like the newsletter at this length or would you prefer shorter snippets?