Hello Reader,

How do you deal with the feeling of "accomplishment"?

After spending days reading and making sense of vast amounts of information without a single deliverable, it is natural to feel a bit "down".

How do you boost your motivation by KNOWING you are making progress, in those cases? How do you know you ARE making progress?

In research and learning, accomplishment and achievement are often related to something we deliver to others.

But the natural flow of research means we will spend most of our time:

• reflecting on the question we are trying to answer,
• reading,
• making sense of what we read,
• synthesising information,
• planning how to acquire a piece of information we believe we need,
• justifying why we need that information and how it fits the bigger picture

.. and other non-deliverable activities.

We spend most of our time collecting the puzzle pieces before we can actually show the puzzle to others.

And in that process, we often feel we haven’t “accomplished” anything.

To make things worse, single to-do list items like “reading a paper”, or “searching for a source” can lead us to what feels like infinite rabbit holes.

So, even when you are working, working, and working, it is hard to tick off even a single to-do item from your list.

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I have passed (and still pass) through it every time I work on research, thinking, or strategising a project.

So today, I want to share how the structure I use to organise my notes helps me feel a sense of accomplishment and stay motivated.

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Developing knowledge

If you have been with me for a while, you know I take what I call “idea notes”.

That means every note describing my knowledge focuses on the description (or justification) of a single idea.

• I don’t have highlights and quotes as notes.
• I don’t have long project-based notes (30+ pages) where you keep moving text up and down, hoping it will become a draft one day.
• I don’t have notes as “text blurbs” without titles.
• I don’t have “literature notes” where all my understanding from a source is described in a single note about that source.

Instead, all my knowledge is organised into idea notes, each focusing on a single idea and connecting to projects, sources, outputs, and other ideas.

They look like these.

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Having idea notes helps me focus on a single idea at a time.

That idea becomes my “current object of study”.

I can then assign a to-do task to:

• reflect on that idea,
• search for a source that expands that idea,
• improve the description of that idea,
• justify my current belief in that idea,
• expand the idea,
• etc.

I assign a time I will spend working on that idea as the focus of my study, and when the time is gone I can choose another idea to be the focus.

Knowing what you are focusing on, it is then easy to make that action SMART (Specific, Measurable, Actionable, Realistic, Time-bound).

That is just another way to say that, you know exactly what you are supposed to be doing (to explore that idea), for how long you will be doing that (let’s say 10 min to 1 hour), and which resources you will need to perform that action.

At the end of the 1 hour - ✅ Action Done - and the feeling and knowledge you have accomplished something today.

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Nice.. but hey! We still need to read long sources, progress on our projects, and write that article!

Yes, so here is how I do the same for them.

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Studying a source

When reading a source, I can break it down into to-do tasks according to my chosen reading strategy (I have quite a few strategies depending on the goal, which I teach here).

The simplest to-do list is to break each page into two types of tasks (for long sources) or create these two only (for shorter sources):

• reading + writing down your understanding (as you go)
• converting the text into idea notes.

This way your progress is visible at all times.

You can see that you have read X pages of your source, but you can also see the whole knowledge that has come out of it.

The result of reading is not just a "blurb" of text or highlights. Instead, you know exactly which "objects of study" you could tackle next and how the source has contributed to your current object of study.

Also, we feel accomplished because we are moving in the right direction, not just because we are moving.

So it is worthwhile to align the “why you are reading this source” with your current projects and directions. When you finish the source or are halfway through it (if it is taking too long to finish), it is also a good practice to reflect again on whether the source still aligns with your goal for reading it.
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Working on a project

When working on a (research) project, I create a question note to track the question I am addressing for that project. Each question embeds a set of objects of attention (i.e. ideas). These are the idea notes I will create and focus on to build the answer to the project's question.

From time to time, as we learn more about the question itself and the ideas composing its answer, it is also worthwhile to stop and reflect on whether we are still heading in the intended direction for that project.
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Crafting a deliverable

When developing a deliverable (e.g. an article, a presentation, etc.), I work on building storylines and output notes, which is a fancy way of saying I create an outline with idea notes.

Building the storyline becomes a task itself, and filling each of the gaps I found in the storyline becomes subsequent tasks.

This way I can see “the whole” of the deliverable coming together (before I actually stop to create it) while also seeing my progress as I fill the gaps.

Below is an example of an output note I started this week for a talk I will give in August in the mentorship programme. Each bullet point without a link is a gap I need to fill (i.e. a task), and each existing idea note will indicate how much knowledge I have already written to build that "output".

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So that’s how I keep myself motivated: I convert my knowledge creation steps into tasks in a way where I can “see” the progress I am making.

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...

There is also a mindset trap you need to be careful about.

This method helps you reflect on whether you are going in the intended direction and how much you have progressed.

This will motivate you if you believe that "walking in the right direction" is a form of accomplishment.

But if you believe that "arriving at the destination" is the only accomplishment, this focus on the micro tasks may backfire.

Mapping out all the 1,280 micro tasks you need to go through to build your output may feel demoralising (even worse when you read a source that "changes everything" and convert that into 1,753 tasks).

So, do I convert it all into to-do tasks every day for every project? No.

For me (personally), that would be too much “box ticking”. Instead, I set up my Personal Knowledge Management processes in a way I iterate through these steps naturally and I KNOW I am progressing because I see it through my idea, source, output, and project notes.

(or in my monitoring log, but that is a topic for another day 😉)

But sometimes, when the urge for a deliverable comes, the realisation of too many ongoing never-ending projects happens, and I feel the need for some good and old box-ticking accomplishments, that’s precisely what I do. I sit down and create a to-do list for the day (or the week) and focus on it.

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What about you? How do you give yourself that motivational boost?

Please let me know by answering this email. Don't be shy! I may take some time to answer but I read and reply to all emails.

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Talk to you soon.

Until then, take care.
Bianca