Supercharging Software Development with Smart Notes: Unleash Your Creativity and Productivity
How Zettelkasten method can help you become a 10X developer?
In one of my older posts, I talked about the PARA framework as a way to organize all the information you consume. As developers, we consume tons of information as we play around with our code.
If you have missed it, you can read it here.
But what if, you want to go deep into a topic and learn everything about it?
Tiago Forte in his book talked about progressive summarization. What that meant was that the more you visit a piece of information, you add more details.
But this does not solve the problem of how to go very deep into a topic and yet have it at a moment’s notice to review and use the information.
One of the examples is you want to go deep about concurrency in programming.
If you are using the PARA framework, you consume an article and keep it in your Resources folder.
A day later you saw a video a related video on concurrency.
Now you create another note about it using PARA framework.
Later at work, you wanted to use some of the information from your smart notes system.
The PARA framework asks you to use search and tagging to help you solve this problem. But I do not believe this to be a clean solution.
The reason is as you build up your second brain, it will become harder to find and you will eventually give up on the system.
So how can you cleanly solve the problem?
Enter the revolutionary concept of "Smart Notes," a system pioneered by the brilliant mind of Niklas Luhmann.
The Genius of Niklas Luhmann
Niklas Luhmann (1927-1998) was a German sociologist and prolific scholar renowned for his revolutionary systems theory and his pioneering work on Smart Notes, which he referred to as the "Zettelkasten" method.
Luhmann's intellectual legacy spans a wide array of fields, from sociology to philosophy, and his insights have had a profound impact on diverse disciplines, including software development.
The Zettelkasten Method
At the heart of Luhmann's contribution lies the Zettelkasten, a method of organizing and connecting ideas that he meticulously cultivated throughout his academic career.
Zettelkasten translates to "slip box" or "note box" in English, but its implications far exceed its humble name.
The Zettelkasten is essentially a system of note-taking and knowledge organization that embodies the principles of modularity, interconnectedness, and dynamic evolution.
The Nexus of Smart Notes and Software Development
Software developers transform abstract ideas into tangible, functional applications.
In this dynamic landscape, where ideas evolve, morph, and multiply, the need for a robust organizational framework becomes paramount.
This is where Smart Notes steps in, offering a lifeline to developers drowning in the sea of code, ideas, and concepts.
Why Smart Notes Matter
Smart notes capture all the disparate pieces of information about a topic and organize it in a way that helps you understand a concept and also links it to other concepts which would be hard for you to link when using only your biological brain.
This linking of ideas breeds creativity and innovation. This is the crux.
It helps you use all the information you have consumed and convert it into a super-fast breadth-first search system.
Unveiling the Tapestry: Types of Smart Notes
1. Reference Notes
This is the first layer of note-taking. Here, you capture only the source and why you find it interesting to create the reference note. This answers the question, of where the information was sourced from.
2. Literature Notes
These are the bits of the content that you like that you only copy-paste into your notes. It answers the question - What are the critical points in the article?
You shouldn’t take more than 5 minutes doing it. If you are taking more than it means you are tackling a complex topic.
3. Fleeting Notes
Fleeting Notes are your understanding of the information. It is in your own words.
It will also include information about how you relate to it.
How do you understand the concept?
As this is your own words, it becomes easier for you to understand at a later point in time.
4. Permanent Notes
Permanent Notes are the building blocks of a developer's knowledge repository.
These notes distill comprehensive concepts, coding principles, and architectural paradigms into succinct, timeless nuggets of wisdom.
This is summarizing all the information in a single sentence. This is hard in the beginning.
This will need deep thinking and it will help you crystallize the concept better.
5. Relevant Notes
This is the exciting bit.
Now you organize other permanent notes related to this under this section.
What this does is when you are looking up your permanent notes, you can see related topics and you can grasp the ideas faster and use them faster.
This is where you can see the key idea from both article and video on concurrency example I shared earlier start playing together.
The Big Picture
The 5 note types are in the order in which we capture them. So when you are capturing a big idea, you follow the approach:
Capture the reference note
Copy and paste the literature notes
Grab your understanding and add it to your fleeting notes
Create one line summarizing the information into permanent notes
Find related articles and link them to Relevant notes.
You will not do this process for all the information you capture. Some will stay at the reference note stage and others will progress into permanent notes and reference notes.
Here, you can use the principle of Tiago Forte. You go deeper based on the urgency with which you need the information.
Tools to implement the system
There are many tools and in the end it all depends on how comfortable you are with them.
It is your second brain so choose wisely.
But here are a few:
Obisidian
Roam Research
LogSeq
Notion
EverNote
Conclusion
Ultimately, this is a notes system working to help your day to day programming.
You can mix and match between systems and can come up with a personalized approach to developing your second brain.
But it is important to develop a system and improve it as you go.
As you tinker with it, you get better at it and you have with you a curated list of information along with your own insights that you can use at moment’s notice.
Taking this further
With the development of Large Language Models (LLM), you can now talk to your second brain.
Imagine that for a possibility.
You can ask questions and now it can go through your notes and come up with answers from your second brain.
I am not sure if if there are tools that already do that but it is a definite option out there.
Penny for your thoughts?
Let me know how you think about it. World is going through an exciting phase and there is innovations happening every day.
Now is the best time to develop your second brain so that your are ready to start talking to your second brain.
Weekend Reads
Things I Learned to Become a Senior Software Engineer ~ Brilliant article to think and work like a senior developer
What Does Kubernetes’ Docker Deprecation Mean for Users ~ Planning to learn about docker. Take a step back and do give this article a read.
A peek into Java 17: Encapsulating the Java runtime internals ~ It will not be straight-forwqward migrating from Java 11 to Java 17. Do give a read to understand.