tags:

- "workflow"

Atomic Notes

By etymology, "atomic" mean "not" (a) "dividable" (tome). Atomic notes are notes which try to address one and only one topic, and they contain no more information than is absolutely necessary for this purpose.

Atomic notes are natural for flexible learning. They might not be the best format for classroom note-taking, but they shine bright in research and personal knowledge management.

For the note-taker, the main obstacle to writing is often the loss of focus over an overwhelmingly long note. How many times have you stopped writing and taken a break to "briefly review" what you've written, and completely lost focus? With atomic notes it is always clear what you need to write. That is,

1. Atomic notes make focusing easier for the note-taker.

After writing up a note, the note-taker needs to organize it in some way. Usually they either use folders or tags, both "compressions" of the original note. Atomic notes address only one topic, so they are easier to "compress", and their title (or tag or folder or whatever) align better with their contents. Therefore,

1. Atomic notes are easier to categorize.

Atomic notes are also easier to fit into complicated contexts, because they are shorter. Being easier to link to and re-use means

1. Atomic notes are more likely to be actively used and memorized.

For the reader,

1. Atomic notes are less intimidating,

because they are faced with significantly shorter text. (How many times have you backed down upon a long bunch of man pages and referred to tldr instead?)

This further enables the reader to develop their own learning path: instead of following the narration flow of a very long article, they can follow the links between atomic notes to freely decide whether a note requires close reading or not.

1. Atomic notes enable the reader to learn at their own pace and along their own preferred path.