I’ve talked about how [[Express Yourself With Writing|expressing yourself with writing]] is a fantastic endeavor, but I don’t think I’ve ever gone over *note-taking* in particular, and how that ties into how I go about experiencing life and media and my own creativity. I was a terrible note-taker in school. I didn’t find it very useful — but that isn’t the case, I just had [[ADHD]] and couldn’t focus on anything, lmfao. With the power of medicine, I now take notes about everything, always, and it’s super helpful! Well, let me roll it back a bit, because taking notes on *everything* is actually very *un-helpful*. ## Notes and Intent When you start taking notes, it might just be simple stuff — things you need to do, funny thoughts you’ve come up with, journaling, etc. The act of creation, at least for me, comes from taking those notes and synthesizing them into something new. For example, the basis of this post originally came from looking at the wordcount of my [[Obsidian]] Vault[^1], and wondering how I managed to write so much, which I noted down — followed by *why* I wrote so much, and how it might be a cool idea for a post to write about. If you’re not careful, you can make the mistake of assuming that your note-taking is the same as the act of creation, which is why taking notes needs intent. What are your goals? For me, I take notes to keep track of [[2025 Cafe Posts|media I consume]], or as inspiration for the story I’ve been writing, or projects I want to start. Those goals should shape what you collect for your notes, because information is its most useful when you can act on it. Asking that question changed what I saved and what I felt could be skipped, and the notes I made became more useful. ## Digital Hoarding When you collect notes *without* intent, you’re just being the digital equivalent of a hoarder. I had like, 1000 Raindrop links before I cleared that proverbial bucket out, because I wasn’t *doing* anything with what I was collecting. I’d straight up grab anything and everything. Capturing everything like that is a waste, because I was collecting things that I couldn’t act on. And that isn’t some productivity guru bullshit by the way — “acting on a note” could be something as simple as “watch that video you just bookmarked.” But if I bookmark 100 videos, I’m just creating a backlog — and God knows I have [[Game Backlog Project|enough of that already]]. Good notes are pruned, reviewed and discarded. Not every idea is a good one, not every video needs to be watched, every article read. Curating your taste is a very helpful exercise that hones your own creative muscle, in my experience. ## Notes Aren’t Work This is also important to me. Notes should be fun to write! You’re not in school anymore either. Scribble and ramble and doodle and write and erase and write again. If what you’re noting down isn’t fun, is it worth keeping? Generally, I don’t think so. Hell, sometimes I just click around or use the random note feature in **Obsidian** to get some inspiration or update something from a while back if I’m feeling stuck creatively. This helps me both get out of a rut, and make my copious amounts of notes not feel like they’re weighing me down. --- The point I’m trying to make is that writing stuff down is helpful when you’re going back to what you’ve written, using those notes to create new stuff. Creation is, in my opinion, what we’ve been put on this earth to do, so the more you can make it easier for you to do, the better! > [!Quote] Kendrick Lamar > I have to make notes because a lot of my inspiration comes from meeting people or going outside the country, or going to the corner of my old neighborhood and talking to a five-year-old little boy. And I have to write them down and then five or three months later, I have to find that same emotion that I felt when I was inspired by it, so I have to dig deep to see what triggered the idea. [^1]: 798,296 as of writing this sentence