Notes should be atomic
note
A note should be about a single concept, but contain the entirety of it (as much as possible). Much like each separation of concerns in software engineering.
It’s hard to define a good granularity level. Broad notes are an indication of unclear thinking, and links to these notes will be noisy. Too fragmented notes mean fragmented linking, making it harder to see connections.
Don’t worry about too many notes: Luhmann had 90,000 notes in his Zettelkasten, that’s around 6 notes every day for 40 years, and he had no search functionality for them.
References
Links to this note
Linked notes1 are a way to use Writing-as-a-user-interface-that-facilitates-thinking. The point is not writing notes per se, but accumulating knowledge, developing insight, and enhancing creativity. They are continuously-refined, living documents. Principles...
Notes should be atomic, meaning that each note contains a single idea. If a note contains a single idea, then the title of each note should be a succinct one-sentence...
Since Writing-is-a-way-to-record-thought-through-language, and the whole point of Linked-notes is to use Writing-as-a-user-interface-that-facilitates-thinking, related notes should be connected together. Similar to how a train of thoughts take you from A to...
Outline notes can be used when naturally arising clusters occur in Linked notes. When I realize that I have a conglomerate of notes around a common topic, I create a...