Rationale

• “Our brains compute across a knowledge graph”

• This system deals with concepts, insights and ideas

• The goal is to map concepts - and “not have a personal detailed Wikipedia”.

Objectives

• Learn from various media (articles, books, videos, etc):

• notes should have only the key ideas
• write the original resource for the details

• Retain insights and understanding

• “rapidly achieve the same level of understanding about something that I once had in the past”

• Quadratical growth

• link each piece of knowledge to our existing knowledge

• Create new ideas (optional)

• Allow to have new perspectives and where to expand the knowledge

• Make learning into a habit Follow the hook model, to allow the habit to form:

• trigger: notification (external) or checking news when waking up (internal)
• action: done waiting for a reward
• variable reward
• so, the 3 points above results on you investing time into the habit.

Primitives

1. Sources: the reference (book, podcast, video, article, etc)

2. Atoms: existing concepts or techniques (like “an entry on a dictionary” or a “wikipedia article”)

3. Molecules: your ideas - crystallised insights and pieces of intuition. They are the link between atoms - so, they are analogue to “zettels” in the Zettelkasten system.

4. Categories: used to organize sources, atoms and molecules.

“Mine atoms out of Sources, make Molecules out of Atoms, and organize everything with Categories.”

Source

• Media or information you want to learn from

• They use to have:

• Concepts: original to the author or existing ones s/he is building upon
• Examples: Additional details, context and examples that illustrate the concepts
• Thesis: explanation on how concepts link to other concepts

• How to takes notes on a source: capture (briefly) the core thesis of a Source, the key concepts, and 1 or 2 of the best examples.

• A source has some knowledge that is unique to the source, and other ones that exist outside of it. That is why we should extract each concept on an individual note - hence, your “atoms”.

• Extract an Atom if it looks like other sources may reference to it, or if you will link ideas to that atom in the future.

• You can extract an atom from a source in a future time, maybe when you are re-reading or editing your notes.

• If a source only has one concept, do not create a “source note” - create an atom directly linking to the source.

Principles

• Notes should mention the key concepts on a source, but not explain them - the explanation will be on an atom for the concept.

• Reduce the author thesis to the simplest form - maximum 3 bullet points

• A note should tell what is inside the source, not repeat its’ contents. Notes are pointers!

• Use a simple and flexible structure. You can e.g. use bullets, where the top-level ones “summarize” the ideas and the lower levels give more information. If even more information is needed, just open the original source.

Atom

• An EXISTING concept, technique, formula, framework etc explained on your own words

• (to detect them, think like that: they could have an Wikipedia page or Dictionary entry)

• should link to a Source note

Principles

• Explain a concept to you - such you can rapidly regain an understanding you once had. So, you must write them in a few words.

• Show how that piece of knowledge fits with other atoms. You can link the current atom with other ones - through the original source and/or through “Categories”.

• An atom is a pointer to a resource (with some personal information attached)

• An atom can link to its source and also to the best resource that explains it.

• An atom can also directly link to other atom.

Molecule

• An insight that can stand on its’ own.

• Couple of sentences - a paragraph at most.

• Builds on one or more atoms.

• “Insights / moments of clarity you have inspired by a source”

• “How to know when to write a molecule or a bullet point in the Source? If the idea is so internalized to you that it becomes a piece of YOUR intuition.”

Categories

• They can be empty notes you can link to

The author’s implementation

Tags

• Denote the “type” of a note. It represents a “is-a” relationship. E.g.: source, atom, molecule - and, also: book, video, article, framework

• Source notes can have an additional tag denoting the type of the source: book, article.

• Atoms can have an additional tag denoting its’ type: tool, formula, historical event, etc

• You can use a “TODO” tag to remember yourself to do something on your notes - review, refine, create a new one or do some research on something that you need to explore or learn deeper

• Useful on obsidian

Folders

• He uses Obsidian

• Atoms go on the “root”

• Sources and Molecules are subdirectories

• Other subdirectories are: Authors, Topics

• Subdirectories that start with “_” are used by Obsidian

• The author mentions that having folders named “Sources” and “Molecules” can seem like a duplication of the tags of the same name, but they ease quickly searching for a primitive on the folder - atoms will be on the folder root, and sources and molecules on subdirectories. So, maybe I could use the same approach because my first experiment will be using Neovim to write the notes but Obsidian to explore it.

• He says sometimes he forgets to move a note to the correct folder - so, he wrote a python script to move notes tagged “#molecule” to the molecules folder

Topics

• “Semantic” structure (tags and folders are organizational). Topic example: “Finance”
• A topic is like a “business domain”
• The author tends to create a topic if more than 5 notes will link to it

Authors

• It is a note with type “#author” - it allows to write information about the author

• Are useful on Obsidian

• Useful only if there are several sources of the same author in atoms/molecules

• He also has a python script to move them to the appropriate folder when he forgets

Insights on how to take notes on Sources

Books

• Review and highlights in Notion

• Key highlights on a Source note

• Extracts concepts in Atoms and insights in Molecules

• He looks through other notes on the same Topic to find potential connections

Textbooks / Online courses

• Read/watch them on 2x speed to get an idea of the contents and if it indeed is useful

• Make notes on the second pass

• Mimic the source structure (chapters/marks)

• On chapters/marks, only take notes on what he wants to keep

Blog posts / YouTube videos / Twitter

• They generally only have a single concept

• If that is the case indeed, create directly an atom and link to the media url instead of the source note.

Podcasts

• Only take notes if an insight appears or something resonate with you

• Interview episodes: since they tend to be dense in information, make notes as if they were online courses / textbooks.

Others

• Separate some time to go through your notes to see what’s in there and try to make connections between atoms creating new molecules.

• He uses some python scripts to give a “report” on his notes, to show TODO items, to move them to the right subfolders, etc. Here they are: https://github.com/robertmartin8/MolecularNotes/tree/master/_scripts

• He created a spaced repetition “flashcard” app called Polymer https://github.com/robertmartin8/MolecularNotes/blob/master/_scripts/polymer.py to help him review his notes on a different way.

• “Maps of Content”: An entry point note in a specific topic.

• Avoid “completionism” when writing your notes or reading the sources - be pragmatic!