In the first two lessons, we learned about capturing notes and organizing them by tags and collections. These are powerful, but the magic happens when connecting notes to other notes.
To make connecting notes powerful, we need to have a basic set of notes. Create a note per entity that you mention in your notes.
These can be:
If you don't have a note created for an entity, you can create new notes on the fly. In Organizedly, you can do this by typing [[ and the title of the new note. You can open the new note in the right sidebar for adding basic information about the entity.
👉 Pro tip: open the connected note in the sidebar for editing.
When you write about an entity in your notes, form a habit to link the note. This is done by typing [[ and selecting the note. This will pay off in the long term. Once your notes are connected, finding information will be a piece of cake. Think of a topic, find a related note, and see how it is connected.
Connecting information makes it easy for you to remember and understand. Once you understand something, you are more likely to remember it. Cramming is an art practiced by college students the night before an exam. It will allow them to remember in the short term without deep understanding. Admittedly, I'm guilty of doing so during my college years. By connecting notes, we want to do the opposite. Work towards understanding. This will spark new ideas and payoff in the long term.
Consider this example. You want to check what you discussed in a meeting with Kevin. You look for a note called Kevin and see how it is connected. You will find the meeting note that you were looking for. You'll see that the meeting note and all other notes that are connected to it. This resembles the way our brain works: we don't store information in folders, rather, our memories are connected.
To view how a specific note is connected, click on the bubble icon in a note as seen in the picture below. You will see all incoming and outgoing connections.
In the right sidebar, you will see a list of all connected notes and all unlinked references. Unlinked references are notes that mention the title of the current note. For example, if you're working on a note called "Blocks", the unlinked references will find all notes that mention the word "Blocks" anywhere.
Let's end this one with a quote from Steve Jobs:
Creativity is just connecting things. When you ask creative people how they did something, they feel a little guilty because they didn’t really do it, they just saw something. It seemed obvious to them after a while.