Dandelion Notetaking

Quite a while back I had a very interesting discussion on notetaking with a colleague, and since then I’ve been thinking about how I take notes, and why I take notes. In our chat I coined the phrase dandelion notetaking, and I’ll try to explain why that came to mind as a model for how I approach notetaking.

A dandelion has roots, a stem, and seeds, and they each serve a specific purpose. They also have very different durability, from the close-to-permanent roots to the transient seeds. Similarly, all notes I take can be put into one of these three categories:

• Roots: Long-term, persistent notes.
• Stems: Medium-term, semi-persistent notes.
• Seeds: Short-term, transient notes.

Roots

Roots are the notes that I think I will need to be able to refer to weeks, months, and even years from now. These notes typically consist of pieces of information: important links, parameters, contact information and so on. A root note is occasionally updated, or added to, but in general changes are infrequent. Root notes are not quite static, but close to it. Though they are rarely updated, and seldom referred to, they are nonetheless very important, and often contain crucial information. In that sense they really are roots, providing stability and an anchoring point of sorts.

Because they are persistent, I need these notes to be very well organized, and searchable. Root notes are hardly ever deleted, and hence the volume of notes continues expanding, making it impossible to remember what is recorded where without using a solid system. Which is why I store all root notes electronically, using labels, tags, folders, etc. to keep them structured. Recording them electronically also enables synchronization across devices, and keeping backups.

A dandelion would perish without its roots, and I would be very disoriented and impeded if I ever lost my root notes.

Stems

Stems are my working notes. In general, I need to write things down to process and structure information. Working notes contain summaries, interesting and important tidbits, reminders, and a lot of lists and tables. Visual and tactile inputs are very important to me, especially when making sense of data, and hence these notes must be written by hand, on paper. Stem notes also contain diagrams, drawings, and an abundance of visual cues like arrows.

Stem notes are semi-persistent; their main purpose is to help me process and organize information, but I also refer to them continuously while working on a project or task. Once the piece of work has been completed, they can be discarded.

Stem notes are typically relevant for a few weeks, or months at the most, and I record them in old-fashioned hardcover notebooks that always come with me. Losing my stem notes would cause temporary strain, but I would be able to recover quickly.

Seeds

Seeds are short bursts of urgency that need to be dealt with now: action items, reminders, and the phone number I need to call immediately after writing it down. There is such an immense information flux to continuously deal with, and I would rather spend my brain power thinking about how to deal with something than focusing on trying to remember to deal with it.

Hence, I need my seed notes to make sure I free up my cognitive capacity to do actual thinking while making sure urgent and important actions are not overlooked. These notes must be fast and easy to take; there can be no delay between thinking about the action and writing it down, which is why I take seed notes by hand. I always have a pad of large sticky notes to the right of my keyboard for this specific purpose. Lined, yellow sticky notes are what works for me. I even make sure to always have a couple of sticky notes attached to the inside of my notebook so that I can take seed notes even when I’m not at my desk.

Just like dandelion seeds, seed notes are critical, but they are transient, and at the end of the day I throw them out.

Summary

Notetaking is an essential part of my personal and professional life, and over the years I have tried a multitude of techniques and tools, with varying degrees of success and satisfaction. In talking to my colleague, I realized that I have actually developed a system that I have been using for several years now, and that works really well for me. Writing this short article has further helped me understand and appreciate my system, and thinking about how I take notes has provided me with a framework for talking about how I take notes.