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There are two kinds of notes

Reference and action.

Reference are notes that you can find when you think of them. You come to think of some old friend; can you find her number in your address book? Your account numbers, passport, passwords, recipes, ideas, facts, research notes. If you think of it and you want to retrieve it, it’s reference. Common attempts to organize reference include tags, trees, indexing, date-sorting, search, alphabetical folders, and links and graphs.

Action are notes that find you when you don’t think of them. They tell you to get lemons in the grocery store, to get to the dentist when you have an appointment, and what to work on when you have spoons and a desk. If it’s there for you when you would’ve forgotten it, it’s action. Common attempts to organize action include alarms, calendars, reminders, TODO lists, check lists, shopping lists, putting it in your bag ahead of time, leaning it against the door.

Knowing how to sift action notes from reference notes and vice versa, and organizing them accordingly, is awesome.

A curious example

Two or three days ago I found Rocannon's World in a box and I started reading it and I finished it today and on the last page I found a sticky note in my own handwriting telling me to email someone! The note had the email address right there. I did not remember why but searching my email archive found a thread where I was talking to an online friend about how I wanted to read that book that he loved. Less than three years have passed but I still had forgotten. But a short pencil beats a long memory, apparently.

This is also an example of how my past self had successfully recognized that this note was “action” and not “reference”. The note found me when I needed it to.

Whereas finding more info in my searchable email archive is “reference” pulling through.♥ I found the background to the note when I needed to.