Knowledge is locked up if not freed from the source context

When we learn or conduct research, we may take notes. It is important to extract what we learn from what we read/listen/watch, and to especially translocate any notes we have taken away from their sources.

Notes are a certain form of crystalised knowledge, which result from processed information. It our notes are embedded in their initial sources, it is hard for us to retrieve them when we need them.
==> [Peripheral vision enhances discoverability]
==> [Note-taking is different from note-making]

A huge obstacle is that we would need to always remember where these ideas came from (good luck to your memory). We would have to constantly refer back to the sources and the originating content of our notes to make sense of what we had learnt. This is inefficient as we repeat the work we had done before every time when we want to access the information/knowledge.

• Notes are only as useful as they are per se if locked within the source context. Connecting notes and ideas inter-disciplinarily multiplies their usefulness. (Ahrens; ch. 1)

Besides, leaving our notes with their originating sources contextually locks what we have learnt with where it came from. It limits the potential application of knowledge, especially cross-disciplinary discovery.

• ‘And if you stumble upon one idea and think that it might connect to another idea, what do you do when you employ all these different techniques? Go through all your books to find the right underlined sentence? Reread all your journals and excerpts? And what do you do then? Write an excerpt about it? Where do you save it and how does this help to make new connections? Every little step suddenly turns into its own project without bringing the whole much further forward.’ (Ahrens; ch. 3)

‘Tools are only as good as your ability to work with them.’ (Ahrens; ch. 4) Similarly, knowledge are only as good as your ability to mobilise and apply them.

Related

• [Atomic research helps consolidate locked up knowledge in an organisation]

Last update: 2021-02-16

References

Ahrens, Sönke. [How To Take Smart Notes]: One Simple Technique to Boost Writing, Learning and Thinking – for Students, Academics and Nonfiction Book Writers. Sönke Ahrens, 2017.