Open the notes file of someone who has been taking notes in a disorganised way for years. You will find a mix of context-free phrases, quotes without reference to their origin, abbreviations invented in the moment that no one would understand today, and pages full of bullet points that seemed perfectly clear at the time and are now completely opaque.

This is not a problem of intelligence or organisation. It is a design problem: those notes were not written to be reread. They were written for the present moment, and in that moment they had all the context they needed. Afterwards, that context evaporated.

The graveyard of unreadable notes

Most note systems end up as graveyards. There is a lot inside, but no life. Notes go in but do not come out; they accumulate but are not used.

The most frequent cause is not the lack of an organisation system. It is that the notes themselves are so cryptic or so incomplete that rereading them requires more effort than they produce. And if rereading costs too much, it simply does not happen.

The solution is not a more sophisticated organisation system. It is writing better notes from the start.

The problem of lost context

When you write a note, your mind automatically fills in the gaps with the context you have at that moment. You know which project it belongs to, in which conversation the idea arose, which book you were reading. That context is invisible in the note because you do not need to write it: it is already in your head.

Three months later, that context is gone. And the note that seemed perfectly clear is now a puzzle.

The solution is to write notes as if you did not have that context, as if you were going to read them for the first time with no additional information.

Principle 1: Write for your future self

Imagine that the person who is going to read this note is someone who knows nothing about the context in which it was written. That person is you in six months.

What does that person need to know for the note to make sense? Probably:

  • Where the idea or information comes from (source, conversation, personal experience)
  • Why you considered it important at the time
  • Which project, area or question it is related to

You do not need to write an essay. One or two sentences of context are usually enough to make the note readable months later.

Principle 2: One idea per note

One of the most important decisions in note design is the level of granularity: how many ideas fit in one note?

The answer that works best for most systems is: one central idea per note. This seems restrictive, but it has several advantages:

  • Small notes are easier to reread and use in different contexts.
  • A note with a single idea can be linked from multiple places without duplicating content.
  • It is easier to know whether the note is still relevant when its scope is clear.

Long notes covering multiple ideas are harder to reuse, harder to connect with other notes, and harder to keep updated.

Principle 3: Add the why

The most frequent mistake in capture notes is writing “what” without the “why”. You capture a phrase from a book but do not write why it seemed important. You note a data point but not the reasoning that connects it with something you already knew.

The “why” is the most valuable part of a note and the one that disappears fastest if not written at the moment. In the future, the “what” you can search for. The “why” — your specific reasoning, your personal connection to that idea — only exists in your mind, and if you do not capture it, it disappears.

Principle 4: Make it self-contained

A self-contained note is one that makes complete sense without needing to open another note, look up the original source or remember the context in which it was written.

This does not mean that notes cannot connect to each other. It means that the note itself must be comprehensible on its own. Links to other notes are additional connections, not substitutes for content.

Format matters less than you think

There are endless debates about whether notes should be in prose or bullet points, with headings or without, with images or text only. The truth is that format matters much less than the principles we have just described.

A prose note that explains the context, develops a single idea and adds the reasoning behind it is infinitely more useful than a perfectly formatted note that only contains the quote without explaining why it is relevant.

Choose the format that comes most naturally to you. What has no substitute is content and intention.

In the next chapter we take a further step: not just writing notes that can be reread, but writing permanent notes that capture genuinely your own ideas.