The argument in brief
- The question
- If I take notes on everything I learn and still don't feel smarter, what is missing?
- The claim
- Saving information is not learning it. Notes help when you rewrite ideas in your own words, break them into single concepts and connect them, and a system built only for storage keeps you collecting instead of thinking. Confidence: An argument from my own experience, stated firmly. No studies are cited.
- The evidence
- My own experience of taking notes from audiobooks, books and videos, then being unable to recall what mattered.
- The idea of the Collector's Fallacy, named in a 2014 essay on zettelkasten.de. That is an essay, not a study.
- The Zettelkasten method, which I describe as popular and whose principles I summarise. I did not test it against other methods.
- The best counter
- Forgetting is ordinary. Reviewing and testing myself on notes might help even in a storage-only system, so rewriting and linking may not be what matters.
- What would change my mind
- Good evidence that people who only collect and later retrieve notes understand and use ideas as well as people who rewrite and link them.
- Open gaps
- 2 gaps. Statements I haven't verified yet. Each is marked in the text.
The question: If I take notes on everything I learn and still don’t feel smarter, what is missing?My knowledge journey started with listening to audiobooks. This is what gave me the bug for learning new things and to become an autodidact. I realised that in order to recall all the amazing things I’d been learning, I needed to take notes. Doing so helps me feel like I’m participating in the knowledge that I’m learning.
However, as time passes, I found that I was forgetting what I’d made notes on. I want to recall aspects of the books that were really important to my understanding of a topic, but I just couldn’t remember what they were. In some way, it’s like remembering the punchline to a joke but not the lead-up.
And I feel like I’m really improving because I’m getting all the new knowledge from the books, the audiobooks, and the videos that I’m watching. But, on the other hand, nothing’s really changing. I don’t feel smarter. It’s like this form of note-taking is giving me the illusion of progress, but I’m not seeing the results.
An assumption: I am assuming that how I feel is a fair measure of whether I am learning, and that the system is the cause rather than how often I reviewed my notes or how hard the material was. I measured neither.And it turns out, the problem isn’t the effort that I’m putting in. It’s that the note-taking system I’ve adopted isn’t designed to make me think.
Notes that pile up
In this day and age, we’re bombarded with no short choice of content to consume. There are books on many topics that allow us to dive deep, podcasts that can allow us to listen to the experts in the field, and of course, there’s YouTube, which is full of content ranging from the very simplistic to a masterclass.
So we’re forever highlighting the passages of a book, creating bookmarks, and adding videos to our watch list. It feels productive. It feels intentional. We even create notes as we read and watch. Yet these notes pile up in apps like Obsidian and Notion. And as the list gets longer, we feel we’re building knowledge.
Yet, why is it, when we try to recall or use it, nothing is there? You can’t quite find that specific passage even though we’re sure that we made a note on it. But it turns out what we’re doing is just capturing what we felt was relevant in the moment, but not applying it to our wider understanding.
Limits: I cite no study for any claim in this piece except where one term comes from.The reality is, if you feel this is happening to you, you’re not alone. Unverified: This is actually how most people “learn”.Gap · needs evidence: This is my impression. I have no figures for how many people learn this way.
Why more of the same does not help
So we think that the issue is down to:
- Not enough notes: so we try to learn more by adding more things to create notes on
- Not the right system: so we try to fix that by seeking the next inventive method, folder structure, application, etc
- Not enough discipline: so we try to block out study time, join the 5am club or find the perfect playlist that will give you the focus you need
So yeah, you start looking for better tools, different structures and capturing more detailed notes. The YouTube algorithm starts feeding you new creators with their own technique. Digital note taking, paper note taking, AI note taking, Zettelkasten, Atomic Notes, etc, etc. I should know, I’m one of those creators.
Then it feels like you’re starting over time and time again. A new system, a new method, a new tool.
The Collector’s Fallacy
Claim, confidence:an argument from experience, not tested: The real issue however is that we’re simply collecting and not actively thinking. We call this the Collector’s Fallacy. This is where saving information feels like learning, but in reality nothing is being processed.Source: The post that named the idea. It argues that gathering books, photocopies and bookmarks feels like progress but that “to know about something” isn’t the same as “knowing something”, and it leans on a remark by Umberto Eco about photocopying. It is an essay from observation, not a study. It is also more about collecting material than about note-taking apps, and it argues that you do need to take notes to make a text your own.The Collector's Fallacy, Christian Tietze, Zettelkasten Method, 20 January 2014
But what does it look like in practice? Imagine you’re highlighting a passage of a book. You’re collecting extracts as you go. But unless you take that and explain it in your own words, you’ll never move on from the Collector’s Fallacy and become a Thinker.
The problem you’re facing isn’t the input, but the transformation of the information that truly helps you to think. Claim, confidence:stated as a rule; I have not tested it: The reality is that learning doesn’t happen when you consume, it happens when you process and re-express what you’re discovering.
A competing explanation: Forgetting is ordinary, and testing yourself on notes, or simply reviewing them, may help even if they are never rewritten or linked. That would make review the missing piece, not connection. I can’t separate the two from my own experience.Our brain doesn’t work like a computer where we can just store information as though they are files. No, we need to build meaning through the connections. It’s those connections that aid the recall of the material.
Passive learning simply doesn’t work. It’s isolated and we rarely revisit the content as it gets buried in our note-taking.
When you start to reframe your note-taking as having the purpose to aid future thinking, we move beyond the archival mindset that makes us think “if I’ve captured it, I’ve made progress”. Our notes should not be just a mere record of what was said, but it should be a critical thinking step that will help us shape our overall understanding of the topic as a whole.
If you’re not changing how you think through your notes, what’s the point?
The same notes, saved and then processed
Illustrative, not data
Collecting
Notes saved18
Processing
Notes rewritten and linked18 of 18
Describe this animation
Two panels side by side, one under the other on a narrow screen. Both show the same eighteen small note cards.
- Left, "Collecting": the eighteen cards sit in a tidy stack of three rows. A counter reads "Notes saved 18". A bar labelled "What I can explain and use" stays short, about a tenth full.
- Right, "Processing": the same eighteen cards are tinted coral to show they have been rewritten, and lines join them in a network of related notes. A counter reads "Notes rewritten and linked 18 of 18" and the bar is mostly full.
In the animation the cards on the left drop in one at a time while the bar stays low, then the cards on the right are rewritten and linked one by one while the bar rises. The bar is an illustration of the idea in the essay, that saving is not the same as understanding. It is not a measurement and nothing here is data.
Getting smarter through your notes
Getting smarter through your note-taking is really quite straightforward. Focus on:
- Rewriting the ideas of what you’re learning in your own words: this will help you test your understanding and make it part of your thought process, not someone else’s.
- Break ideas into single concepts: this is how we make sure we really understand the components.
- Connect the ideas together: our mind builds connections for understanding and recall, doing the same in our notes helps make this process much easier.
There are established systems that define a starting point to help you. Unverified: The Zettelkasten method is extremely popular.Gap · needs evidence: I haven't measured or looked up how widely the Zettelkasten method is used; 'extremely popular' is my impression from the note-taking community. Its key concepts are:
- Don’t just copy what you read, interpret it and make it your own
- Don’t just store your notes, connect them together and discover insights
- Don’t just collect notes for the sake of it, use them to develop your own thinking to become an expert thinker
Your notes should be a living and breathing system. It’s not a point in time snapshot of what you read, but an evolution of how you think, and how to allow your thinking to change as time goes by.
What to try today
So in conclusion, Claim, confidence:my conclusion; it holds if the claims above hold: if you feel that you’re not really getting smarter but you’re putting in the reps of making notes, it’s not because you can’t learn, it’s because you’re using a system built for storage, and not thinking.
You may think of note-taking as something you’re passionate about. But I would urge you to reframe this. You’re not just a note-taker, you’re a deep thinker.
If you want to try this out today, instead of looking for more information to capture, take notes you already have, and process them into your own thoughts. Rewrite it to show you understand it, and ask deep questions to find the gaps in your knowledge. What would change my mind?: Good evidence that people who only collect, and later find their notes by search or review, understand and use ideas as well as people who rewrite and link them.And remember, the goal isn’t to have thousands of notes. The goal is to have better thoughts.
My interest: I sell the book below, so I gain if you take this advice. The disclosure at the end says more, and the argument above should stand without the book.If this is something you’re keen to explore deeply, then consider checking out my book Atomic Note-Taking. It uses the Zettelkasten method to build a system and a workflow that’s aimed to help you become an expert thinker, not a note collector.
Sources
- The Collector's Fallacy, Christian Tietze, Zettelkasten Method, 20 January 2014
Books behind this essay
Not sources for any claim here. These are books I have finished that shaped how I think about this question. Where I rely on evidence, it is cited in the text.
Building a Second Brain
Shaped how I think about notes as material to put to work, not only something to keep.
How We Learn (opens audible.co.uk, external site)
Shaped how I think about remembering and forgetting, and why I suspect reviewing notes may matter as much as rewriting them.
Richard Feynman’s Mental Models (opens audible.co.uk, external site)
Shaped my habit of testing whether I understand an idea by explaining it simply in my own words.
Mindset (opens audible.co.uk, external site)
Shaped how I think about getting smarter as something built through effort and practice, which is the hope behind the advice at the end.
