Evergreen Notes
Evergreen notes are notes I have I have fully written and optimized over a long time range, refined and updated. These are categorized in my second brain with #garden / evergreen1.
Andy Matuschak defines Evergreen notes as:
Evergreen notes are written and organized to evolve, contribute, and accumulate over time, across projects. This is an unusual way to think about writing notes: Most people take only transient notes.
That’s because these practices aren’t about writing notes; they’re about effectively developing insight: “Better note-taking” misses the point; what matters is “better thinking”. When done well, these notes can be quite valuable: Evergreen note-writing as fundamental unit of knowledge work.
Also, flagging as an evergreen note does not mean they are finished writing:
Taxonomy of note typesEvergreen ≠ finished.
All notes are alive, and continue to compound, these are Continuous Notes eventough categoriez as Evergreen note. Evergreen means the note is well grown and matured, but still growing.
Also, nothing as part of my Second Brain is ever finished, that’s the whole idea. Finished thoughts or none changing are published as blogs, as blog vs. notes explains further.
# Compounding Effect of Notes
It’s hard to write Notes that are worth developing and compounding over time. These principles by Andy Matuschak might help:
- Evergreen notes should be atomic
- Evergreen notes should be concept-oriented
- Evergreen notes should be densely linked
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Prefer associative ontologies to hierarchical taxonomies ^0dd872
- ? evergreen note is an Ontology? Therefore, Second Brains too?
- Write notes for yourself by default, disregarding audience
# Zettelkasten
This concept is of course enormously indebted to the notion of a Zettelkasten. See Similarities and differences between evergreen note-writing and Zettelkasten.
Origin: Evergreen notes
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Check out my Taxonomy of note types of all notes in my second brain/digital garden. ↩︎