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Interesting Article on Organizing Information
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Posted by mprazoff
Dec 12, 2015 at 07:46 AM
The following article, posted in the Evernote blog, while ostensibly written around using Evernote to manage information, seems to me to be sufficiently broad and interesting, to apply to any attempt to organize information and creative thought. It discusses the limitations of tagging information and proposes an alternative way to mark information as valuable. I found it to be both stimulating and thought provoking. I hope that others will also find it of value.
https://blog.evernote.com/blog/2015/12/11/evernote-and-the-brain-designing-creativity-workflows/
Mark
Posted by Hugh
Dec 12, 2015 at 03:25 PM
Yes, a very interesting article. Thank you for it.
On the basis of a single reading, I’m not entirely convinced by all its arguments - particularly in regard to the potential role of Evernote in one’s mental toolbox - but I’ll have to think about them. And anything that quotes Richard Feynman favourably starts with Brownie points, in my view.
Posted by Stephen Zeoli
Dec 13, 2015 at 01:07 PM
That is an interesting article, good food for thought. For the same reasons the author states, I’ve been skeptical of tagging as the primary organizational tool, at least for me. The idea of processing information the way the author describes it is intriguing. Like Hugh, I’m not convinced that Evernote is the best tool for this kind of work, which brings me to taking exception to this claim at the start of the article (made, apparently by the editor at Evernote, and not the author):
“From Michael Hyatt to Thomas Honeyman, thousands upon thousands of you have relied on tags as your primary organizational system. But, the power of Evernote is in its flexibility.”
The power of Evernote is that it makes it easy to capture data and keep it accessible on virtually any device. But Evernote is no more flexible than any other note-manager and is less so than others because of its limited notebook hierarchy. I give the EN people credit for running such an extensive article that mostly nullifies their primary organization scheme. I wonder if it is a set up to big changes they are planning to the app.
But that’s a digression. The point of the article is that you need to interact with your information—at least the information that you capture for creative purposes. That’s an invigorating idea. But it definitely suggests a note system different than what Evernote does well. I would think a system that supported this iterative interaction would have these features:
1. An excellent editor.
2. The ability to annotate the text in a number of ways.
3. A facility to save versions of the information—you might want to refer to the original or see how your thinking about it evolved.
4. Quick and easy browsing of information so you can make those unexpected connections—if you have to search for it, that means you are expecting them.
Not sure such a note-taker currently exists. But it makes me want to find one that does.
Steve Z.
Posted by Paul Korm
Dec 13, 2015 at 02:44 PM
Very good article—thought provoking.
Stephen Zeoli wrote:
>1. An excellent editor.
>2. The ability to annotate the text in a number of ways.
>3. A facility to save versions of the information—you might want to refer to the original or see how your thinking about it evolved.
>4. Quick and easy browsing of information so you can make those unexpected connections—if you have to search for it, that means you are expecting them.
I would add “Intelligent search or other feature that suggests related / similar content”.
>Not sure such a note-taker currently exists. But it makes me want to find one that does.
Is it necessary to have a single tool for this? I tend to think “no”. It’s more interesting to have lots of tools in the shop.
Posted by Dr Andus
Dec 13, 2015 at 02:50 PM
Stephen Zeoli wrote:
>1. An excellent editor.
>2. The ability to annotate the text in a number of ways.
>3. A facility to save versions of the information—you might want to
>refer to the original or see how your thinking about it evolved.
>4. Quick and easy browsing of information so you can make those
>unexpected connections—if you have to search for it, that means you
>are expecting them.
>
>Not sure such a note-taker currently exists. But it makes me want to
>find one that does.
Well, there is the one you got me hooked on, Steve, a while ago ;-)