We Have a Linking Problem!

It’s possible to make something too easy. When what was difficult becomes frictionless, it’s almost certain that we’ll over-indulge.

This is a danger with digital note-taking apps that emphasize linking your knowledge, like Obsidian, Logseq, and Roam Research. The ease with which we can associate one note with another may, on the surface, appear to be a boon, but if we’re not careful, it can become a curse.

An Analogy to Food

Food is excellent; I love food. We need it to survive, it gives us energy, and it usually tastes pretty good. It’s how we get the things we need to live happy, healthy, and productive lives. Not having access to food quickly becomes a problem. So it seems like having nearly effortless access to food is a great idea. However, just like too little, too much also has unhealthy consequences.

The same is true for linking and tagging within knowledge systems. It gives us the ability to connect our ideas, but we need to develop the proper habits and exercise control in how we use them.

Why is Excessive Linking & Tagging A Problem

Dilution

Every time we link two ideas, it’s meant to be a signal within the vast sea of our knowledge. It becomes a beacon to light our way to insight. A few beacons easily stand out amidst the darkness of our ignorance.

But try to turn on too many beacons, and what was once a signal now becomes noise. We trade a dark background for an impossibly bright one. We’ve diluted the meaning of what that connection is supposed to signify.

Context

Using a link or tag doesn’t inherently provide context about the nature of the connection, and note-taking apps usually have no built-in forcing function to give us pause to consider one. So unless we expand on why two ideas are related when a link is created, we rely on having to remember. This puts a massive burden on our future selves.

What Can We Do?

Create Context

When adding links, force yourself to write about why those notes are related. If you can’t come up with anything meaningful, perhaps they don’t deserve to be connected.

Create tags with built-in context; rather than #Courage, use #[[Courage (Benefit of)]], #[[Courage (Example of)]]. This distributes links in more meaningful ways and helps to prevent creating a link every time the word is used in a sentence.

Use Sparingly

If you follow the advice above, you’ll naturally begin to add fewer links, but it’s still helpful to adopt a mindset of less but better. Most of what we know is connected to something else, so it isn’t about thinking of all the possible connections but highlighting the most impactful ones.

Linking isn’t Thinking

Creating a digital connection between two notes doesn’t mean we’ve made a mental connection between our neurons. That will only happen when we spend time reflecting on how those ideas fit together. If we don’t, then we’ve replaced thinking with linking.

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