How I Solve My Knowledge Worker Problems Thanks to Note-Taking
Notes are buds of knowledge waiting to bloom, and knowledge fuels problem-solving
Everybody writes.
This is the first sentence of How to Take Smart Notes by Sönke Ahrens, the famous book about the Zettelkasten method of taking and organizing notes to foster creativity. That phrase smells universal—it speaks of ‘everybody’—and mentions the human activity I love the most: writing.
Most people believe you cannot think of yourself as a writer if you aren’t like Hemingway. It’s a wrong belief that experience denies: since childhood, we have gotten used to writing notes down. That doesn’t make us someone like Shakespeare, but it demonstrates that we are all writers.
Ordinary schools don’t help to develop that awareness. Who has met teachers who explained how to take notes during lessons? They assume that students learn note-taking on the go and that it doesn’t deserve an educational path. What a detrimental mistake!
According to Forbes,
There are currently about one billion knowledge workers across the globe whose jobs specifically require them to combine action with a level of domain expertise — their knowledge — to generate value and make critical decisions.
