Evergreen Notes

Evergreen Notes

Andy Matuschak proposed the term Evergreen Notes to describe a system of note-taking that aspires towards cumulative personal knowledge, rather than simply information capture.

An Evergreen Note is written to capture and describe a single concise idea or concept and evolve as knowledge and insights on the topic are accumulated over time.

Principals:

• Atomic - captures one sigle idea concisely & in its entirety
• Densly Linked to make us think expansively on the topic.
• Associative rather than heirarchical. Lets structure emerge organically rather than imposing artifical constraints from start.
• Concept Oriented around big ideas rather tha. specific books, articles, events and media.

This concept evolves in large part from Niklas Luhmann’s Zettelkasten which he credits for helping him achieve his huge body of work.

It is important to note that the goal here is not just to take better notes or keep notes more organized. The goal here, and of note-taking in general is to improve your reading, understanding and thinking capabilities.

Implementation Techniques

• [Write about what you read]