atomicity make bad note better
Table of Contents
When a note is of bad quality and written in whole, it can be hard to reuse any of it - like my GTD integration or my research system.
If a note does not make sense, but the subsections of it are atomic and thus make sense in a narrower context or simpler form, those subsections could be reused easily(if they are already zettel, they could immediately be reused; if they are only subtree in the bad note, making them their own zettel is only copy and paste), deleting the bad note is also easier
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zettel should be atomic
content of a zettel should only address atomic idea, because:
- atomic notes make reference easy, make discussion with zettel easy, as referring to one propositions is then intuitive
- atomicity - flexibility, making it convenient for rearranging organization and compilation, to reuse notes with zero effort
- atomicity make bad note better and hence ensure works would not be wasted
In practice, when made atomic, a zettel often falls in one of 3 common zettel categories
- use reference only if necessary
use only the plainest, most literal terms
“I couldn’t reduce it to the freshman level. That means we really don’t understand it.” - Richard Feynman
atomic
An entity is atomic when it cannot be split further; any further categorization would not make sense.
“Arithmetics” could be sensibly categorized into “plus, minus, devide, multiply”, but devide “multiply” futher into “term 1, multiply operator, term 2” won’t make much sense, as the relation of multiplication won’t hold when the 3 have seperated, and it is very unlikely that any of them would be mentioned without the other 2 at the same time.