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If your notes inbox feels like a processing factory instead of a sweet place to think… you’ve been optimising for the wrong outcome.
The Problem With “Processing” Your Notes (& What To Do Instead)
If I look in my writing inbox right now I’ll find 680 ‘unprocessed notes.’
My writing inbox is where all of the notes I’ve taken while I’m consuming content end up ready for my daily writing practice where I take them, think on them & use them as prompts to start to develop my own ideas.
It’s my single most important tool as a creator.
It’s fun when I share my screen with people and suddenly they get that anxious look, like how can you have so many notes that you need to process and it not cause you major anxiety.
And while it might look like I don’t actually process any of the notes, I’m in my writing inbox every day, so it’s not a lack of time I’m spending in there. The reason I have so many is that getting to inbox zero is not my outcome — so I don’t optimise for that.
A Shift From Processing To Thinking
When I first started exploring the Zettealksten method of note-taking I was militant about taking notes and then processing every one of those notes into a permanent note before I could move on to reading something else.
But instead of building a rich library of knowledge and a practice that was fulfiling, all I ended up doing was creating shallow knowledge & notes because I was simply trying to churn through my literature notes to process them all.
It was all process without substance.
Worse yet, what ended up happening was I STOPPED spending time writing because the thought of having to do all that processing daunted me so much and most days I just couldn’t bring myself to open my inbox.
So I reframed how I thought about my writing inbox.
