I definitely very often run into the problem that I forget why something was good to do in the first place. What are the important bits? Often I get sidetracked, and then the thing that I am doing seems not so got, so I stop and do something completely different. But then later on I realize that actually the original reason that led me down the path was good and that it would have been better to only backtrack a bit to the important piece. But often I just don’t remember the important piece in the moment.
E.g. I think that having some kind of linking structure in your world model, that links objects in the model to the real world is important such that you can travel backward on the links to identify where exactly in your world model the error is. Then I go off and construct some formalism for a bit, but before I got to the point of adding the links I forgot that that was the original motivation, and so I just analyzed the model for a couple of hours before realizing that I still haven’t added the linking structure.
So it even happens during the same research session for me if I am not careful. And if you want to continue the next day, or a week later, having organized your thoughts in a way that isn’t so painful to go through that you won’t do it is extremely helpful.
I recognized a couple of things as important so far for being able to do it correctly:
Make it fun to make the notes. If you can’t make this information processing activity fun you basically can’t do it.
My brain somehow seems to like doing it much more when I put all the notes on a website.
Also taking lots of ADHD medication helps.
Make the notes high quality enough such that they are readable, instead of a wall of garbage text.
Writing thoughts mainly on a whiteboard, and analog journals (including reflection) seems to help a lot (in general actually).
Integrate note-taking tightly into your research workflow.
Don’t rely on postprocessing, i.e. having a separate step of producing research notes. At least I didn’t manage to get this to work at all so far. As much as possible make the content you produce in the first place as good as possible (analog tools help a lot with this). That means writing up notes and reflections as you are working, not at some time later (which never actually comes).
+1 for just throwing your notes up on a website. For example, mine are at https://www.hgreer.com/Reports/ although there is currently a bit of a gap for the last few months as I’ve been working more on synthesizing existing work into a CVPR submission than on exploreing new directions.
The above is a terrible post-hoc justification and I need to get back to note taking.
I’m missing a key piece of context here—when you say “doing something good” are you referring to educational or research reading; or do you mean any type of personal project which may or may not involve background research?
I may have some practical observations about note-taking which may be relevant, if I understand the context.
I specifically am talking about solving problems that nobody knows the answer to, where you are probably even wrong about what the problem even is. I am not talking about taking notes on existing material. I am talking about documenting the process of generating knowledge.
I am saying that I forget important ideas that I generated in the past, probably they are not yet so refined that they are impossible to forget.
Thank you for the clarification. Do you have a process or a methodology for when you try and solve this kind of “nobody knows” problems? Or is it one of those things where the very nature of these problems being so novel means that there is no broad method that can be applied?
Here. There is a method you can have. This is just a small pice of what I do. I also probably haven’t figured out many important methodological things yet.
You Need a Research Log
I definitely very often run into the problem that I forget why something was good to do in the first place. What are the important bits? Often I get sidetracked, and then the thing that I am doing seems not so got, so I stop and do something completely different. But then later on I realize that actually the original reason that led me down the path was good and that it would have been better to only backtrack a bit to the important piece. But often I just don’t remember the important piece in the moment.
E.g. I think that having some kind of linking structure in your world model, that links objects in the model to the real world is important such that you can travel backward on the links to identify where exactly in your world model the error is. Then I go off and construct some formalism for a bit, but before I got to the point of adding the links I forgot that that was the original motivation, and so I just analyzed the model for a couple of hours before realizing that I still haven’t added the linking structure. So it even happens during the same research session for me if I am not careful. And if you want to continue the next day, or a week later, having organized your thoughts in a way that isn’t so painful to go through that you won’t do it is extremely helpful.
I recognized a couple of things as important so far for being able to do it correctly:
Make it fun to make the notes. If you can’t make this information processing activity fun you basically can’t do it.
My brain somehow seems to like doing it much more when I put all the notes on a website.
Also taking lots of ADHD medication helps.
Make the notes high quality enough such that they are readable, instead of a wall of garbage text.
Writing thoughts mainly on a whiteboard, and analog journals (including reflection) seems to help a lot (in general actually).
Integrate note-taking tightly into your research workflow.
Don’t rely on postprocessing, i.e. having a separate step of producing research notes. At least I didn’t manage to get this to work at all so far. As much as possible make the content you produce in the first place as good as possible (analog tools help a lot with this). That means writing up notes and reflections as you are working, not at some time later (which never actually comes).
+1 for just throwing your notes up on a website. For example, mine are at https://www.hgreer.com/Reports/ although there is currently a bit of a gap for the last few months as I’ve been working more on synthesizing existing work into a CVPR submission than on exploreing new directions.
The above is a terrible post-hoc justification and I need to get back to note taking.
I’m missing a key piece of context here—when you say “doing something good” are you referring to educational or research reading; or do you mean any type of personal project which may or may not involve background research?
I may have some practical observations about note-taking which may be relevant, if I understand the context.
I specifically am talking about solving problems that nobody knows the answer to, where you are probably even wrong about what the problem even is. I am not talking about taking notes on existing material. I am talking about documenting the process of generating knowledge.
I am saying that I forget important ideas that I generated in the past, probably they are not yet so refined that they are impossible to forget.
Thank you for the clarification. Do you have a process or a methodology for when you try and solve this kind of “nobody knows” problems? Or is it one of those things where the very nature of these problems being so novel means that there is no broad method that can be applied?
Here. There is a method you can have. This is just a small pice of what I do. I also probably haven’t figured out many important methodological things yet.
Also this is very important.