What an odd headline in the Times: “No more koala cuddles at sanctuary visited by Putin and Taylor Swift”.
Evergreen notes allow you to think about complex ideas by building them up from smaller composable ideas.
My evergreen notes have titles that distill each idea in a succinct and memorable way, that I can use in a sentence. For example:
- A company is a superorganism
- All input is error
- Calmness is a superpower
- Concise explanations accelerate progress
- Cross the chasm
- Everything is a remix
- Writing is telepathy
- You have no obligation to your former self
- etc
You don’t need to agree with the idea for it to become an evergreen note. Evergreen notes can be very short.
I have an evergreen note called Creativity is combinatory uniqueness that is built on top of another evergreen note:
If you believe Everything is a remix, then creativity is defined by the uniqueness and appeal of the combination of elements.
Evergreen notes turn ideas into objects. By turning ideas into objects you can manipulate them, combine them, stack them. You don’t need to hold them all in your head at the same time.
The term evergreen notes was coined by Andy Matuschak and you can find more about this method on his site. You can also listen to my interview on the Metamuse podcast for more thoughts on evergreen notes and how I use them in Obsidian.
