I Will Teach You to Be Smart

An Introduction to the Concept

Anything you can write about, you can change.

I read How to Take Smart Notes during the lockdown of 2020. At the time I was heavily into other productivity endeavors such as David Allen’s Getting Things Done and Bryan Wolfmueller’s Everbook. I also bounced around through a horde of software suites and task managers trying anything I could to get a leg up on the data overload that being a modern information worker immersed me in. I wasted oodles of dollars on subscriptions and licenses, and even more time converting my files from one system to another. Years of video editing, writing books, and playing World of Warcraft also left me with a burning case of carpal tunnel syndrome.

So when Ahrens’ explication of the Luhmann method demonstrated the deep capacity of analog information management and therefore promised that I maybe didn’t have to use all digital tools if I didn’t want to, I leapt at the opportunity to get my head above water. Little did I realize that Ahrens’ approach never really intended that I use 6x4 notecards for everything. After a second read through, it is clear that Ahrens’ work is intended for scholars to use “smart noting” to better their scholarship.

You know, to, like, writing long papers…

But it was too late. The damage was already done. I was by this point over two years into the experiment. More so, it was working. I realized that I hadn’t just adopted Ahrens’ system. I’d gone beyond it. I’d almost entirely severed myself from digital information workload. I’d developed a personal system for total analog information management, including my calendar, task management, book-length writing and everything in between.

I Will Teach You to Be Smart was originally conceived as a popularization of Ahrens’ work, something accessible to repristinate the eminent scholar’s treatise on treatises for the masses. But as the manuscript outline took shape, it became evident I was doing what best-selling nonfiction writers do: spending two to three years researching a topic, then cataloging it to share with the world.

I’m not done yet. The beauty of the Smart Note strategy is that it is endlessly open to improvement. That’s part of its point. More specifically, it requires constant customization. I continue to find habits and niches that improve my use and recall, that better tailor my framework (Index? Who needs an index?). I constantly come to realizations that what I thought I was doing was only “almost” what I ought to be doing.

Once you start down the path to true knowledge, there is always more to discover. The glory of a principle is that it has infinite refractal applications. Every tactic has a trade-off limitation, but time measures the value of nearly all things. When you use it to take notice, when you stop wasting it and start harnessing it, it will inevitably show you the better way.

I’ve also put the hard work off of finishing I Will Teach You to Be Smart because I’ve been searching for something else. Smarting my notes led me to wanting to smart even more notes, rather than spend a bundle of hours writing about the process of smarting them. There is still a great deal of clean up to do in this presentation, and, frankly, I’d just as soon keep meditating on Sun Tzu or the Hebrew of King Solomon.

That said, the discovery of substack as a toolbox has given me a great opportunity to engage this project without having to do it all at once. The biggest problem with writing a book is that you must spend such a very large amount of time with nothing to show for it. You struggle in silence and obscurity for years only to get the book to the publisher. After that, it can be eighteen months or more before your dream goes to print. By then, a pandamic lockdown the same month might utterly destroy your sales. (And, yes, that is exactly what happened.)

But the ability to publish in serial format, to publish then filter, grants the opportunity to share what I know right now, without having to toil under the “maybe someday” allure of book-manuscript glory.

So, along with the other trajectories that my inner critic can shame into the “not a bestseller” obscurity of “I never got around to it,” I will begin releasing elements of I Will Teach You to Be Smart right here. If all goes well, in a year or two I will compile these serials into the book format I’ve often dreamed of. But there is no reason for me, or for you, to wait that long to get smart. There’s a lot going on in the world. We can’t wait around for the day after tomorrow. We need to harness this lightning right now.

So, subscribe up and stay tuned for a series written just for all you productivity junkies and information-overload managers. I know what you’re going through. I know what you’re wishing for, and even if my path to smart turns out to be totally divergent from your own, I promise you that it was supposed to be that way. When you build with first principles, it doesn’t matter so much what your final framework looks like. What matters is that you won’t ever have to build another one again.

Let’s get started:

You Want the Gist?

To revolutionize your life:

1. Write down (“take note of”) that which you “notice.”

2. Later, after the right amount of time, judge its true value.

3. Translate, elaborate and/or activate it to greater value.

4. Repeat.

Given time, enough space and a good pinch of trust, you cannot but improve. 

It’s that easy. But my guess is you’d a bit more than that. It’s coming. But the gist is the gold. The gist is the secret. The gist is what you’re after. The gist, in the end, is all you really need.

To be continued…