Sean's Notes

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Linking Your Thinking's Take on Note Taking Problems & Solutions

Build Your Custom PKM System Now

Linking Your Thinking is a 6-week hands-on workshop that will teach, train, and support you in building a custom knowledge management system you can trust. Learn how to never lose your ideas again. Connect and create meaningful insights.

The Fall of the Note "Taker" [The Problem]

Suddenly, my notes felt lost to me. Where did it all go wrong?

It was a joy in the beginning. But as my digital library grew, something happened. My notes started to disappear. Not literally, but I couldn't find them because there was so much junk clogging up my searches.‍

Too much NOISE drowning out the SIGNAL.‍

Like a chronic headache, a terrible sensation followed me everywhere. My digital thoughts felt locked away. Somehow, I gave myself “digital dementia.”‍

How did this happen? How does my joy evaporate?

And how did I overcome it?

This isn't "cookie-cutter".

By the end of this workshop, you'll have:

New tools to reliably take your thinking to a higher level.

Your own personalized, flexible, and future-proof PKM system.

This is the exact system of "fluid frameworks" I’ve used to build my personal digital library with thousands of notes.

It's helped me develop my thinking, expand my businesses, produce fulfilling creative projects, and engage in countless compelling conversations.

From 2008 to 2015, I used Evernote. My notes were great at first. But just like the creepy character in the movie offering our heroes candy, the initial sweetness lured me into a trap that I barely escaped from!

My notes still have the scars to show for it.

Scars like horrendously formatted text and links that no longer work.‍

​For the past six years, I discovered a better way to organize my ideas—and build them too.‍

​​Yes, it's based on linking notes together.

But it's equally based on an emergent structure that can organically support your notes over time.

Mapping My Way Out [The Solution]

Even as I sank into Evernote's trap of digital madness, I was clawing back. I developed a basic system of using “Map" notes, which were basically “notes with links to other notes."‍

I used these "Map" notes to grow, develop, and manage a fitness boxing business — expanding it in the US, Scandinavia, and Saudi Arabia. I also used it extensively to produce two indie feature films—along with a bunch of other common uses like writing, tracking, and journaling.‍

The Maps—now called MOCs for "Maps of Content"—worked, but the health of my digital note system continued to fail. After several years, just the thought of opening Evernote created anxiety for me. The happiness I used to feel using my digital note library was experiencing “death by a thousand cuts”.

Scaling Zettelkasten

I left Evernote and went to plain text in 2015. I adopted the Zettelkasten Method and started linking my thinking. But even that was not enough to scale my thoughts.

I craved a higher level to view and develop my thoughts. I craved my maps.

So I continued to develop my mapping system.‍

I used my MOCs (map notes) as the foundation for my entrance into the entertainment industry in Los Angeles.

In the span of one year, I went from being a PA (essentially getting people coffee), to being the assistant editor on a feature film (working for a brilliant Emmy winning editor), to getting my first credit as an editor (a 5x upgrade in pay).

While being in the right place at the right time certainly played a role, so did having a system of digital notes that I could develop and trust. I used it to accelerate my career by extensively developing 4 major MOCs under the topics of: The Industry, Relationships, Storytelling, and the Craft of Editing.‍

I felt I had a few special ideas — like MOCs — that I hadn’t seen elsewhere else.

But I also figured it was just a cognitive bias I had. That's when the Obsidian beta came around. That's when I shared the "Linking Your Thinking" Frameworks in a starter kit now known as the LYT Kit.

What the Linking Your Thinking System Solves

The Linking Your Thinking (LYT) System solves the

two biggest problems in PKM: too much structure and too little.‍

1. Too much structure

The biggest problem with Microsoft Word and even Evernote was

how dependent they are on folders (not to mention crippling “feature-bloat”).‍

Our brains don’t work naturally within a folder-dominant framework.

It makes it difficult to develop ideas.‍

2. Too little structure

The "Folder Rebellion" has now gone mainstream with apps like The Archive, Roam, and Obsidian. They all rely on LINKS as the main way of relating notes.‍

Links are an evolutionary leap over folders.

Links encourage the development of your ideas to more closely resemble how our brains actually work.‍

But the problem with only using links is how claustrophobic it can feel…‍

It's like navigating Mirkwood Forest at night—with only a torch.

Sure it’s adventurous, but sometimes you want the birds-eye view.

(Remember the LYT Kit? It's now been downloaded over 25,000 times!)

The LYT Framework solves both problems in PKM:

You can develop ideas quickly and effortlessly using direct links.

You can zoom out and confidently see the bigger picture at any time!

[About the program]

The Rise of The Note “Maker”

Before the 2020s, a note was just a note. A note was something you took, used, and tossed.

Let's call this: "Churn and Burn".

But now, in the Age of the Linked Note things are different. Now notes can grow and evolve with other notes, to form

a living system of related thoughts that you can develop throughout your lifetime.

Let's call this: "Know and Grow".

THE ANSWER ISN'T MORE NOTES... IT'S BETTER NOTES.‍

Thinking through linking your ideas is seriously a revolution. Sure, the internet has had links for decades, but now regular peons like you and me can create links as quickly as we can think of them — without any programming, and in a way that is future-proofed!‍

We stand on the cusp of this new age of thinking, and like a great frontier, the opportunities stretch out before us.‍

But with this superpower finally at our fingertips, it's important to have a flexible system you can: customize, scale, and trust.

Create your Custom PKM System NOW!

You have the ability to create FAST notes. You have the ability to create LINKED notes.

You just have to figure out a way to: make, grow, develop, and scale your ideas now—and into the future.

With Linking Your Thinking, my prime directive is helping you get more joy out of your digital notes, on your way to accomplishing valuable things with them.