Conquering Our Notes to Write Our Family History
Creating a Meaningful Family History Knowledge Base
Hello Family Historian,
As you read this week’s post, I want you to know that the ideas and methods I discuss have profoundly resonated with me. I am excited to share them with you and hope you find them intriguing. I feel like this is the game-changer many of us need right now. Also, please take the poll at the end of the post. I am very interested in what you think.
All the best,
~ Robin
The Notes
Why do the notes we take for our genealogy research, which meant so much to us when we took them, become a buried pile of archived, unprocessed, disjointed words on pages? We own an archive of notes, a collection of photocopied sources, and a digital dumping ground of files on our hard drives. Why, with such an abundance of material to write from does writing our family histories continue to be just beyond our reach?
Today we will embark on a journey to conquer our notes and make writing our family histories the successful outcome.
Research notes that we intended to use as sources to write our family histories can lose meaning without spending the mental capital needed to keep them ready in our memories. Unprocessed notes that once inspired thoughts about a great chapter in the family history book we intend to write fade over time. Our Outlines leave us stymied as to how to fill them. The pages we once wrote in our heads when we originally took the notes are now trapped in some memory vortex.
Determined to capture and keep the brilliant thoughts that pour into our minds when we score a genealogical source, we spend our brain power trying to remember them. Unwilling to abandon any of our ancestors, we fight the good mental fight to keep them close in our memory bank only to find them slipping away.
That story we read about our 5 times great grandfather, the one when he migrated. What happened again? What was the source we found that in? Is it filed under his surname or was it by location?
Who can blame us for having such an impressive stack of forgotten sources? They give badges for that kind of genealogical geekiness, don’t they? We live in a source-abundant digital world that provides us with more information about our ancestors than ever before. We teeter on the fine line between having what we need to be able to write a family history and being digital hoarders with hardcopy backups, just in case. We never meant for this to happen. Our intentions were pure. But alas, here we are on the precipice of never writing that family history.
The Memory
What can we do about keeping our notes relevant in our thinking so we can transform them into written family histories?
How can we leave ourselves with the mental space needed to be creative, effective, and impactful family history writers?
The first thing we need to do is give ourselves a break from trying to keep our thoughts queued up in our memories.
The notes and the thoughts we form about them need a place to exist outside of our brain. We need a method for processing our thinking that frees us from the 20th Century idea that we must use our mental capacity to memorize facts. The goal is to expand our creativity and our ability to turn our notes into the written family histories they are meant to be. With our family history knowledge base in a safe and accessible existence outside of our brains, we are free to reach our goal.
How on earth will my thoughts exist outside my brain? This seems a little impossible. Or is it?
Sönke Ahrens, author of How to Take Smart Notes: One Simple Technique to Boost Writing, Learning and Thinking describes a place outside our brains.
A good structure is something you can trust. It relieves you from the burden of remembering and keeping track of everything. If you can trust the system, you can let go of the attempt to hold everything together in your head and you can start focusing on what is important: The content, the argument and the ideas. (Ahrens, How to Take Smart Notes. p. 5-6 , Kindle Edition)1
Okay, great. My thoughts are going to be outside of my brain. Does this involve surgery? Will there be some kind of brain-to-brain transfer like a Frankenstein situation? Well of course not. Don't be silly! Making a place for thoughts to exist outside of our brain is easier than it sounds. All we need is a second brain.
A what?
In his book, Building a Second Brain, Tiago Forte explains the idea of a Second Brain for storing information we collect. This out-of-body container of sorts is a trusted place where you save the information that is important to you. The difference between the Second Brain and a disjointed note archive is that the notes have been processed so that our thoughts remain accessible.2
To be able to make use of information we value, we need a way to package it up and send it through time to our future self. (Forte, Building a Second Brain. page 3 , Kindle Edition)
Forte's method includes creating access to prior information, organizing your knowledge, saving your thinking, connecting ideas, having a reliable system for sharing ideas and keeping track of details, thus giving your first brain more capacity for creativity.
While Forte focuses on managing personal knowledge, Ahrens looks at how to process notes and facilitate our thinking. Ahrens writes:
Writing is, without dispute, the best facilitator for thinking, reading, learning, understanding and generating ideas we have. Notes build up while you think, read, understand and generate ideas, because you have to have a pen in your hand if you want to think, read, understand and generate ideas properly anyway. If you want to learn something for the long run, you have to write it down. If you want to really understand something, you have to translate it into your own words. Thinking takes place as much on paper as in your own head. (Ahrens, How to Take Smart Notes. p. 22-23, Kindle Edition)
What is the structure of this kind of writing for thinking? Ahrens refers to the work of Niklas Luhmann, who in 30 years, published 58 books. (Ahrens, p. 14 Kindle Edition) Luhmann had a technique for taking notes called Zettelkasten, translated from German means Slip (Zettel) Box (kasten). Ahren explained that one note would be taken on one slip of paper. Each slip of paper would be kept in a box according to its connection to other notes and to a numbering system Luhmann devised. From these notes, he wrote from the bottom up.
There were three kinds of notes.
Fleeting Notes
These are reminders of what is in your head, or your "first brain." Writing down thoughts and ideas before they are forgotten. They are quick and to be processed later.
Literature Notes
When you are reading something, make notes about the content. Avoid excessive quoting. Copying word for word does not allow you to understand the meaning.
Permanent Notes
Write exactly one note for each idea and write as if you were writing for someone else: Use full sentences, disclose your sources, make references and try to be as precise, clear and brief as possible. (Ahrens, p. 25, Kindle Edition)
This is also where we can link notes to other notes, connecting ideas and developing questions and research projects in a bottom-up from within the system approach.
Where will all of this happen? While Luhmann used boxes for his notes, Ahren recommends using a digital Notetaking App for Zettelkasten. (Ahrens, p. 38, Kindle Edition) Forte also recommends his Second Brain happen in a Notetaking App. (Forte, p. 38 Kindle Edition)
The Learning Journey
Gathering ideas from both Forte and Ahrens creates questions for us as family historians.
How will a Second Brain and a system for notetaking work for genealogists?
Can it all be put together in a way that makes sense for us family historians?
Can it be made in a simple yet effective way that makes moving from research notes to written family histories that we can build from the bottom up?
Having a note, through a specific notetaking process that lives in our Second Brain, be a catalyst for thoughts, that connect to other thoughts and then blossom as a fully developed family history is possible.
It will take four conditions:
A level of understanding of the Zettelkasten system within the context of a Second Brain.
A digital Notetaking app that will support this kind of note-taking process.
A willingness to do things differently than how we’ve always done it.
Time
The next few Genealogy Matters Newsletter posts will be dedicated to diving deeper into this topic, discussing why it matters, and learning to use a new system to write our family histories.
The steps in this journey will be:
Drawing from the idea of a Second Brain, we can learn how to use a specific Notetaking App to create a family history knowledge base.
Develop a notetaking system specifically for genealogists that draws inspiration from the Zettelkasten method.
Gain practical skills in transforming our notes into written family histories.
If these ideas resonate for you and you are interested, I invite you to come along as we take the time needed to understand and implement this method. In doing so, we can overcome the hurdles we face in writing our family histories.
Together, we will learn a new system for managing our family history knowledge base. We will defy the odds of our notes joining the ranks of the forgotten ideas and remnants of lost files that live in the wasteland of our hard drives. Finally, we will use the legion of photocopies living like squatters in our file cabinets. We will reclaim the mental space needed to create, be curious, and write the family histories that future family historians will love us for.
A Question for You…
If your thoughts weren’t captured in the poll, feel free to add them in the comments!
Until next week…
Grateful
I want to acknowledge and express my gratitude to Zelda York, my editor. I couldn’t do this without her! Thank you!
I love the Substack Family History Community! You are the best!
Thank you for investing your time in reading this newsletter. My goal is to be able to:
Research and provide information about organizing and preserving your family history.
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Ahrens, Sönke. How to Take Smart Notes: One Simple Technique to Boost Writing, Learning and Thinking. 2nd edition, Revised and Expanded edition. Hamburg, Germany: Sönke Ahrens, 2022.
Forte, Tiago. Building a Second Brain. S.I.: Atria Books, 2022.
You've been looking over my shoulder, apparently.
Very interesting! I look forward to learning more. Thanks.