You have more note-taking tools than any generation in history.
Notion. Obsidian. Roam. Apple Notes. Evernote. Google Keep. Craft. Logseq. Bear. You have tried at least four of them. Probably more. You have watched the YouTube tutorials, copied the templates, migrated your data at least twice, convinced that this time you found the right tool.
And yet.
When you need that insight from three months ago, you spend 15 minutes searching. When you try to recall what you learned from that client conversation, you remember it exists but not where it lives. When you need to make a decision and you know you have relevant information somewhere, you give up and start from scratch.
This is not a tool problem. This is not a discipline problem. This is a mental model problem.
You have been taught to manage notes like a librarian: capture everything, file it properly, maintain perfect organization. But your brain does not work like a library. Your brain works like a network. And that mismatch is costing you hours every week and insights you will never know you missed.
Here is what this article will do for you. First, I will show you exactly why your current approach guarantees failure, no matter how sophisticated your tools are. Then, I will introduce the principle that actually works, the one that mirrors how your brain processes information. And before you finish reading, I will give you a habit you can implement in 10 seconds that will change how you think about every note you take.
Not next week. Today.
The Graveyard Problem
“We don’t rise to the level of our goals. We fall to the level of our systems.” – James Clear
I run four companies with over 70 team members. For years, I was the most disciplined note-taker you could imagine. Meeting notes, project updates, strategic insights, book highlights. All captured. All organized. All filed in carefully labeled folders.
All useless.
I learned this during a board meeting at one of my companies. We were discussing a strategic partnership, and I knew I had relevant notes from a conversation eight months earlier. Detailed notes. Key points highlighted. Even tagged properly.
But I could not find it. And when I finally did, it sat there alone, disconnected from the three other conversations, two articles, and one failed experiment that would have given that note actual meaning.
That note was captured. But it was dead. An orphan in a graveyard of good intentions.
Here is the problem: every time you ask “where should I put this?” you are creating a burial location. You are filing information in a place you will need to remember later. And three months from now, you will not remember your filing logic. You will remember what the note was about. You will remember the context. You will remember the problem you were solving. None of which matches your folder name.
I have watched executives with 47 carefully labeled folders who still cannot find the strategy document from Q2. They filed it under “Strategy,” but their brain remembers it as “the one with the competitor analysis” or “the document from right after the market shifted.”
The filing cabinet model optimizes for storage. But storage is not the goal. Retrieval is. Insight is. Connection is.
You do not need to organize notes. You need to make notes useful. And those are not the same thing.
Your Brain Has No Folders
“Neurons that fire together wire together.” – Donald Hebb
Here is something that changed everything for me: your brain has no filing system.
Neuroscience has shown us that memory and intelligence work through association, not categorization. When you try to remember something, your brain does not browse through mental folders. It follows connections. One thought triggers another thought which triggers another thought until you arrive at what you were looking for.
This is why you remember random things with perfect clarity and forget “important” things completely.
That obscure fact you learned at a dinner party? You remember it because it connected to the conversation, the person who told you, the surprise you felt, and three other topics you discussed that night. Dense connections. Easy recall.
That critical insight from last quarter’s strategy meeting? Gone. It existed in isolation. It connected to nothing except a folder called “Q3 Meetings” that you will never open again.
Isolated notes die. Connected notes compound.
This is the insight that changes everything. When information connects to other information, each piece makes the others more valuable. The connection itself creates meaning that neither piece had alone. And when you add new information that connects to existing information, you do not just add value. You multiply it.
This is how expertise actually develops. Experts do not know more facts than novices. They have more connections between facts. Their knowledge is denser. When they encounter new information, it immediately links to hundreds of existing pieces, creating insight that seems like intuition but is actually connection density.
Your productivity system should work the same way. Not folders and hierarchies. Connections and networks. Not “where does this go?” but “what does this connect to?”
In ICOR®, we call this the “one brain with two parts” principle. Your physical brain and your digital tools are not two separate systems. They are one system with two components. The digital part should work exactly like the physical part: capture naturally, connect automatically, retrieve when needed.
When your tools mirror how your brain already works, there is no friction. You are not learning a new system. You are extending how you already think. This is why the Refine phase of ICOR® exists: to ensure that what you captured months ago becomes usable today. Not through heroic searching, but through connections that make retrieval natural.
The Compounding Principle
“Knowledge, like money, grows through compound interest.” – Paul Graham
In a properly designed productivity system, every piece of information you add makes the entire system more valuable.
Not additively. Exponentially.
Think about compound interest. A dollar invested does not just sit there. It earns interest. Then the interest earns interest. Over time, the growth accelerates. The system gets more valuable not just from new deposits but from the deposits working together.
Notes can work the same way. But only if you architect them correctly.
Most people’s note systems get harder to use as they grow. More notes means more search results. More documents means more scrolling. More folders means more decisions about where things belong. The system fights you. Every addition makes retrieval worse.
This is additive architecture. 1,000 notes equals 1,000 isolated items to search through. The value grows linearly, barely, but the friction grows exponentially.
Compounding architecture works differently. 1,000 notes equals 1,000 interconnected nodes that surface patterns you never explicitly created. Each new piece of information creates new connections with existing pieces. It makes everything more findable because there are more paths to reach it.
Three requirements make notes compound:
Capture. The information must enter your system. Friction kills capture. If saving something requires decisions about folders and categories, you will skip it. The best insights often come from things you almost did not save.
Connect. The information must link to other information. This is where most systems fail completely. They capture fine but connect nothing. Every piece sits in isolation, valuable only if you remember it exists.
Surface. The information must be findable through multiple paths. Connections create paths. Dense connections create many paths. When you search, relevant information emerges from multiple angles.
This is what “nothing gets lost” actually means in ICOR®. It is not about storage. Everything is stored somewhere. It is about findability and usefulness. If information is stored but unfindable, it is lost. If it is findable but disconnected from context, it is useless. True capture means the information remains accessible and valuable and connected to the contexts where it matters.
The test: Does your note system make you smarter over time, or just more organized?
The 10-Second Habit That Changes Everything
“The chains of habit are too light to be felt until they are too heavy to be broken.” – Warren Buffett
Before you restructure anything. Before you evaluate new tools. Before you create a single new system. Test this principle with the smallest possible action.
One sentence. Every note. Starting now.
The Link Habit: Before you close any note, write “This connects to:” and add at least one connection.
That is it. Ten seconds. No new tools. No system changes. No learning curve.
After a meeting note:
This connects to: Q4 product launch, pricing decision, conversation with Sarah last week
After capturing an idea:
This connects to: client onboarding problem, the article I read about first impressions
After a journal entry:
This connects to: goal of improving delegation, pattern of taking back tasks
Why does this work?
First, it forces connection thinking at the moment of capture. Right now, you have context. You know why this note matters. You know what it relates to. In three months, that context will be gone. The one-sentence habit preserves it.
Second, it trains your brain to think in connections rather than categories. After a few days, you will notice something shift. You will start thinking about connections before you write, not just after.
Third, it creates immediate proof. By the end of today, you will have notes with explicit connections. You will notice that you are already thinking about information differently.
Here is what to expect:
Day 1 feels slightly annoying. You will wonder if this is worth the effort. It takes 10 seconds, but those 10 seconds feel like friction. Do it anyway.
Day 3, you start thinking about connections before you write. The question “what does this connect to?” becomes automatic. You catch yourself considering relationships while you are still in the middle of a note.
Day 7, you notice you are remembering things differently. When you try to recall something, you think in terms of connections. “That was related to the product launch” becomes your retrieval mechanism, not “I think I put that in the Marketing folder.”
Day 30, you cannot imagine not doing this. The habit is permanent. And you have a month of connected notes proving the principle works.
This is what the Input phase of ICOR® is really about. Not capturing everything. Capturing with intention. Capturing with connection. Capturing in a way that serves your future self.
From Collector to Connector
Now that you understand the principle, here is how to scale it. Three rules. Simple to understand. Transformative to implement.
Rule 1: Ask “What does this connect to?” before “Where should I put this?”
The connection question unlocks retrieval. The storage question creates burial.
A meeting note might connect to a project, a client, a strategic initiative, and a hiring decision all at once. In a filing system, you have to choose one. In a connection system, you link to all of them.
Rule 2: Orphan notes are dead notes.
If a note connects to nothing, it will help with nothing. Every piece of information must link to at least one other thing. If it does not, either find the connection or question whether it belongs in your system at all.
The test: Can you explain, in one sentence, why this note matters to something you are actively working on? If yes, make the connection explicit. If no, the information is either premature or irrelevant.
Rule 3: Capture for emergence, not just storage.
You do not know what patterns will matter in six months. So capture more context than you think you need. Do not just save the fact; save why it matters. Do not just save the conclusion; save the reasoning.
Future insights depend on today’s connection density. The pattern that will solve next year’s problem might emerge from two notes you capture today. But only if both have enough context to recognize the connection.
Before closing any note, run this test:
– What does this connect to?
– Why does it matter?
– When might I need this?
If you can answer all three, you have captured for emergence.
What Emerges When You Stop Filing
“The whole is greater than the sum of its parts.” – Aristotle
The real payoff is not organization. It is emergence. Insights that arise from the density of connections, not from explicit analysis. Patterns you never planned to find.
Last month, I was preparing for a difficult conversation with a team member about performance. Before the meeting, I searched my notes for their name. What came up was not just our previous one-on-ones. It was connected to a project delay from Q2, which was connected to a resource allocation decision I had made, which was connected to feedback from their colleague about unclear expectations.
I walked into that conversation with context I never explicitly tracked. The connections surfaced it.
An entrepreneur I worked with kept connected notes on every client conversation. Not filed by client name. Connected by themes: what problems they mentioned, what outcomes they wanted, what objections they raised. Six months later, she noticed something she never explicitly analyzed. Her best clients, the ones with highest lifetime value and lowest churn, all started with the same type of conversation. They all mentioned a specific problem in their first call.
She never went looking for that pattern. The pattern emerged from the density of connections.
This is the feeling shift. You stop searching for information. Information starts finding you.
When you sit down to make a decision, relevant context surfaces because it is connected to the decision at hand. When you start a new project, related insights emerge because they are linked to similar projects. When you encounter a problem, potential solutions appear because your system has been quietly connecting patterns all along.
Most professionals have spent years building a beautiful library they never visit. Connected professionals have built a system that reads itself and tells them what matters.
The Shift That Changes Everything
The filing cabinet model is dead. It was designed for physical constraints that no longer exist. Every time you ask “where should I put this?” you are creating a burial location for information that deserves to live.
The compounding model is how intelligence actually works. Your brain connects. Your productivity system should connect. Every piece of information should make every other piece more valuable.
The shift is simple to name:
From collector to connector. From searching to surfacing. From organized storage to compounding intelligence.
You have a choice right now.
You can close this article, nod thoughtfully, and go back to your folders. Back to the filing. Back to the question that guarantees you will never find it when you need it.
Or you can start differently.
One sentence. Every note. Starting today.
“This connects to:”
That is your entry point. That is your proof of concept. By the end of today, you will have evidence that connection beats collection.
Most people will not do this. They will agree with everything they read and change nothing. They will keep filing. They will keep losing. They will keep wondering why they can never find what they need.
You do not have to be most people.
Start connecting. Start today. Start now.
The note you take in the next hour could be the note that changes everything. But only if you connect it to something that matters.
