Comment by atoav | Hacker News Reader

Comment by atoav | Hacker News Reader

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> Without specific goals in mind obsessive self-documentation is just a massive level of busy-work that doesn't actually contribute to your skills or happiness.

I don't think this is true. Taking notes like this is shown to help with the ideas and knowledge you retain after having read the book (surprisingly: if you take the notes by hand it is better than if you type them somewhere).

I often take notes while I read books or attend meetings without ever having the intention of using them for anything. It helps me memorize the important bits of the thing I spent some time of my life on. And then it can simmer within me, mix with some other books, movies, music, experiences and come out as an really new idea. And then potentially I could go back to the notes (I rarely do) if there is something I was not sure about.

I had to basically memorize a particular academic book for a tough university entrace exam. I created around 50 pages of dense hand-written notes on it, and could recall all the arguments contained in the book with detail. 15 years later, all I remember from that is that the book was about early humans, tool making... or something along those lines. The note making helped with short-term retention, but did nothing for long term retention.

You need spaced repetition for long term retention.

Human memory is like dynamic RAM: you have to keep refreshing it.

Did you ever revisit the notes? I would expect spaced repetition to help with that.

Why would he? Forgetting irrelevant information is not a problem to be solved; it's garbage cleanup.

I think the point is that you could occasionally read thru your relevant (for whatever interest you have) notes to keep those ideas ~refresh in memory. I doubt anyone's advocating for reading every note you've taken in school 20 years ago.

AFAIK our brains are not saturated SD cards, learning something doesn't remove an older file.

I inferred from the comment I was replying to that the commenter was disappointed to have forgotten this particular information. You can’t regret forgetting something while also considering it irrelevant garbage.

I read it as him pointing out that taking notes only helped him while the information was immediately useful and at this point he's forgotten it as thoroughly as if he hadn't taken notes at all.

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