Three note types that transform thinking

I used to think all notes were created equal.

Anything worth remembering got the same treatment: highlight it, copy it into my notes app, maybe add a tag, and file it away. My system was democratic—everything had equal status, which meant nothing had any status at all.

It was like treating your spare change and your savings account the same way. Sure, they’re both money, but you don’t build wealth by treating every penny identically.

The breakthrough came when I realised that notes need to serve different purposes at different stages of thinking. Some are quick captures. Some are deep processing. Some are finished thoughts ready to be used.

Sönke Ahrens describes three types of notes in How to Take Smart Notes, based on Niklas Luhmann’s zettelkasten system. Understanding the distinction between them transformed how I think, learn, and write.

Let me show you how.

Fleeting notes: your thinking inbox

Fleeting notes are exactly what they sound like—fleeting. Temporary captures of whatever crosses your mind while you’re reading, listening, observing, or just thinking.

I write these constantly in my daily logs. A thought while reading a book. A connection I notice during a conversation. A question that pops up while I’m walking my dog. These go straight into Bear as quick bullet points, often just fragments.

“AI tools reduce friction but might also reduce learning?”

“Luhmann never forced himself to work—connection to my procrastination article”

“Why do some photographers resist digital—same psychology as people avoiding AI?”

Notice what these are not. They’re not complete thoughts. They’re not well-written. They’re not organised. They’re just captures—reminders of ideas that I don’t want to lose.

Here’s the crucial part: fleeting notes are disposable. They’re meant to be processed and then thrown away. They’re your inbox, not your filing cabinet.

Most people make one of two mistakes with fleeting notes:

Mistake 1: Treating them as permanent. You capture something interesting and think “Great, I’ve noted that down.” Then six months later you come across “interesting point about motivation” and have no idea what you meant or why it mattered.

Mistake 2: Never processing them. Your fleeting notes pile up until you have thousands of cryptic fragments that you’ll never do anything with. I’ve been there. It’s like having 50,000 unread emails—technically you have all that information, but practically you have nothing.

The solution? Process fleeting notes within a day or two. Either develop them into something more substantial, or delete them. Be ruthless. If you can’t remember why you noted it down or what to do with it, it’s not worth keeping.

Literature notes: your dialogue with ideas

When I read something—a book, an article, a paper—I create literature notes. These are different from fleeting notes in a crucial way: they’re not my thoughts about random things, they’re my understanding of someone else’s ideas.

Here’s how this works in practice.

Let’s say I’m reading an article about how social media algorithms affect attention spans. Instead of just highlighting passages, I also write my own explanation of the key points:

“Article argues that recommendation algorithms optimise for engagement, not attention quality. Short-term engagement (clicks, scrolls) is easier to measure than long-term value, so platforms inadvertently train users toward shorter attention spans. Author compares this to junk food—engineered for immediate satisfaction, not nutritional value.”

See what I did there? I’m explaining the article’s argument in my own words. I’m not copying quotes. I’m not just summarising. I’m testing whether I actually understand what I’m reading.

As philosopher John Searle said, “If you can’t say it clearly you don’t understand it yourself.” Literature notes are your clarity test.

I keep these notes with links to the sources so I can cite them if needed. But the real value isn’t in having the citation. It’s in the act of translation.

When you force yourself to rephrase someone’s idea, you discover gaps in your understanding. You notice assumptions. You start to see how it connects to other things you know.

Good literature notes include:

The main argument or idea, in your own words
Key distinctions or definitions
How this relates to other ideas you’ve encountered
Questions or uncertainties you have

Bad literature notes are:

Direct quotes without context
Summaries so brief they’re meaningless later
Highlights without explanation of why they matter
Information without your interpretation

Here’s a trick I learned: write literature notes as if you’re explaining the idea to someone who hasn’t read the source. If your note only makes sense to someone who’s already read the article, you haven’t actually done the work of understanding it.

I picture my daughter in a couple decades reading my notes. If she can’t understand what I meant, I haven’t written it clearly enough.

Permanent notes: your external thinking

This is where the magic happens. This is where fleeting insights and borrowed ideas become your ideas.

At least once a day—usually in the evening—I review my fleeting and literature notes. I’m looking for anything that connects to my existing thinking, challenges my assumptions, or answers questions I’ve been pondering.

Then I write permanent notes.

These aren’t just “things worth remembering.” They’re developed thoughts, written in complete sentences, making explicit arguments or observations. They’re standalone—I can read them months later without remembering the original context and they’ll still make sense.

Let me show you the difference.

Fleeting note: “Luhmann never forced himself to work”

Literature note: “Luhmann claimed he only did what was easy and immediately obvious. When he got stuck on one thing, he’d switch to another project. His system supported this by always having multiple threads of thought to pursue.”

Permanent note: “The productivity paradox: forcing yourself to work on something when you’re stuck wastes mental energy and produces inferior results. Luhmann’s approach—switching between multiple projects—works because it uses natural motivation instead of fighting it. The key is having a system that makes it easy to switch without losing progress. Connection: this is the same principle behind the Pomodoro technique, but applied at a project level rather than task level. Question: does this work for people who don’t have multiple projects, or is parallel work a requirement?”

See the difference? The permanent note is:

Complete: It stands alone without requiring the source
Clear: Written in full sentences with explicit reasoning
Connected: Links to other ideas
Questioning: Ends with an open question that invites further thinking

I write permanent notes in a specific structure that’s become habitual:

Main idea or observation
Why it matters or what it explains
Connection to other notes
Questions it raises

Not every note follows this exactly, but it’s my default template.

Flow between note types

Here’s how these three types of notes work together in practice.

I’m reading Steven Johnson’s Where Good Ideas Come From. As I read, I’m taking fleeting notes:

“Slow hunch—ideas need time to develop”
“Coffee houses as liquid networks for ideas”
“Darwin’s notebooks show gradual development of evolution theory”

Later that day, I process these into literature notes:

“Johnson argues that breakthrough ideas rarely arrive as sudden insights. Instead, they develop as ‘slow hunches’—incomplete ideas that need time and connections to mature. He traces Darwin’s theory of evolution through his notebooks, showing it took years to fully form, not a single eureka moment reading Malthus. Key point: slow hunches need external storage (notebooks, conversations) because they’re too vague to hold in memory reliably.”

Then I think about how this connects to my existing notes about creativity, writing processes, and knowledge management. I write a permanent note:

“The myth of the eureka moment damages creative work by making people expect instant insights. Johnson’s ‘slow hunch’ concept explains why note-taking systems are crucial: ideas need external storage to survive long enough to develop. This connects to why my best articles emerge from notes I’ve been developing for months—the writing is just the final step of a long thinking process. Contrast with blank page approach where you expect to generate and develop ideas simultaneously. Question: how long is typical for a slow hunch to mature? Days? Months? Years?”

Now I have something valuable. Not just information I’ve collected, but thinking I’ve done.

Common mistakes that kill note systems

Treating everything as permanent notes. If every fleeting thought gets permanent status, you dilute the signal. Permanent notes should be reserved for ideas you’ve actually developed, not just captured.

Treating everything as fleeting notes. The opposite problem—everything stays in rough draft form. You’re constantly capturing but never processing. Ahrens calls this “just a bookshelf filled with notebooks full of wonderful ideas, but not a single publication to show.”

Writing for yourself today, not yourself tomorrow. Your notes need to make sense to your future self who won’t remember the context. I learned this the hard way losing count of the number of times I’ve come across a note and had no idea what I meant. Write as if you’re explaining to someone else.

Collecting quotes instead of understanding. Literature notes shouldn’t be quote collections. Quotes are useful as supporting evidence, but your understanding needs to be in your own words. Otherwise you’re just building a database, not developing thinking.

Making notes too long. Permanent notes work best when they’re atomic—one idea per note. If you’re writing multi-page notes, you’re probably combining several ideas that should be separate. This makes it harder to link notes and harder to reuse them later.

Not linking notes. The whole point of permanent notes is that they connect to each other. Every permanent note should link to at least one other note. If it doesn’t, it’s either too isolated or you haven’t thought through how it relates to your other thinking.

Building the habit

Start simple. You don’t need to overhaul your entire system overnight.

Today, try this: take one idea from something you’re reading right now. Write three notes:

Fleeting: “Interesting point about X”

Literature: “Author argues that X because Y. This differs from Z approach by…”

Permanent: “The key insight about X is… This connects to… This raises the question…”

Do this once. Just once. See how it feels.

Tomorrow, do it again with a different idea. After a week, you’ll have seven permanent notes. After a month, thirty. After a year, 365 developed thoughts ready to become articles, presentations, or simply a more sophisticated understanding of your field.

The compound interest of ideas isn’t about volume—it’s about having thoughts that build on each other. Three well-developed permanent notes are worth more than three hundred fleeting captures.

As Ahrens writes, “We have to read with a pen in hand, develop ideas on paper and build up an ever-growing pool of externalised thoughts.”

That pool is built one note at a time. But only if you’re building the right kind of notes.

Next in this series: The willpower trap—why discipline-free systems beat forced productivity every time. We’ll explore how to design workflows that work with human nature instead of against it, and why the most productive people aren’t the most disciplined.