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The Illusion of Competence.
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So you read an actionable, insightful book.
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You learn visually by highlighting the key
points and underline the key words. And then
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an hour later or maybe it's 5 minutes later, if
you're like me, you try to tell your loved ones,
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your friends or family about all these amazing
things that you've learned. But there's that
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awkward pause... Why can't I explain what
I just learned? What was that idea again?
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This happens to the best of us. It's
called the illusion of competence. The
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gist of it is all that underlining, all
that highlighting, all that note taking
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is giving us the illusion that we're learning
something new while our brain is just relaxing
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like a potato. So how to fix it? One way is to
take smart notes. Actually, no air quotes. These
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notes are actually smart. This is how Leonardo da
Vinci took notes. You know, the polymath genius
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who invented tanks, made scientific discoveries in
astronomy, civil engineering, zoology, geometry,
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and had time to paint on the side, like the Last
Supper and the Mona Lisa. Niklas Luhmann also used
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smart notes and published more than 70 books
and almost 400 articles on the economy, lore,
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politics, art, religion, media and even love.
So if you want to become a powerful thinker, or
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you just want to remember the things that you've
learned, smart Notes is going to help you do that.
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There are 3 things that make smart notes smart.
The first one is smart notes are active, meaning
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that they're not passive highlights, underlines
and notes that just follow the author's flow.
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1/ active smart notes Instead, it's about actively
restructuring other people's thoughts into your
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own structure. Now, you might ask, Well, what is
my structure? Well, if you don't already have one,
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here's a great one to get started: It's
called Q/E/C. Q/E/C. It stands for Question,
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Evidence and Conclusion. This is what I used in
law school Even if you are not studying for law,
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this still works because Professor Cal Newport
from Georgetown University, who's written
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lots of books on a deep work on time blocking
on digital productivity, he uses this method,
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and actually he was the one that named this the
Q/E/C Note-Taking method. You look for only 3
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things when you're reading: the questions, the
evidence and the conclusion. This way it doesn't
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matter what you're reading, which order the author
puts his ideas in. You can always find these three
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things and link them together. Professor Newport
even has a system for identifying them while you
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read. For any conclusions, ideas, you put a
dot next to it. For the evidence and examples,
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you put a dash across it. And when you review
your notes, you think about which question are
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these ideas trying to answer and which evidence
links to these ideas. Let me give you a quick
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example with the book Atomic Habits. James Clear,
like his name, he's a very clear writer. So, many
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of his headings are actually already questions.
Then you go down the page and you look for new
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ideas and put a dot next to them. He gives great
examples and anecdotes, so you put a dash across
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them. Once you've finished reading a section,
then you can put all these notes together.
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Start with question, give the evidence and write
the conclusion down. This is how it can look like.
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Now, most people stop here, right? I've
got the question. I've got the evidence
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I've got the conclusion. What more do I need?
A-ha. This is where you are going to outsmart
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others. Because the next thing about smart
notes is that they are atomic. The size of your
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notes and the ideas on them matter. When other
people are organizing their notes in one giant
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document, 2/ atomic smart notes whether digitally
or in notebook, you do something different. You
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make your notes atomic. This is a classic example
of how tools actually shape and limit how you can
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think. Think about it. If you use a giant word
doc, how do you think? You think vertically,
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right? You think chronologically, you think A,
then B, then C. If you take away A and C, all of
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a sudden you can't really remember what was B. But
if you use atomic ideas not in one giant document,
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but each idea stands alone by itself, then you
can think in 3D, right? You can think up and down,
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left to right. You can think diagonally. You
can think about this pile and that pile. All
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of a sudden your ideas come alive. This is what
Charlie Munger was talking about when he said "The
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first rule is that you can't really know anything
if you just remember isolate the facts and try and
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bang 'em back. If the facts don't hang together
on a latticework of theory, don't have them in
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a usable form." So once you've got your Q/E/C's,
you want each Q, each E, each C - each question,
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each evidence, each conclusion to be its own
atomic note, because in the next step we are going
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to rearrange them. Especially if you're using
the Zettelkasten method, making your ideas atomic
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is going to make all the difference. Because
the third thing that makes smart notes smart
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is that they are connected, which means one, we've
already connected ideas with the Q/E/C method. But
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there's a two, 3/ connected smart notes which is
outside of these new things that you've learned,
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you also want to connect new ideas to existing
ideas, things that you already know. This is how
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we will combat the illusion of competence. The
way to get out of the illusion is to make sure
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you're latching your new ideas onto existing ones.
And how do you do that? You can try the compass
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of the Zettelkasten thinking. I learned this
one from my friend Fei. You take one idea in the
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middle and you think in four different directions.
Compass of Zettelkasten Thinking North is:
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Where does this idea come from? West is: What's
similar to this idea? East is: What competes
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with this idea? And South is: Where can this
idea link to next? Let me give you an example
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from Atomic Habits again. "You do not rise to the
level of your goals. You fall to the level of your
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systems." Let's use that as the main idea. Okay,
so let's go north. Where does this idea come from?
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Well, James Clear says it comes from goal oriented
thinking that most of us do. But the problem
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is that winners and losers have the same goals,
right? So what's different? It's the systems
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they set that help them achieve those goals. Okay,
then let's go West. What's similar to this idea of
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don't focus on goals, focus on the system? Well,
systems thinking is exactly about this idea.
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I've talked about it in detail here. But the
gist is that you want to troubleshoot a system
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to make sure that you're reaching your
eventual goal. So just like how we manage
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large organizations, we can apply similar
principles in our habit formations. Okay,
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then let's go east. What competes with this idea
of focus on systems, not goals? What's opposite?
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What's missing? Well, we can say that goal setting
is important. Right. It gives us a direction to
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go towards and then have the system that get you
there. But if your goals are wrong and you are on
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the wrong trajectory, then it doesn't matter how
good your system is, you're not going to get to
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where you want to go. Goal setting has to happen
first, but then you need the systems. All right,
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then, let's go south. Where does the idea of goals
and systems lead to? Well, as James Clear said
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himself, is not just about forming good habits.
It's also about breaking bad habits. Forming
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atomic habits has helped people with addiction,
with weight loss goals. Coming back to systems
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thinking and larger organizations. Maybe we can
apply the same principles and help organizations
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break bad habits like problems in diversity, like
protecting the environment. Wow. Just by thinking
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in four different directions, we're coming up with
ways to solve climate change and diversity issues.
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Connecting ideas is essential. And if you want
to take your smart note-taking to the next level,
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then make sure you check out my Zettelkasten
guide and I'll see you in the next one. Bye!
