# Rank and File — Real Life **Covers**:: **Source**:: [Rank and File — Real Life](https://reallifemag.com/rank-and-file/) **Creator**:: [[reallifemag.com]] # Highlights ##### ^306377894 ###### ^306377894q He told me that he grew up in a house without books. When he arrived at university he realized that every single one of his classmates had a leg up on him. He would have to read hard to catch up, and he would have to retain what he read. From his first semester he made a habit of writing one-line summaries along the top edge of each page in every book he read, and he never stopped. He collected notes from these summaries in card indexes, filed and cross-referenced. He didn’t have a good memory and he didn’t read fast, but he was diligent. His notes, a mass evolved over the last 50 years of his life from reading all the books in his house, were downstairs, collected in cardboard boxes. The notes were his life’s work. I might think writing or teaching were scholar’s work, but the real work was taking notes, imposing the will and unity of a single perspective on a vast quantity of argument and information. I should begin now, he said, while I was still young, still capable of making naively ambitious gestures like asking for long book lists. I had an advantage on him, he added, because I used computers and had grown up using them. If he could do his life’s research over again with a computer he could have done twice as much. He leaned forward and fixed me with a stare that paralyzed every muscle in my undergraduate body. It matters less what you read, he told me, emphasizing each word, than how you take notes. ^306377894 ##### ^306906899 I think a good warning that you always need to questioning yourself and contrasting your ideas with others ###### ^306906899q Seeing the shape of your ideas is not the same as having new ideas. Creating a too-comprehensive portrait of your own thoughts can amount to locking yourself into a labyrinth of your own preconceptions ^306906899 ##### ^306906900 highlight_tags:: [[note writing]], [[Zettelkasten]] I am starting to think the Zettelkasten is impossible for most people. Luhmann worked on his manically, as do I. That isn't sustainable or the goal for most, increased magical efficiency is, and is does not seem that technology has been able to make it more accessible. Still though, I cannot believe that their note taking practice produced no value. Even if it failed to write the dissertation, where would they have been without it? I guess that they wish they had spent their time on something different, but what would that have been and would if have inspired them like their professor's note archive? ###### ^306906900q I had to admit that once again my attempts to disrupt thinking with a technology of note-taking had only resulted in an enormous, useless accumulation of busywork. ^306906900