070
Health
080
060
Goals People
EMERGENCE
THE HOME NOTE
LEVEL 5 085
050
The Home note is the beginning and
the end. It is a launchpad and a
Compass Sources homebase. It is a North Star.
Consolidating the new higher
order notes with the old higher All roads lead to home.
order notes.
It is a spot to deliberately create. It is a
TOP-DOWN CONVERGENCE
spot to consciously consolidate.
The Home note allows for
top-down “Convergent”
thinking like navigating and 000
Home
090
040
HOME MAPS
deliberate creating.
PKM Writings These “Home Maps” are special
higher-order notes that emerge over
BOTTOM-UP CONVERGENCE
time.
The Home note allows for
bottom-up “Convergent” Since you weren’t born yesterday you
thinking by consolidating new may already have some ideas for your
forms of emergence. top-level “Home Maps.”
095
030
Lists Interests But since you are just putting this
together, add less than you want and
let the rest emerge organically as they
are needed. Too much too soon is too
100
020
bad.
Projects 010
Concepts
Mindsets
HIGHER-ORDER NOTES
Mental Models Your new higher order note links to
MOC
EMERGENCE
Personal
your existing web of higher-order
notes.
LEVEL 4 Development
MOC
A rule of thumb is that all roads
Linking Higher-order notes.
should lead to Home. That means all
higher order notes should lead to
EMERGENCE
your Home note.
Higher order notes are
connecting to each other.
Create
These are living Eco-systems
Habits CREATION
of thought.
MOC Creating new stuff becomes mostly
C reation effortless because the majority of the
work was already done.
Just apply it to your specific purpose,
do a bit of specific assembling, fill in
the gaps, and presto!
Create
UNIFYING PHASE
- Merge/Unify
- Navigate
- Reference
EMERGENCE
LEVEL 3 What emerges is a valuable grouping
of ideas. Two obvious benefits: It can
be used to navigate your notes and to
Higher order notes like MOCs are create a final product.
being assembled, collided, and
UNIFYING
unified.
Habits MOC
COLLIDING PHASE
EMERGENCE
- Interact
Emergence is when the new whole
- Exchange
is greater than the sum of its parts.
Massive amounts - Collide
of convergence,
Each note is refined and has settled divergence, and
emergence Thought collisions produce insights.
into a natural spatial constellation.
happen here.
Colliding ideas in higher order notes
can raise our thinking abilities to
CONVERGENCE + DIVERGENCE
another level. This is what we mean
Convergence continues but conflict
by “next level thinking.”
causes new divergence.
COLLIDING
Habits MOC
CONVERGENCE
ASSEMBLING PHASE
Similar ideas are put in close - Gather
proximity. It’s natural that they - Assemble
gather into spatial relationships - Incubate
It’s helpful to get a higher-level
perspective on your notes. Any “Note
about notes” is a higher order note. It
will mainly have links to other notes.
ASSEMBLING
Habits MOC
EMERGENCE
GROWING NOTE LIBRARY
LEVEL 2 As a note library grows, it can become
difficult to navigate quickly, even with
Direct links only. No higher-order excellent direct links between notes.
notes have yet been created.
The perspective is at sea level.
This is a living system naturally
evolving.
DIVERGENCE, EMERGENCE, AND
CONVERGENCE
LINKING ATOMIC NOTES
Some divergence, convergence, and Here’s a more connected Zettelkasten
emergence happens naturally here, showing some atomic notes with
but there is not a clear perspective. bi-directional links.
Some better built notes are starting to
become evergreen.
EMERGENCE
MAKING ATOMIC NOTES
LEVEL 1 Here’s a basic Zettelkasten of atomic
notes without links yet.
Collecting from the primordial idea
soup (sources, ideas, interactions, Some are placeholders, some
insights).
half-formed.
New ideas solidify into unique These are ideas without structure.
notes.
DIVERGENCE
From the collection and extraction
phase, new ideas solidy into unique
shapes.
