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I don’t know anything about zen.

I just observed myself cataloging facts and trivia … and I noticed the real insights came about spontaneously.

I decided that every minute spent note taking was better spent reading or re-reading or simply walking and thinking.

I agree with you that YMMV.

The point of taking notes is not to preserve the information (or at least not primarily) but to load it into the brain where the connections can magically be made, as you put it. Rich Hickey has a nice talk on this called "Hammock Driven Development".

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