The CTO’s Hidden Notebook
My satisfaction no longer lies in the doing of my CTO responsibilities, but rather in the cultivation of my own knowledge.
I'm on a flight from New Jersey to San Diego. I'm 3 hours in. All I've been watching is downloaded YouTube videos about Obsidian, the note taking app that has amassed a feverish fanbase. I am determined. No internet. No snacks. No movies. Just Obsidian tutorials until I get it.
But I don't get it. And I am super frustrated. What is the magic of Obsidian? Markdown files. Linked documents. Wiggly knowledge graphs. Community plugins. It all feels super basic to me.
For years now, I've been struggling with taking notes. One place for all my thoughts, todos, reading lists, drawings and mind maps. I tried all the apps under the sun but inevitably I would run into a limitation that would have me abandon a method, app or technology. I would turn back to paper and pen which goes really well until I remember that I have to carry that notebook wherever I go. Not to mention the inability to remember what I wrote down and on which page.
Watching thousands gush over Obsidian had me on the precipice of relief that finally there is a tool made for me. But this tool feels like any other tool. And I feel hopeless. Ready to close my laptop and ring the flight attendant for that drink.
But something catches my eye as I reach for the lid of my laptop. In a youtube video by Odysseas called "Obsidian: The King of Learning Tools", he mentions his own frustrations. Similar to mine. And then he talks about a book that he read on a 3 hour flight that changed the course of his note taking journey. It is a book called "How to Take Smart Notes" by Sönke Ahrens. And as I slap shut the laptop, I jump on the internet and purchase the book.
What happens next is an ecstatic convulsion of my brain. One key idea from the book after another unlocks decades of cobwebs and deep misunderstandings I hold about note taking. About how I learn. How I build knowledge.
See, I was stuck in a collection of information rut. Gathering articles, videos, books and talks like a squirrel gathers nuts. I was building a reference library without any references. Sönke's book helped me understand that I had lost the art of building my own knowledge.
It is now almost a year after that blissful moment in business class. And I am happy to say that I have cultivated a home for all my learnings. I do it in Obsidian but you can do it in any tool you like.
My satisfaction no longer lies in the doing of my CTO responsibilities, but rather in the cultivation of my own knowledge.
You know how it feels to do your job as CTO. You're in the Grand-Prix of delivery. Around every corner a new obstacle. Bursts of acceleration. Respite like a pit stop. Three second stops. I know how this feels. Great work accomplished is an adrenaline rush. But at the end of the race, the crowds dissipate. The audience relinquishes their attention. And like them, it's on to the next adventure.
So much of our time as CTO is spent in the realm of real time decision making. Managing people. Reviewing documents. Deciding what is important. Filtering out the noise. Prioritization. An effort that exhausts and at times feels ephemeral.
But what if at the end of the race, you have enhanced your knowledge? Built an improved version of you. And I'm not talking about work experience. I'm talking about actual, reference-able, searchable knowledge.
Write as if nothing else counts
What if you focused on writing as if nothing else counts? According to Sönke, this would not necessarily mean you do everything else less well. I mean, who has the time to write right? But rather, it would make you do everything else differently. (page 74 of How to Take Smart Notes)
Everything you do, all your CTO stuff, you do it differently.
Writing brings a clear tangible purpose to all your meetings, readings and time spent making decisions. Imagine how different a meeting would feel if it was an opportunity to learn. How amazing would it be if your research at the company was going to contribute new understandings to your own body of knowledge?
All these activities now serve as fodder for writing that will enhance your learning and build out your anthology.
Introducing the CTO Notebook
Using the CTO Notebook you'll feel relief for having found a method to capture your thoughts and immerse yourself in a deep relationship with your own knowledge.
The core of the CTO Notebook is built around the Zettelkasten method, invented by Niklas Luhmann, a German sociologist, in the 1950s.
It is a note-taking system that involves creating and linking small, discrete notes to build a network of interconnected ideas. Each note, or "zettel," contains a single piece of information and is linked to other relevant notes, facilitating easy retrieval and synthesis of knowledge. This method enhances learning, creativity, and productivity by mirroring the brain's associative thought process.
"Every note is just an element in the network of references and back references in the system from which it gains its quality" - Niklas Luhmann 1992
Create your CTO Notebook
In your favorite note taking app, create the following folders:
fleeting/
This is where you will drop your unstructured thinking. Thoughts, sentences, words, phrases, bullet points, etc.
references/
This is where you will copy information that you are learning from books, articles, videos and meetings
people/
This is where you create notes about people. Typically you will title the note with the full name of the person.
literature/
This is where you elaborate on what you have read and created inside of the references/ folder. These notes consist of your own thinking and your own interpretation of what you have read.
permanent/
These are your well formed notes. Generally you'll take what you have dropped into fleeting/ and elaborate your understanding into well formed mini-essays or short articles.
topics/
See this as your index cards. The broad topics notes that link out to all of your permanent notes. All your notes are in relationship to other topics and contexts.
projects/
This is the folder I use to store all my project related notes that pertain to projects I am working on as CTO.
Some of my folders will have sub-folders in them but I do resist the urge to get too granular with my folder structure. You don’t want to spend any time thinking about where your note needs to live. Especially if you’re in the process of creating it!
How to use your CTO Notebook
Now that you have the structure for your CTO Notebook in place, you get to create notes! You are about to create a beautiful painting of your brain. With brushes of daily activities dipped into colors of information.
We do this by following the capture, understand and elaborate flow.
1. Capture
According to Zettelkasten, your notes flow freely from your brain into small bitesize notes. No judgement, no hassle, no heaviness. You are free from the burden of understanding what you write, organizing your thoughts or even full sentences. Simply capture.
For this process you will be dumping your own thoughts into fleeting/, notes from books and articles you're reading into references/ and conversations with your colleagues into people/.
These notes will build up over time and quite honestly may represent what you're already doing with sticky notes, voice memos and todo lists. The idea here is that you capture everything in one place where possible.
2. Understand
"The challenge of writing as well as learning is not so much to learn, but to understand, as we will already have learned what we understand. The problem is that the meaning of something is not always obvious and needs to be explored." - Sönke Ahrens
At the end of each day, or no less than weekly, you get to go through all your fleeting notes. Add more ideas to each of your fleeting notes. Expand your understanding. If you like what you see, move the note over to the permanent/ folder. Expand on it even more. If you hate it, delete it. No one needs to know.
Remember that permanent does not mean immutable :) Permanent notes evolve and are a work of art. You also don't have to create long and exhaustive permanent notes around a specific topic. You can have multiple permanent notes each with a core idea centered around a topic.
The same goes for your notes in references/. Re-read your references and synthesize with your own thinking to create new notes in literature/. This is also a judgement free zone. If what you write feels like it's not your thinking, don't worry about it. Just write them down. There will be plenty of time to update, re-read and sometimes even delete your notes.
3. Elaborate
"The first step of elaboration is to think enough about a piece of information so we are able to write about it. The second step is to think about what it means for other contexts as well" - Sönke Ahrens
This is the fun part. Link it all together! Obsidian makes this brutally easy but with any tool you love, make sure that you are linking your notes together.
Let's say you are summarizing thoughts on how to organize a developer retreat. And let's say you talked it through with Alice Preston in a 1:1 meeting you had with her. Well, if you used your CTO Notebook you'll have an Alice Preston note in your people/ folder and you can easily link to the conversation you had with her from your Developer Retreats note.
Use your topics/ folder to write index notes. You could simply list out the links to your notes around a specific topic. I also like to link back to the relevant index note by referencing it from the note that I am working on.
So as you work with your notes, any notes, look for opportunities to link back to existing notes. This is the crux of the Zettelkasten method and will help you find existing notes, thoughts and ideas in the future.
Be your own boss and build your body of knowledge
Remember that your CTO Notebook is a body of knowledge. Your knowledge. It is one work of art. The art that is you. It doesn’t belong to your CEO. You are the boss.
The serendipity of recalling knowledge adjacent to what you are looking for is a close map of how the brain already works. And it is beautiful.
One time I was searching for colleague's birthday expecting to find something about it in my people/ folder. When their name came up I saw that there was a note mentioning their name in a note residing in the permantent/ folder. Since I was in their context I was able to re-read and examine some of their ideas and discuss it with them in a deep and meaningful way.
Take your CTO Notebook with you wherever you go
Here are a few scenarios of how I use my notebook. I want to encourage you to try these out.
When you have a thought
Open your notebook app, create a new note and dump your thoughts. Doesn't matter if it's a todo, an epiphany or words of frustration. Get it out. Put it in the fleeting/ folder.
if you're like me, I get stuck on what to title my notes. Even when they are random ideas that I just have to get out. Obsidian has a nice feature called Daily Notes. When you have an idea, just tap on Daily Notes and it will automatically create a note with today's date.
When you are in a meeting
Open your notebook app, create a new note and write your thoughts. I will sometimes open an existing note, or I will title a new note with what the meeting is about and who is in the meeting.
You can put these in fleeting/ if you want, but I find that my meetings are related to projects I'm working on as CTO and so I keep them in my projects/ folder.
When you read an article or a book
There are many tools to help with this but I like to take the notes I made, or the highlights I drew from the book or articles and copy them into my references/ folder. The references folder does not contain my own original thoughts. This is where I blissfully copy everything I find interesting or important for my CTO work.
When I process references, I will create a note inside of the literature/ folder where I will write about the impression the quote, highlight or core idea has on me.
When you do your one on ones
I go directly to my people/ folder and find the note with the name of the person I am meeting with and create a new section with notes from my meeting. I like this approach as it helps me maintain continuity with what my person wants.
I will also have their birthdays and interests logged as well as their ambitions and goals for the year.
Start writing today!
If you build your CTO Notebook you'll have all your knowledge at your fingertips. But more importantly, you'll become a writer. You'll understand that it takes work to build your knowledge graph.
You'll have to face yourself in your pages of writing.
This is where judgment lives. This is where imposter syndrome lives.
But push through.
Be in a wonderful relationship with your own knowledge.