The Mighty Oak
I am a student of symbolism. Something about how the human mind can create symbolic imagery to represent something else resonates with me. Symbolism is an important part of the process of thinking. However, symbols can be overused. That is why today, I want to move us from the esoteric concept of shade-tree thinking to the reality that the shade tree represents for me. To do this, I am going to continue using the shade tree as our metaphor, by focusing on one type of shade tree in particular. The mighty Oak tree is going to be the representation for our thought and our creativity as we focus on the practical application of note-taking, which are the seeds (or acorns in the case of the Oak) of our thought.
Photo by Kevin Wenning on Unsplash
The Oak is a Keystone Species
The concept of a keystone species was introduced in 1969 by zoologist Robert T. Paine. Paine understood that a keystone species is a necessary part of all ecosystems and serves as an organism that helps hold the system together. In any ecosystem, the loss of a keystone species would dramatically impact the rest of the system, reducing the biodiversity that causes the system to thrive. Notes function the same way for the human mind. They strengthen the limitations of our memory and thinking, helping us to organize our thought processes, knit together our ideas in new ways, and serve as the foundation and building blocks for our projects, tasks, writing and other forms of communication. Notes bind together the ecosystem of our mind.
Think of calendars, project notes, to-do lists, tickler files, reminders, filing cabinets, paper notebooks, digital notes, standard operating procedures, and other types of information gathering where we write something down, mark it in a specific way, put it in a specific place, in order to retrieve it later. These markers of thought are held together by acorns of information (notes) that we place in appropriate locations, cultivate for growth (progress), and build upon or discard as needed. They are an important part of the ecosystem of our thought. Sönke Ahrens in his wonderful book How to Take Smart Notes, supports this idea of notes as a keystone species when he paraphrases Niklas Luhmann, "It is not possible to think systematically without writing" (94).
The Oak as a Symbol of Our Thinking
Whether, you take notes digitally or on paper, it is essential that you have a process for harvesting your thoughts. I primarily use two methods of note-taking: Roam Research and paper. However, I follow a similar process in each. There are times when the act of writing on paper seems to stimulate my thought processes. When this occurs, I later write those thoughts into Roam, which is my primary thinking tool. Every idea, every note ends up in Roam.
I am sure that many of you have already heard the benefits of Roam touted by those, who like me, are enthusiastic about its possibilities, but this is not my post on Roam. Use whatever tool works for you and helps you with your thinking.
Whether in a notebook, on an index card, or in Roam, I always designated my notes in a similar way, building on an adaptation of Andy Matuschak's Evergreen notes. My thoughts and ideas use the symbolism of the mighty Oak and fall into four categories:
Acorn Notes are scattered thoughts that are in my inboxes or in Roam text that have dropped off the tree and are waiting to be developed. I write enough about the thought or idea to give me some context, and leave them in place to be developed at the appropriate time. Partial thoughts, reading snippets, miscellaneous information all reside here, The incubation period is short. I check this area weekly. Incomplete ideas can be discarded, other ideas can be allowed to grow, mature, and be transplanted into the appropriate idea garden.
Seedling Notes are thoughts that are beginning to take root. I'm doing some more study on these thoughts, connecting them to other ideas, nurturing them toward maturity, although not all of them will reach that state. Did you know that approximately 1 out of every 10,000 acorns become seedlings that grow to maturity, becoming a mighty Oak tree in spite of the odds against them? It is similar to many of our ideas. Not all of them will reach maturity, hopefully more than 1 in 10,000, but the great thing about these ideas, unlike the Oak acorn, it that we can still use them in the future, build on them, connect them to other acorn notes and draw life from them to mature other ideas.
Shade-Tree Notes are where deep thinking, interconnectedness and maturing thoughts have taken root and are growing to become a mighty tree of thought. Here, a process is developing similar to the Oak trees you see in nature:
First, through the process of growth, I have been accumulating conscious (invisible to others) and unconscious thoughts (invisible to me) that form the root system of my thinking.
As these thought grow, I begin to develop a trunk of knowledge that is visible to others, form my thinking, and are identifiable, although in the deeper parts of the trunk, there is much growth in the core that still remains invisible to others, this is the foundation that supports what others can see.
Branches represent the growing ideas that extend outward, reaching out and sharing with others, who like the Oak leaf, share ideas with me that in return produce growth and clarify my thinking. I believe that, except for rare cases, all good thinking happens best in community.
And it is this good thinking that produces fruit, more acorns that drop to the ground, as well at falling leaves when an idea has reached its wintering season.
These falling leaves are shared ideas, that have been tested, but are inconsistent or past their prime. They are not failures, but thoughts that have been shared at great risk (it's always a risk to share your thinking with others), and through community they have been identified as fragile, weak and so they fall to the ground. But they still provide nutrients to the life of our thinking--so even falling leaves are invaluable.
Falling leaves provide us with wisdom and humility, as we stand stripped by the cold, wintry reception of our thinking. They demonstrate to us that our thinking isn't perfect, our communication of thoughts sometimes fail us, that we do not stand alone as the hope of humanity, but that alongside the sometimes foolishness of ourselves and our fellow humans, we can come together to form great ideas, as we learn to discard faulty ones.
Sources
Wikipedia: Keystone Species
National Geographic Resource Library: Keystone Species
Further Reading
How to Take Smart Notes by Sönke Ahrens
"Andyʼs working notes" by Andy Matuschak
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