What does it mean to truly know something? To know about something isn’t to know something.
Nobel prize wining physicist Richard Feynman believed you know that you have mastered a topic if you could teach it to a 6th grader.
If we don’t synthesize information we extract from sources with our own knowledge, it’s not any better than the original source.
If we aren’t changed by the notes we write, it’s a pointless effort.
Many people mistakenly think that by saving information, it must be useful – and even worse, that they’ve “learned” it.
This is the collector’s fallacy and it is one of the worst traps to fall into as note-maker. Collecting without creating is accumulation without utilization.
When I learned that the Japanese have the word Tsundoku to describe the habit of acquiring books without reading them, I instantly felt guilty. I had been collecting books for years without expanding my understanding of the world. I appeared smarter to people who saw my book collection, but I didn’t have the knowledge, I just had material things.
Seneca once said “the abundance of books is distraction.” That is the case for notes that are not reformulated with your own synthesis of experience and specialized knowledge.
Extensive note-taking is not much different than copy and pasting information from one place to another.
Extensive note-making will make you a value creator by generating meaningful insights.
Note-making is the act of investing in your mind by developing valuable knowledge that can fuel various creative outputs.What gives your notes value is not that they are stored in your system, its impact they can have on others.
Niklas Luhmann’s wrote over 50 books and roughly 600 articles on various topics, relying on his zettelkasten as a creative engine to “avoid premature systematization and closure and maintain openness toward the future”.
The purpose of a zettelkasten is to create, not to collect.
Think of your note box as a machine that is fed information and spits out intellectual currency. You make informational deposits into it that cost you nothing and it turns it into knowledge assets that can be monetized.
The creator economy provides a unique opportunity to use this value creation engine to our advantage and earn income by synthesizing our unique experiences, interests and skills to provide holistic solutions to problems and share them with the world.
But this isn’t an automated process. Like with any machine, it requires human skill to operate.
Learning the skill of note-making by using a zettelkasten to generate creative outputs provides you with permissionless leverage in the creator economy.
Welcome to the future of learning. Anyone can start their own online education business overnight for little to no cost and earn an unlimited amount of income with your knowledge.
Are you starting to see how your notes are intellectual currency?
The global e-learning market is estimated to grow to $648 billion by 2030. Imagine getting just a tiny slice of that pie just by following your curiosity.
I am here to show you how in my upcoming Zettel Monetizer course.
In 6 weeks, I will teach you the simple, time tested note-making skills that enabled me to:
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- Gain over 50,000 social media followers in 2 years
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- Build a 5-figure newsletter business in 1 year
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- Generate 61M+ impressions in the past year
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- Go from 0 to 1.5k YouTube subscribers in 90 days
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- Reclaim my focus to become a mindful creator instead of a mindless consumer
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- Help thousands of divergent thinkers organize their digital life and write valuable notes in Obsidian
If making notes as intellectual currency is a concept that sparks your curiosity, find out more here and enroll in the course before June 17th.