Linear note taking explained

 

Around the Luhmann note taking system there is a huge amount of confusion available. The reason is, that the Luhmann method is working the opposite of conventional note taking. Instead of trying to understand the advantages of index card and manual created registers, let us take a closer look how conventional linear note taking is working.

The idea is, that the user has a book in which he can write down notes. New information are put at the end. In the advanced setting, the book is divided into sections. But the idea is always, that new information are located only at the end of a section. This has to do with the underlying pipeline. The user is reading something in another book and writes down his ideas and comments into his own note taking book. Then the book gets formatted and will be published as a new scientific work.

Somebody may argue that this pipeline is so common, that there is no need to describe the principle in detail. The reason why it is so common is because the assumption is, that linear note taking is the only principle which is available. The advantage is, that the complexity is very little.

In the easiest case the note book has no sections so there is no decision needed at which position new information have to be added. They are put simply after the existing notes and if the book is full a new note book gets started. In a digital workflow the same principle is used. If the user tries to add something he scrolls with the cursor to the last paragraph, presses the enter key and adds a new paragraph.

If sections are used to structure the note book the pipeline is slightly more complex but not very much. In most cases, the user has created 2 up to 5 different sections so he has to decide at which section he likes to add something. In the example figure only 2 sections are available. The decision for the user is to add something at the end of section “brown fox” or at the end of section “lorem ipsum”.