Documentation on NetworkNotes

Introduction

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Most notetaking tools inherit a metaphor from the filing cabinet: a note belongs in exactly one folder, and folders nest inside folders. It feels tidy. It is also the reason so many notes are written once and never seen again, buried in a hierarchy you have to remember in order to retrieve.

NetworkNotes throws the cabinet out. Here the unit is the Note (a piece of information you want to keep), the relationships between notes are Links you create, and the whole collection forms a Network that grows more useful the more densely it is connected.

How NetworkNotes Is Different

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

There are plenty of notetaking methods: plain folders, PARA, Building a Second Brain, Zettelkasten. Strip away the branding and almost all of them answer one of two questions.

Two questions, two families

“Where does this note go?” is the filing question: plain folders, PARA, Building a Second Brain, tag systems. They organise notes by location or category, and they’re good at it. When you know what you’re after, you can put your hands on it.
“What does this note connect to?” is the linking question: Zettelkasten, evergreen notes, and NetworkNotes. They organise by relationship, so ideas you’d never have filed in the same place can still find each other.

The important part: these two families aren’t enemies. Filing tells you where a note lives; linking tells you what it relates to. You can keep your folders, or PARA, or whatever grouping you already use, and add links on top. That’s the first principle: connect, don’t just file. NetworkNotes never asks you to dismantle your filing system; it asks you to stop treating filing as the only structure you get.

Concepts

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

NetworkNotes is built from a few simple parts. Learn these and the rest of the system follows naturally.

The NetworkNote

The whole method is named for it. A NetworkNote is a note connected to at least one other note; it’s the thing you are actually building. Everything else here is either a part of it or a way of working with it.

The three primitives

Note: a piece of information you want to retrieve later (any size).
Link: a connection you draw between two Notes.
Network: the whole that emerges from many connected Notes.

Seeing it: the NetworkMap

A NetworkMap is a visual representation of your Network (Notes as dots, Links as lines), so its structure (hubs, clusters, orphans) becomes something you can see at a glance.

NetworkNote

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

A NetworkNote is a Note (a piece of information you want to remember for later) connected to at least one other Note.

It is the unit the whole method is named for. A Link is the connection you draw; a NetworkNote is what a Note becomes the moment you draw one.

A connected Note, not a lone one

On its own, a Note is raw material, a fact in isolation. Give it a Link to another Note and it stops being isolated: it now has a way in and a way out, and it can be reached from ideas you haven’t had yet. That connected Note is a NetworkNote. (An unconnected Note is an orphan, a NetworkNote-in-waiting.)

Note

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

A Note is a piece of information you want to be able to retrieve later. That is the whole definition. There are no fixed types to sort it into (use your own, or none), and it does not have to be a single tidy idea.

Make it whatever size is useful

A Note can be atomic: one idea, stated plainly, like “spaced repetition improves retention.” It can just as easily hold everything you want to keep about a talk you gave, a course you took, or a meeting you sat in. You size a Note to the unit you’ll want to pull back later.

Link

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

A Link is a relationship you draw between two Notes. You create one simply by referencing one Note from another. The Link, not the Note, is the unit of meaning: it says these two ideas belong together.

Links are bidirectional

Every Link you create is visible from both ends. Connect Note A to Note B, and B gains a backlink to A for free. This is what lets you arrive at an idea from any direction; the Network has no single front door. The link is still directed, though, and that asymmetry carries meaning: see Directionality.

Network

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

The Network is the whole that many NetworkNotes form: every Note and every Link, taken together. You never design it. It is an emergent shape, the accumulated residue of many small linking decisions.

Structure you discover, not decree

Over time, clusters form around the ideas you return to most, bridges appear between fields you didn’t expect to connect, and the structure of your own thinking becomes something you can actually see. A “category” in NetworkNotes is not a folder you created; it is a neighbourhood that emerged.

NetworkMap

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

A NetworkMap is a visual representation of a Network: each Note is a dot, each Link a line between dots.

It isn’t a different thing from your Network; it’s the same Network, seen. But seeing it changes what you notice.

What a NetworkMap shows you

A list of notes hides structure; a NetworkMap makes it visible at a glance:

Hubs: the densely connected dots are your load-bearing ideas.
Clusters: tight groups reveal the themes you actually return to.
Orphans: dots with no lines are notes still waiting to be connected.

You don’t read a NetworkMap so much as navigate it. It’s a map in the literal sense: for orientation, not prose.

The Three Principles

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

The primitives describe what NetworkNotes is made of. Three principles describe how to keep it healthy.

Connect, don’t just file

Folders, tags, an “events” bucket are all fine. They give a note a location. What NetworkNotes adds is the Link, which gives a note its relationships, the one thing no folder can do, because a note relevant to three projects can live in only one folder but can link to all three.

Putting It Into Practice

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

NetworkNotes is a system, not a piece of software. There is nothing to install. It’s a way of working with notes (link instead of file, and invest in connections), and you can practise it in almost any tool that lets one note point to another.

That portability is the point. Your notes outlive any app. Pick a tool that fits how you work today, and take the method with you if you ever switch.

Network Measures

Mon, 01 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Because your notes form an actual Network, you can measure it. That’s something a folder of files can never offer. A handful of simple measures, borrowed from network research, tell you how healthy your network is and where it needs tending.

A warning first, because it matters: these are diagnostics, not scores. Glance at them now and then, act on what they show, and get back to writing. The moment you start optimising a number, you’ve fallen into the exact trap the method is built to avoid: perfecting the system instead of using it. They also mean little when your network is small; a dozen notes is mostly noise. Measures earn their keep as the network grows.

Centrality

Tue, 02 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Not all notes pull equal weight. Centrality is the network-research term for how important a note is to the structure around it: how much of the network leans on it. Two kinds are worth knowing for notes; the rest are academic.

Hubs: degree centrality

The simplest centrality is just degree: how many Links a note has (see Network Measures). Your most-connected notes are your hubs: anchor ideas that many others connect to or through, the de-facto tables of contents that emerge on their own. They’re where reviewing pays off, because touching a hub touches everything around it.

Directionality

Tue, 02 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0000

A Link is not just a connection; it has a direction. You always draw it from one note to another, so every link has a source and a target. Most of the time you can ignore this. When you can’t, directionality is the reason.

A → B is not B → A

“Spaced repetition” pointing to “Memory” says one thing: this note draws on, or leads to, that one. “Memory” pointing back to “Spaced repetition” says something else: this note is supported by, or exemplified by, that one. Same two notes, opposite arrows, different meaning. The direction is part of what the link says.