Shipping containers enabled creative, repeatable solutions to transport.
A shipping container is a standardized unit of shipment in economic goods. Before the invention of the shipping container, deliveries were made utilizing ad-hoc containers. More importantly, the methods around which these containers were loaded onto ships, packed, handled, stored, and unpacked were all ad hoc. Along comes the shipping container. Itself not much to marvel at (it is just a box, after all), but the possibilities a standardized unit of shipment enabled for everything else have made huge impacts. Suddenly huge shipyard could be utilized to load millions of pounds of goods onto ships in an effective, repeatable way.
Most people’s approach to note-taking is similar to the approach that used to be used for shipping goods. They write notes utilizing whatever space and tools are convenient. The format, location, and style of notes change as convenient mediums come and go, and a majority of them fall into abandonment. This may be fine for the occasional and ad-hoc “need to buy more milk” notes, but this approach does not create a body of work that can build off itself. Ideas and the notes that represent them cannot be reshaped and reused. They remain in the margin of whatever book, never to serve another purpose.
👉 A Smart Note system makes your notes as standardized, modularized, and revolutionary as shipping containers
A common format, approach, and location for your notes enables the system to grow indefinitely. The standard note can then become subject to a standard approach and process. The whole of the body of work can be indexed, retrieved, reviewed, and expanded upon. Thoughts are no longer lost to time and space. Connections can be drawn between nodes to strengthen the web, because they have a certain similarity. When everything looks and feels mostly the same in terms of presentation, the only thing left to take center stage is the content. The ideas.