The Surprising Reason Why Classifying Your Notes Doesn’t Work (And Never Will)

Stop searching for the perfect filing system — Here’s what to do instead

I’ve searched for the best system to classify my notes for over a decade.

But I finally discovered that the best way to classify my notes… is to not classify them.

Sounds crazy, I know. But hold on with me. Because in this article, I’ll show you why classifying your notes is doomed to failure and what to do instead.

Stop taxing your brain

Everybody hates taxes.

And this is why you should hate classification, too. Wait a minute… What does classifying have to do with taxes?

Classifying from the Latin classis. It was common practice to split people living in the Roman Empire into different categories to see how much taxes they had to pay.

Classification is all about finding a common pattern that makes sense.

Over 3,000 years later, people still don’t agree on the best way to do that and still hate to pay taxes.

This tells you a lot about how hard it is to find the right *classes*.

If you’re constantly looking for a way to classify information, you’re thinking harder than you should.

Information is a never-ending black hole

300 exabytes.

That’s the amount of information created by humans, according to Google.

So if you think that classification will help you get a grip on information… Good luck.

Information is a never-ending deep black hole. And AI-generated content will make things worse.

People who’ll thrive in the next decade know exactly how to manage information and attention.

But guess what? Your brain power is limited.

So it’s worth spending more time managing your attention than finding categories where to dump your notes.

Your brain doesn’t classify

The human brain is not wired for classification but for connection.

Sure, we classify things. But that’s not the default mode. Classifications only come after making connections.

Think of it as a child: he first learns that the stove is hot and thus may hurt. But classifying that everything that’s hot can hurt comes later down the development of the brain.

It comes down to being able to identify patterns.

And this is a damn complex and energy-draining task.

Start with why

Most people get distracted by classifying information.

They look up everything they can online to find a one-size-fits-all system. Meantime, they don’t get anything done. But classifying is a means and not the goal itself. A well-organized note-taking app is useless if you don’t use the information there.

Did you ever ask yourself why you’re taking notes?

Most people answer with platitudes like “I want to be able to retrieve anything at will.”

Newsflash: A Google search can do that, too. And probably better than your classified notes.

Instead, you want to find a way to do something meaningful with the notes you’re taking instead of just saving and classifying them.

After taking thousands of notes over the years that I almost never revisited, I asked myself WHY.

Why was I taking notes if I never took the time to revisit them?

In my case, it was creating content.

Once I was clear about my WHY, everything became easier. I knew I had to develop a system to turn my notes into content.

Once you have an end goal, ask yourself about the means. If the means take too much time and effort, it’s probably not the right one.

This is why you see so many people add more and more notes to their note-taking apps without being able to produce anything significant out of them.

Enter: self-organizing notes

But there’s a better way.

And it looks like this: Stop classifying information.

You want to come up with a structure that lets information organize itself.

And this structure exists.

There are a bunch of new-generation note-taking tools that mimic how our brain works.

Simply put, instead of classifying your notes without outdated folders or tags, you organize them using backlinks.

Backlinks are nothing else than connections. This allows you to quickly jot down notes, connect them with previous notes, and then resurface the notes when you need them.

Easier, faster, and way more fun.

Want to turn your notes into online content? Click here to get my free course (Safe link to my website)