Capturing and organizing information to draw on later

In I'm Sorry But There's No Shortcut for This (And That's a Good Thing), Ryan Holiday wrote:

To be a great reader, it's not enough to read—you have to question, challenge, verify, and mark things up. You have to put books through the wringer and authors on trial. You have to go chase things down, follow footnotes, look up references, look up words you don't know. You have to have a practice of capturing information and organizing it so it can be drawn on when you need it later.

For the last few months, I have been thinking a lot about the last sentence, about learning—so much so that I have been making an app to help me with it.

Like Ryan Holiday said, I'm starting to think there are two key parts of learning:

Collecting and processing information
Applying information until we internalize it

But I'd argue it doesn't have to be a two-step process. If we keep doing a set of tasks regularly, we can master them without having to write down how to do them. This doesn't mean we simply repeat a series of steps like a robot or we don't make mistakes. We notice the results from each attempt and refine our actions until we get better and better. This is largely how I have worked since graduating from formal education. I focused more on doing things than writing things down. But to learn well, I needed to repeat the tasks often enough, such as writing or making software daily, like a craftsman, which I didn't.

If I don't repeat the tasks often enough (step 2) and my brain doesn't get reminded of them, I need to store them somewhere outside my brain (step 1). So, when I pick up the tasks again, I have a way to jump start my memory rather than start from scratch.

At least that's how it should work in theory. But in practice, I forget what I have saved to even search in my notes app when I need to draw on that knowledge. The other issue is that much of knowledge work is tacit. It is hard to write down exactly how we do the work or what we have learned so that the next attempt will be easier. How do you write the steps for writing an essay or making a software product? You can write the generic steps like start with an outline or plan the data structure first. But that doesn't mean the outcome is an essay that people read or a product that people use. Every essay and every app is different and requires different decisions at various points in its lifecycle. "Should you have this sentence or that feature" and "how should you write this sentence or build that feature" are not questions you can easily answer by simply checking your notes.

So, instead of just collecting more information, I'm trying these three things:

Write down only what I want to refer to. Many apps optimize for capturing information even when we might not use it. This "just in case" hoarding bloats my notebook and overwhelms my brain.
Review all my notes regularly. Sometimes even a quick glance at the title can be sufficient because it reminds me of what I had written. I get a daily email of five old notes from my notebook.
Do the work daily. For now, that's writing and making software (and parenting). This has led me to notice little things that went unnoticed when I didn't practice as often, such as using "ultimately" too often. This then primes my brain to look out for relevant information to capture and use, like other ways authors conclude their essays. But more importantly, this gives me a regular opportunity to apply what I have collected, so that I am more likely to internalize it.

This is still a work-in-progress. I feel there are still several gaps. For example, after I found better alternatives to "ultimately", what exactly should I record in my notebook? Gemini can easily give me 10 alternatives but is that useful to collect? Or is using the alternatives in different essays sufficient?

I don't know yet. But I'll report back when I have an update. Let me know if you have a system that works well for you!