NoteTaking structure vs Conceptual Structure (Newbie Question)

RemNote Learning RemNote
#1

Please bear with me I’m a total newbie, something is wrong in the way I’m using the feature building the structure of new knowledge in rem

In my usage of RemNote regarding new information incoming, this is what I do:

Logic 1

I open a new document under a folder (=“Courses”) that I call with the name of the course I’m following. By doing that I created a child Rem Course1 under the parent " Courses ". Under Course1 I create as many section as there is in the original document I’m taking notes about.

I think this matches what RemNote expects me to do.

→ This means that the structure underlying my note taking resembles the table of content of the document. What I mean by that is that the structure (parent/child) is a reflection of the how the document is structured in the first place

Logic 2

Let’s say the Course1 I’m following talks about living things. At some point I’ll deal with “Heart” which is a concept in itself → [[Heart, Ctrl+enter . Now I have a Rem called Heart. Great.

However I would like to have [[Heart nested under [[Organs. How do I do that on the fly ?

To me the only solution is to have 2 different type of structures living in parallel in the left side panel

  1. The parent/child structure that resembles the table of content (→ logic 1 )
  2. The many parent/child structures that follow conceptually hierarchical notions (with however as many different taxonomies as necessary) (→ logic 2 )

There is something fundamental that I’m missing, please help me out :slight_smile:

#2

The missing piece is this - Create new references within the same (or any) document - That is how you create Heart nested under Organs on the fly

At the same time, don’t get caught up in organizing the contents perfectly when you are taking notes. You can easily move stuff around either using the shortcut Ctrl + Shift + M or drag - drop the rem to a new parent. I usually do the drag - drop using the split windows.

Since Heart belongs to organs but also occurs within another Course1, it is worth exploring Portals

#4

My suggestion is the same as above.

I try to explore the flexibility of being able to connect/embed Rems freely between/within each other. On the other hand, I also like to have everything accessible from a certain structure in my sidebar, to avoid stray content (of course, I can also adjust the sidebar structure as needed).

I think the way Portals are implemented favour the above approach. It implies that there is an “original” location for a Rem, to which all Portals lead to. In your example, I’d have Organs/Heart be the original location, since it’s more fundamental than that specific course.

PS: Having said the above, I sometimes wonder if Portals should really be just Instances, without the implied hierarchy (or even such a clear visual distinction; except maybe for some subtle hint that other instances exist). This would simplify a situation like the one you presented - you could create the Heart Rem within the Course Rem, then whenever you want you can “Instance it” into the Organs Rem.

#6

Thank you :+1: this is exactly what I wanted to achieve.
As you mention in your original post, I don’t like the fact that new concept are un-categorized when could.

Thanks a lot for this.

I suppose this is not introduced in the tutorials to avoid a hierarchical thinking. However when dealing with science note etc, the structure of knowledge are pretty clear and there is an advantage to reflect these predetermined hierarchy in RemNote on the fly.

#3

If you stick to lecture by lecture or course by course methodology, either portal stuff in from older lectures by ctrl+shift+enter and writing it in or ctrl+shift+p to search and open in separate pane and write it in that way.

However, remnote allows you to explore a more complex method of building your knowledge base: you let your own structure emerge as you take notes. For that, you will at some point want to create keynotes that will contain references to other notes. Ideally, you could also populate those with portals, but the slowdown is just too severe for the moment. You may find out more about this second method by chasing down the links in the note-taking section.

#7

At the moment I use portals only to edit other rems (with new info I found), then delete it in current rem.

The portal as hard-written section of a rem to allow multinesting is interesting as well, I will explore it, thanks :wink: