Bottom-Up Note-Taking in Capacities

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Over the years, my approach to note-taking has changed dramatically. Looking at my old Evernote account, I had everything neatly organized into pages and folders. When Notion was released, its flexible layouts, databases, and nested pages felt like a dream come true for my organization-craving brain. I switched immediately.

I spent hours in Notion sculpting my perfect setup. However, every time I thought I had it right, it didn't take long for the entire system to come crashing down. In an instant, my elaborate system became an annoyance. It felt slow, and I increasingly felt the need to start over again—something I did many times, perhaps too many.

With the emergence of tools with bi-directional linking, my mindset shifted. I started to wonder—what if you could let the organization of notes emerge from the process of capturing, writing and curating notes? 🤔

This question has led me down an interesting path. Now, instead of organizing my notes in advance (The top-down approach) I just focus on writing notes with a set of principles and methods that automatically organizes these notes. (The bottom-up approach)

I first experimented with this in Roam Research, then Logseq, and now I’m using Capacities as my daily note-taking companion. And since this note-taking system (well, maybe I build one again...) has stuck with me for four years, I thought I would write down the principles and methods that make it work for me.

Principles & Methods

1. Write at the speed of thought

Whenever I'm faced with an important task, project, decision, question or whatever I feel is important I do the following:

I open my daily note in Capacities and try to write at the speed of my thought. So basically, anything that I'm thinking or doing I try to type down without any judgement or structuring. I call these notes “unstructured notes”

I found this to have several benefits:

Empties the brain: There is something calming about writing down your thoughts—similar to journaling—that frees up mental space and gives me clarity.

Helps with focus: Writing down what I'm thinking makes it easier for me to stay within a topic, instead of immediately following the next thought or idea that bubbles up.

Diving deep: Reading my own thoughts often sparks new thoughts to come to my mind. Which creates a positive feedback loop that allows me to think more deeply about a topic.

Creates a log: At the end of the day, you can always see what you worked on and thought about. This helps with memory and also looking back weeks, months or years.

No writers-block: Since you are just putting down your own thoughts, there is little friction in the writing process.

Of course, it’s impossible to write exactly at the speed of thought. But it’s a nice principle to aim for a friction-less and fast writing process.

Method

The method that inspired me to write “unstructured notes” is called Interstitual journaling—which I first read about on Ness Labs. Basically, every time I start thinking or doing something new, I create a new bullet point in my daily notes and give it a timestamp.

Then, within the bullet point, I take my notes. This also has the added benefit that I can just close the bullet point and hide the notes inside. Which helps to transition to something new.

Example

2. Organize only what matters

Imagine having a magical book that writes down all your thoughts. Sounds interesting, right? But when you think about it, is it really useful? Personally, I don't think it is, and here's why:

My experience is that a large part of my internal thoughts have a short shelf life. They appear in one moment, serve their purpose and are not really useful anymore in another and disappear.

There is only a small part of thoughts, such as insights on experiences, learnings, decisions and ideas that really have long-term value of organizing them and being able to find them again.

It's valuable to write out thoughts—because it also facilitates better thinking—but there is no need to save and organize everything.

Method

Per default, I treat all my unstructured notes as noise and only valuable for what I’m doing in the moment. Only when I’m writing and thinking things like “Oh, this is interesting”, or “I need to do remember this” do I take action to organize those notes.

In the example below, you can see two entries from the morning. In both cases, I was simply thinking out loud about how to approach my day. After 9:25, I found a website I wanted to share on LinkedIn. To make sure I can find it again, I tagged it with my "To share" label.

3. Write notes that organize themselves

With the goal of writing notes at the speed of thought, it’s important to avoid friction as much as possible. Whenever I need to click an interface to manually organize my notes, it takes me out of the flow.

In an optimal environment, the notes would magically organize themselves based on my priorities. Which actually might be feasible in the future, when note-taking tools integrate more AI into their feature set.

But I’m already happy with the built-in features in Capacities, which allow me to quickly organize my notes without the need to leave the editor.

Method

There are two things that I do to organize my notes:

1. Indentation to create hierarchy

I heavily use indentation in my notes. If you think about it, indenting notes acts as a form of visual mapping, where the indentation represents branches of thought, similar to a mind map.

Combined with the fact, that you only need to press TAB on the keyboard to use indentation, makes it in my eyes the best feature to add hierarchy and basic organization to notes with minimal friction.

2. Links to create context and actions

Context answers the question “What is this note about?”, “Where does it belong to?” and “How can I find this back?”.

Since Capacities has a great search feature, some context is automatically created simply by having text and keywords in the note, that I can later search for.

To be more specific about adding context, I link tags (using #) or objects (using @) in the note or as a parent of the note. (Whatever makes most sense logically)

4. Use tags extensively

For me, tags are the simplest way to create new links in my notes. They help organize thoughts and ideas without requiring complex structures.

Tags have several benefits:

Easy to use: They allow for immediate categorization of thoughts as I write, making it easy to find related notes later.

Resurfacing: Tags improve the resurfacing of my notes. When I need to revisit a topic, I can quickly locate all relevant entries by looking up a specific tag.

Multi-functional: Tags can be used for different content types. (e.g #In Progress could be used for tasks, but also for a reading list)

Composable: Tags can be combined to add specific context to a note. (e.g #ToShare with #Stephan

Building a habit of extensively using tags enables me quickly connect unstructured notes to my existing network of organized notes.

Method

Every time I come across new use case that I think is valuable, I add a tag or a new tag collection. Below you can see my current setup of tags. One of the collections I use most often is the “Actions” collection, which includes tags like #To Review and #To Share. Within the Activities collection, I frequently use #Journaling and #Meeting as well.

List of my current tags (Still need to import quite a few from Logseq)

Activities

Reading
Writing
Journaling
Meeting

Status

In Progress
Done
Archived

Actions

To Research
To Decide
To Do
To Share
To Review

Outcomes

Stuck
Decision
Insight

Type

Voice Note

Topics

Example

In the example below, you can see how I’m using tags to take notes on a meeting.

5. Use objects for structured content

My note-taking approach emphasizes writing unstructured notes and connecting them to my network of organized notes. But I also use objects, which are a core feature of Capacities in my workflow.

For me, objects represent a form of “structured content.” While working in my daily notes, if I want to create something with structure, I often use objects.

Method

I create new objects when they satisfy these questions:

“Is it something permanent?” (e.g. a person in my life)

“Is it something I want to get back to?” (e.g. an article draft)

“Does it need structured content?” (e.g. fields, headings etc.)

My goal is to always create the object from within my daily notes. Because then I automatically have a backlink that shows me in which context I created the object.

Example

I use a general “Page” object to write long-form content that I might develop and get back to over time. Here, one use case I found is to create “Shortcut Cheat Sheets”. This is a collection in my pages of shortcut lists for specific applications that I use.

Summary

This approach might not be for everyone, but for me, it works well. Creating a log of my thoughts and work throughout the day gives me clarity and keeps me focused—and I like being able to look back on what I’ve been doing and thinking.

The more I use the bottom-up approach, the more I notice my notes growing organically. I aim to apply the same idea to this system. The principles outlined in this article are a constant work in progress, and I may change or adapt them as my use of Capacities evolves.

I’m also still eagerly waiting for Capacities to launch their import feature so I can import all my notes from Logseq and Roam Research. Manually importing is not an option, because I don’t want to spend three days in a row pressing copy and paste.

I hope that you enjoyed reading this article, and I’m happy to hear what principles and workflows you are using and find valuable