12 Favorite Problems

Build Your Note-Taking Spider Web

I took thousands of digital notes: book highlights, blog articles, observations, feelings. Every day, ideas and information bloom like wildflowers on my intellectual adventures. I can’t help but pick some for my future use. 

But I never revisit them. These notes become tiny particles that disappear into the abyss of my digital space. 

My notes also fail to build on each other. My mental energy dissipates into many topics that don’t relate. My knowledge feels a mile wide and an inch deep. 

The 12 favorite problems

Tiago Forte introduced me to the concept of the 12 favorite problems. The idea is to keep a dozen of questions that fascinate you. When you learn information and ideas, the 12 problems become containers to organize the new knowledge. 

Here are some of my favorite problems. I use these questions to guide my reading and to organize my notes.

1. Communication. How to write to inspire and how to speak to connect? 

2. Creativity. What mindsets and habits make a better creator?

3. Systems. How to design incentives to make the future of work centers around creativity?

4. Learning. How do we foster life-long learning in a culture that desires short-term results?

5. Design. How to design human-centered AI? 

6. Culture. How do identity and social connection change online and in VR?

7. Experience. Can we just be living in our imaginations? What is consciousness after all?  

8. Parenthood. How do I raise my children so they want to come home? 

This idea changed my relationship with my notes. With my favorite problems, I built a mental spider web and no notes can escape from it. 

The future of note-taking apps could use NLP to classify topics and to discover connections between notes (source)

The spider web catches notes and makes them stick. I’m free to read what my curiosity leads me. I take notes from highlights to scribbles to screenshots. I connect every note to one of the 12 questions. Constraint works in my favor here. The spider web waits in its place to effortlessly capture the thoughts that pass by. 

The spider web shows density in my knowledge. As a question collects more notes, I’m more likely to write an essay about it, building up my grasp of the subject. A top-down view of the web helps me relate my day-to-day ideas to bigger projects I’m working on. 

My spider web is not perfect but it evolves. Setting up the spider web takes work up front but it’s worth it. Your web might have a funny shape; it might be too wide or too shallow; it might not catch everything you want. But it works with imperfection. Over time, you tweak your problems and add sub-problems, weaving in more silk threads to your web. You close gaps and round up the web to cover all your readings and your ideas.  

Want to have a better relationship with your notes? Start with your 12 favorite problems.