Make atomic notes
Have you ever tried to review your meeting or project notes for a helpful bit of knowledge and given up because the wall of text and irrelevant information seemed insurmountable? Your eyes hop around from point to point, but you can't seem to find what you need or even focus.
Your notes are not helpful because they have too much information. There's only one little bit of knowledge you need for your current project, but you have to weed through irrelevant information (the previous project's due dates, objectives, attendees, etc.)
For knowledge to be helpful, it needs to be distilled to be actionable. Benjamin Franklin was a master at doing this: "Speak little do much." With four words, he could execute a process for self-governance. Here's another example in three words: "Haste makes waste."
The solution to this problem is to create an atomic note which is a note that contains one idea in one note. It is the building block of knowledge. It is "a discrete unit of information interpreted through your unique perspective and stored outside your head...[that] stands on its own and has intrinsic value, but knowledge building blocks can also be combined into something much greater—a report, an argument, a proposal, a story."(1)
How do you write an atomic note? In short, you need to break the note down (again, one idea, one note).
For example, you could write a note about fruits, but that would be a considerable note because there are 1,600 varieties of bananas alone! Breaking fruits into smaller categories makes the knowledge easier to digest. Tropical fruits is a subset of fruits, but it would still be a large category. You need to break it down further to arrive at an atomic size note. An atomic note would be a note about Fuji apples (a manageable entry in Wikipedia). Notice that it is not a note about apples (a very long entry in Wikipedia), which would still be too large of a category. Instead, it's a note about a specific variety of apples.
Building a knowledge base of atomic notes would be a treasure trove for the knowledge worker. Imagine going into your knowledge base and extracting the exact note that moves your project forward or provides valuable insight for your client—without the fluff! Imagine the time you would save not re-reading or re-interpreting a note.
In the spirit of Benjamin Franklin: "Make atomic notes."
(1) Building a Second Brain, Tiago Forte, p. 24.