The Integrated Thinking Environment has several ways to organise, classify and tag information.
These are NOT IMPORTANT. What is important is to make the notes, record the action items, to get STARTED. Let the structures, tags and classification rules evolve organically as you work with your information.
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This Integrated Thinking Environment (ITE) has been implemented in layers.
For two main reasons - to provide the ability to quickly start using the tool, but then to provide the ability for you to personalise it as you develop your ITE, your note taking skills, and most importantly your ability to productively make use of your notes.
At its heart is a single table, called dbNotes which allows for notes of various types. All notes
should have a Note Name
can be tagged in a structured and unstructured way and/ or it can be linked to a project. (Unstructured Tag, and Tag 1,Tag 2andTag 3.)
can be linked to a Project
can have a due date. (Date)
can have a Description. A description is a sentence or more to elaborate on the Note Name. The
@Canvas Column
Detailed Notes is where the detailed information is recorded.
can have a URL. If you use the Coda browser extension to save web pages, Coda will store the URL in this column, and the page name in the Note Name column.
can be hidden from the main Notes displays by clicking on the Archive checkbox.
can be summarised in the Summarycolumn.
have a Created Ondate. This is used in some dbNotes views to reverse sort the notes table, so that the most recent entries are at the top.
The first, Basic layer is a very simple implementation.
It contains three Note Types
Raw material
Use this note type to record unprocessed information - links to web pages, copies of information, anything that you would like to return to in the future.
Knowledge
Basic knowledge, synthesised from existing Notes.
Action Item
Todo’s, anniversaries and other topics with a date.
Use the Anniversary tag in Tag 1, and the Wedding and Birthdate tags in Tag 2 to identify your anniversaries. Of course, feel free to add your own tags for public holidays, dog and cat birthdays, whatever else you can think of to celebrate or commemorate.
It contains one,
Generic
Project Type
Notes of all Note Types can be linked to a project, not just Action Item notes. Therefor you can keep together all your research, action plans and other notes in a single grouping. If the project gets large, use the structured tags to organise.
For example, if you are building a house and are collecting ideas to use, you can create a Tag 1 for Rooms, and Tag 2’s for Bathrooms, Kitchens, etc and use that to group your ideas. Another Tag 1 could be for building materials, and then Tag 2’s for Roof, Walls and Floors. And similarly for the Action Items needed to plan, design, build and finish the house.
The second, Intermediate layer adds the functionality described on the
All of these, and others, are very useful. And they are all tool agnostic. This ITE turns the concept around, it is a tool that is methodology agnostic.
You can use any of these methods, use your own, and or mix and match as much as you want,