Andy Matuschak uses this term to refer to all notes that bring structure to his Evergreen note-taking system. In short, this is his term of art for Structure notes. He doesn’t seem to make any distinction within this category. Sascha Fast, on the other hand, thinks that outline notes are a special kind of structure note—one that is associated to a specific writing project (i.e., one with a goal of producing a publishable artifact).
Andy’s advice is to Create iterative outlines as you write notes.
To do
- Convert this note into something that is truly yours. Remove references to Andy and Sascha. Embrace it as yours.
- But differentiate it from structure notes.
References
Matuschak, A. (n.d.). Taxonomy of note types. Andyʼs Working Notes. Retrieved September 18, 2021, from https://notes.andymatuschak.org/Taxonomy_of_note_types
Fast, S. (2018, March). Differences between Buffer Notes, Outline Notes, and Structure/Index Notes. Zettelkasten Forum. https://forum.zettelkasten.de/discussion/161/differences-between-buffer-notes-outline-notes-and-structure-index-notes
Outline notes are for writing projects.
When I have a note that is the starting point of an article I paste it into my org and write a short outline for an article.
Outline notes are a special kind of structure notes.