Because planning is unsuitable for thinking, you need to use interest, curiosity, and intuition when involved in an intellectual pursuit. To produce more insight, you need to follow insight. A plan does not allow this.
You need to focus on what is interesting to you. If you follow your interest, you will read more about it, which in turn will generate more notes. In a workflow that optimizes curiosity, materials naturally cluster around your current interest. If you change interest, materials will cluster on that new interest. You can also take note of why you changed interests and that by itself can be an insight. That said, it can be helpful to remember that everything you do is to generate insight that can be published.
By using curiosity, you feel free and in control. In turn, you minimize the risk of losing interest in your topic because freedom motivates us.
However, you can only make this work, if you combine curiosity with a note-writing system and practice.
To do
- Literature note. Cultivate it to become a permanent note.
References
Ahrens, S. (2017). How to Take Smart Notes: One Simple Technique to Boost Writing, Learning and Thinking – for Students, Academics and Nonfiction Book Writers. CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform.