I got this title as a tweet. From the famous dude over at boot.dev. Here is the tweet. Now, he is great at what he does, his team is great at what they do and they definitely do not need a testimony from me. So I would like to make this quick: He is right.
It’s not that someone’s busy. It’s just that you are not the priority
I am sure you have heard or read that before. If you haven’t, well, you just did. Ask yourself - is that not the case? You friend asks you out to build a lego marvel but you got your love waiting for you on a date. Your friend would probably go down in priority and maybe you will also give them an excuse that isn’t true - something like “nah, I’m studying” or “hey, I got a sore throat and a body ache man. Will join you tomorrow if you okay?” or something.
It’s the same thing with concepts, with facts, with figures. You won’t forget what your salary is. You won’t forget what defer does for you when you program in go and are about to release your first ever app to production. You won’t forget the path from your home to your office. As long as you are healthy, those are important things and you would never ever forget that.
If you are taking notes, especially if you are taking way too many notes, you aren’t remembering stuff! You are offloading that task to your notebook. That notebook can be in pen-and-paper form, Obsidian, Apple notes, Notability + Apple Pencil, the reMarkable tablet. Doesn’t matter. The fact is - the advertisement around those tech solutions actually make you think that it would be amazing to take notes.
But. It. Isn’t.
Note taking makes your brain forget instantly. It makes you believe that you will revisit that concept later, will re-re-mem-ber (not a typo) it. No. You won’t. Just remember this:
If it’s important, your brain WILL remember it. And if you think it is important, make your brain, in fact force your brain to remember that important thing. How?