## 2 Everything You Need to Do Imagine you do *not* start with a clean sheet. Imagine instead some friendly genie (or well-paid personal assistant – whatever is more likely for you to have available) prepared a rough draft of your paper for you. It is already a fully developed argument including all references, quotes and some really smart ideas. The only thing left to do is to revise this rough draft and send it off. Make no mistake: there is still work to do and it is more than just finding some typos. Editing is work that needs focus. You have to rephrase some sentences, delete one or two redundancies and maybe add a couple of sentences or even passages to fill some holes left in the argument. But at the same time, it is a well-defined task: nothing that couldn’t be done within a few days and certainly nothing you would have trouble motivating yourself to do: Everybody is motivated when the finish line is within reach. No problem so far. Imagine now you are not the one who has to edit the rough draft and turn it into the final paper, but the one who has to prepare it. What would be helpful to achieve that quickly? It would certainly make things a lot easier if you already had everything you need right in front of you: The ideas, the arguments, the quotes, long developed passages, complete with bibliography and references. And not just readily available, but already in order, sorted by chapters that have descriptive headlines. Now that’s also a clear assignment. No worries about perfect sentences (someone else will take care of that), no worries about finding things and coming up with ideas (someone else already took care of that), you just focus on turning a string of ideas into a continuous text. Again, that is still serious work and you have to put some effort into it, if you want to make it great. You might spot a missing step in an argument and have to fill it, or you might want to rearrange some notes or leave something out that you regard as less relevant. But, again, this is not an overwhelming task and luckily, it doesn’t need to be perfect. No problem so far. Equally manageable is the task of bringing already existing notes into order, especially if half of them already are in order. Searching through a file system with strings of discussions, plenty of material and ideas is, believe it or not, fun. It does not require the kind of focused attention you would need to formulate a sentence or to understand a difficult text. Your attention is rather at ease and it even helps to have a playful mindset. Only with a less narrow focus will you be able to see connections and patterns. You see clearly where long strings of discussions have already been built up – this is a good starting point. If you do look for specific notes, you have an index to turn to. No problem at all so far. At this point, it should become clear that you don’t need to wait for a genie to appear, as each step is clearly not only within your abilities, but also straightforward and well defined: Assemble notes and bring them into order, turn these notes into a draft, review it and you are done. Now, that’s all well and good, you might say, but what about *writing* these notes? Obviously, it is easy to write a paper if the main part of the writing is already done and only needs to be turned into a linear text. But isn’t that a little bit like saying: If you are short of money, just take what you need out of your piggy bank? Everyone can make things look easy by leaving out the main part. So, where is the genie for that? Granted, writing these notes is the main work. It will take enormous amounts of effort, time, patience and willpower, and you will probably break under the weight of this task. Just kidding. It is the easiest part of all. Writing these notes is also not the main work. Thinking is. Reading is. Understanding and coming up with ideas is. And this is how it is supposed to be. The notes are just the tangible outcome of it. All you have to do is to have a pen in your hand while you are doing what you are doing anyway (or a keyboard under your fingers). Writing notes *accompanies* the main work and, done right, it helps with it. Writing is, without dispute, the best facilitator for thinking, reading, learning, understanding and generating ideas we have. Notes build up *while*you think, read, understand and generate ideas, because you have to have a pen in your hand if you want to think, read, understand and generate ideas properly anyway. If you want to learn something for the long run, you have to write it down. If you want to really understand something, you have to translate it into your own words. Thinking takes place as much on paper as in your own head. “Notes on paper, or on a computer screen \[...\] do not make contemporary physics or other kinds of intellectual endeavour easier, they make it possible,” neuroscientist Neil Levy concludes in the introduction to the *Oxford Handbook of Neuroethics,* summarizing decades of research. Neuroscientists, psychologists and other experts on thinking have very different ideas about how our brains work, but, as Levy writes: “no matter how internal processes are implemented, (you) need to understand the extent to which the mind is reliant upon external scaffolding.” (2011, 270) If there is one thing the experts agree on, then it is this: You have to externalise your ideas, you have to write. Richard Feynman stresses it as much as Benjamin Franklin. If we write, it is more likely that we understand what we read, remember what we learn and that our thoughts make sense. And if we have to write anyway, why not use our writing to build up the resources for our future publications? Thinking, reading, learning, understanding and generating ideas is the main work of everyone who studies, does research or writes. If you write to improve all of these activities, you have a strong tailwind going for you. If you take your notes in a smart way, it will propel you forward. ### <a class="pcalibre pcalibre1" id="_Toc475013794"> 2.1 </a> Writing a paper step by step **1.** Make fleeting notes. Always have something at hand to write with to capture every idea that pops into your mind. Don’t worry too much about how you write it down or what you write it on. These are fleeting notes, mere reminders of what is in your head. They should not cause any distraction. Put them into one place, which you define as your inbox, and process them later. I usually have a simple notebook with me, but I am happy with napkins or receipts if nothing else is at hand. Sometimes I leave a voice record on my phone. If your thoughts are already sorted and you have the time, you can skip this step and write your idea directly down as a proper, permanent note for your slip-box. **2.** Make literature notes. Whenever you read something, make notes about the content. Write down what you don’t want to forget or think you might use in your own thinking or writing. Keep it very short, be extremely selective, and use your own words. Be extra selective with quotes – don’t copy them to skip the step of really understanding what they mean. Keep these notes together with the bibliographic details in one place – your reference system. **3.** Make permanent notes. Now turn to your slip-box. Go through the notes you made in step one or two (ideally once a day and before you forget what you meant) and think about how they relate to what is relevant for your own research, thinking or interests. This can soon be done by looking into the slip-box – it only contains what interests you anyway. The idea is not to collect, but to develop ideas, arguments and discussions. Does the new information contradict, correct, support or add to what you already have (in the slip-box or on your mind)? Can you combine ideas to generate something new? What questions are triggered by them? Write exactly one note for each idea and write as if you were writing for someone else: Use full sentences, disclose your sources, make references and try to be as precise, clear and brief as possible. Throw away the fleeting notes from step one and put the literature notes from step two into your reference system. You can forget about them now. All that matters is going into the slip-box. **4.** Now add your new permanent notes to the slip-box by: a) Filing each one behind one or more related notes (with a program, you can put one note “behind” multiple notes; if you use pen and paper like Luhmann, you have to decide where it fits best and add manual links to the other notes). Look to which note the new one directly relates or, if it does not relate directly to any other note yet, just file it behind the last one. b) Adding links to related notes. c) Making sure you will be able to find this note later by either linking to it from your index or by making a link to it on a note that you use as an entry point to a discussion or topic and is itself linked to the index. **5.** Develop your topics, questions and research projects bottom up from within the system. See what is there, what is missing and what questions arise. Read more to challenge and strengthen your arguments and change and develop your arguments according to the new information you are learning about. Take more notes, develop ideas further and see where things will take you. Just follow your interest and always take the path that promises the most insight. Build upon what you have. Even if you don’t have anything in your slip-box yet, you never start from scratch – you already have ideas on your mind to be tested, opinions to be challenged and questions to be answered. Do not brainstorm for a topic. *Look* into the slip-box instead to see where chains of notes have developed and ideas have been built up to clusters. Don’t cling to an idea if another, more promising one gains momentum. The more you become interested in something, the more you will read and think about it, the more notes you will collect and the more likely it is that you will generate questions from it. It might be exactly what you were interested in from the beginning, but it is more likely that your interests will have changed – that is what insight does. **6.** After a while, you will have developed ideas far enough to decide on a topic to write about. Your topic is now based on what you *have*, not based on an unfounded idea about what the literature you are about to read might provide. Look through the connections and collect all the relevant notes on this topic (most of the relevant notes will already be in partial order), copy them onto your “desktop”[\[6\]](part0000_split_023.html#_ftn6)and bring them in order. Look for what is missing and what is redundant. Don’t wait until you have everything together. Rather, try ideas out and give yourself enough time to go back to reading and note-taking to improve your ideas, arguments and their structure. **7.** Turn your notes into a rough draft. Don’t simply copy your notes into a manuscript. *Translate* them into something coherent and embed them into the context of your argument while you build your argument out of the notes at the same time. Detect holes in your argument, fill them or change your argument. **8.** Edit and proofread your manuscript. Give yourself a pat on the shoulder and turn to the next manuscript. These are the steps, presented as if you will write only one paper/article at a time. In reality, you never work on just one idea, but many ideas in different stages at the same time. And that is where the system plays out its real strengths. We cannot help but think about more than one question at a time and the chances are that you will think and write in the future as well. It might not be for academia or a publication, but certainly for your own intellectual growth. Gather what you encounter along your way and don’t let any good idea go to waste. You might read a certain book in hope it could be useful for one of the papers you write. Maybe you are wrong, but it still might contain some interesting thoughts worth keeping and useful for something else you haven’t thought about yet. In truth, it is highly unlikely that every text you read will contain exactly the information you looked for and nothing else. Otherwise, you must have already known what was in there and wouldn’t have had reason to read it in the first place.[\[7\]](part0000_split_023.html#_ftn7) As the only way to find out if something is worth reading is by reading it (even just bits of it), it makes sense to use the time spent in the best possible way. We constantly encounter interesting ideas along the way and only a fraction of them are useful for the particular paper we started reading it for. Why let them go to waste? Make a note and add it to your slip-box. It improves it. Every idea adds to what can become a critical mass that turns a mere collection of ideas into an idea-generator. A typical work day will contain many, if not all, of these steps: You read and take notes. You build connections within the slip-box, which in itself will spark new ideas. You write them down and add them to the discussion. You write on your paper, notice a hole in the argument and have another look in the file system for the missing link. You follow up on a footnote, go back to research and might add a fitting quote to one of your papers in the making. How focused you want to read depends on your priorities. You don’t have to read anything you don’t consider an absolute necessity for finishing your most urgent paper, but you will still encounter a lot of other ideas and information along the way. Spending the little extra time to add them to your system will make all the difference, because the accidental encounters make up the majority of what we learn. Imagine if we went through life learning only what we planned to learn or being explicitly taught. I doubt we would have even learned to speak. Each added bit of information, filtered only by our interest, is a contribution to our future understanding, thinking and writing. And the best ideas are usually the ones we haven’t anticipated anyway. Most people follow different lines of thought at the same time. They might focus for a while on one idea, but then leave it alone for another while until they see how to proceed further. It is helpful then to be able to pick up on another idea now and go back to the earlier thought later. It is much more realistic to keep this flexibility and you don’t have to worry about starting all over.