The drawbacks of categorizing
It can be hard to categorize.
Often people expect things to neatly fit in a category. Like this:
| fruit | vegetable |
|---|---|
| apple | cabbage |
| But what if we have something that fits in both categories? Like a tomato? | |
| We could put it in both categories: |
| fruit | vegetable |
|---|---|
| apple | cabbage |
| But this might |
- cause issues with people’s expectations
- cause problems with software expecting something to be in 1 category
- duplicating data in 2 places can lead to a lack of single source of truth
When writing notes we run in the same problem. Often we start with multiple folders, 1 for each category. And we organize our files in the folders.
But when we have thousands of files, there will be notes that belong in multiple categories.
I start to waste a lot of time thinking which folder to put it in. This is a cognitive load with zero productive value, and can be avoided by putting all notes in a single folder. Instead of trying to organize and choosing a single category (folder) for the file, we can create an infinite amount of links inside a note to other notes. This means a note can be linked to multiple categories. 1 note for each category.