Atomic Notes

27 February 2025·budding·Sabiqul Hoque

Atomic notes are notes that can exist on themselves without needing additional context to explain them. They cover one topic or idea only and as stated are self‑contained. They often make part of the permanent notes of a Zettelkasten system and are often therefore linked to other atomic permanent notes. This note, in itself can be considered an example of an atomic note.

Connected Ideas (Similar / Opposing Ideas)

Org Roam allows for both files and headings within a file to be considered a node within the org-roam database. I have been leaning towards sparingly using headings as nodes because:

They tend to complicate things; it’s nice if most of my file types are able to follow similar structures
It doesn’t lend itself well when trying to export the backlinks of a file to another format

With this in mind, most of my atomic notes tend are contained in the one file per concept as well (rather than headings within a file)

Also see

Notetaking

Sources

Ahrens (2017)

Ahrens, Sönke. 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.

Cite this note

@online{hoque2025atomic,
  author = {Sabiqul Hoque},
  title = {Atomic Notes},
  year = {2025},
  url = {https://sabicool.github.io/Braindump/notes/20250227231010-atomic_notes.html},
  organization = {Braindump}
}