Tags

• People often feel a pressure to tag content so that they may find it more easily in the future.
• Tagging is useful, but only if one tags the keywords for which the given note may add to the discussion. (How to Take Smart Notes)
  • e.g. for a note about the Dunning-Kruger effect, tag it “mistrust of science” instead of “cognitive biases”. You are much more likely to write about mistrust of science than to make a compendium of cognitive biases (unless you are an archivist).

“The real problem with tags, and why they not only fail to help, but actually even hurt people’s creative self-esteem, is that they give the impression that creating such a system requires a heroic feat of comprehensive planning, followed by years of meticulous, unwavering cataloging and annotating. I see many creative people, justly overwhelmed at this task for which their minds are not well suited, give up on the idea altogether.” — Tiago Forte