[jkingsbery]

Is this really how other people operate?

I really on my old notes all the time. People mention "oh, I was going to look into X," and I do a quick search through my notes to send them some links to the investigation I did earlier on X. People ask a question "What are you planning on doing on Y?" and I find in my old notes "subject matter so-and-so says: Y? I wouldn't worry about Y." Especially in engineering, there are lots of things that I think are not important at the time because I lack context to understand it's importance, and I only understand it's importance because I wrote down unimportant seeming things, go back and read through my notes and realize "Oh, 3 different people told me Z is a big deal. I didn't realize, I should go learn more about Z."

[emoprincejack]

No, its not how other people operate. Most people are like you and use notes for exactly what they are used for. This making the front page is wild to me. Just write anything semi-contrarian and you are good to go.

[Solvency]

I think the article could easily be rewritten from the perspective of "dumping your excess thoughts / stream of consciousness into note files for later examination or future discarding is good because..."

Because as mentioned, some notes are evolving documents, and others are just scrap files. And I do get a lot of value out of shelving thoughts and ideas for many of the reasons the article describes. It's just written as an unnecessarily grand sweeping generalization.