💭 Week #18: The Pain Points of Having Scattered Notes

Even galaxies that seem cluttered to our eyes aren’t really cluttered.

Jun 18, 2025

Probably you have a lot of notes made all around—including those beautifully made notes you’ve held dear for so long, and those notes that you’ve scribbled in your notebook and then left forgotten about.

Your notes that feel like an object floating on space. (Image by NASA Hubble Space Telescope)

And we’ve been there too. 📃

We have this pile of notes in our corner that only gets dusted, yet we don’t want to throw it away because we know we’re going to need it someday.

But when is that someday?

It’s been years since it was piled there for too long. It carries emotional weight that anchors us to it, and that’s why we don’t want to put it in the bin.

It is special!
It is one of those moments we want to keep.
It was created by our creative minds.

But it’s stale — and doesn’t have any prompt to remind us of what’s in there. They’re all random—scattered, we must say. You need to reread and re-adventure again through your pile of notes to see what’s in there, to make it live again, to feel again, to reconnect with your past self. 🌳

It’s a beautiful moment to rediscover—but let’s be honest, we’re wasting our time.

Here’s what inspired us lately…

“Lift up your eyes to heaven and see. Who has created these things? It is the One who brings out their army by number; he calls them all by name. Because of his vast dynamic energy and his awe-inspiring power, not one of them is missing.” —Isaiah 40:26

Even galaxies that seem cluttered to our eyes aren’t really cluttered. We know they have their own cosmic order. It flows from us to star systems, to galaxies, to galaxy clusters, to superclusters, to the cosmic web—the whole universe.

That suggests the One remembers all of them and feels that none is missing.

Now, back to our scattered notes: we can feel relieved that we don’t have as many as there are heavenly bodies in the universe. Because if we did, imagine the overwhelm we’d feel.

Why do we bother with our notes at all?

Because thoughts, ideas, musings, insights—they’re precious. That’s why we jot them all down. They become our reference points when we circle back to the same topics, because our mind remembers: I wrote that down somewhere. 📝

But our notes are a mess.
All scattered.
No system can help us!

So how do we make them feel like those heavenly bodies—each in its place, part of a greater order?

Here are 4 principles we can think of.

Organized
Just like how the universe doesn’t throw stars randomly into the void, our notes need their own cosmic address. Every thought, every scribble, every brilliant 3 AM insight deserves a home where we can actually find it again. We’re not talking about rigid filing systems that make us feel like a corporate robot—we’re talking about creating neighborhoods for your ideas. Give them folders, give them tags. When our notes have a place to belong, they stop being that overwhelming pile in the corner and start becoming a library of our own brilliant mind. 🌌

Atomicity
Think of each note as a single star—complete, self-contained, shining on its own. We must not cram five different ideas into one note like we’re trying to fit an entire constellation into a shoebox. One idea, one note. One insight, one entry. When we keep our notes atomic, each one becomes a perfect little universe of thought that we can move around, connect, and reference without having to dig through paragraphs of unrelated rambling. Our future self will thank us when they can grab exactly what they need without having to decode a novel. ☀️

Connection
Here’s where the sublime happens—just like gravity pulls celestial bodies into beautiful dance patterns, our notes should link to each other in meaningful ways. That random thought about creativity from last Tuesday? It might be the missing piece that connects to our project idea from three months ago. We must create bridges between our ideas. Reference other notes. Build pathways. When our notes start talking to each other, they stop being isolated islands and become an interconnected web of our evolving thoughts. 🕸️
(Image by NASA)
Purpose-driven
Every note we keep should earn its place in our system, just like every star has its role in the cosmic dance. We must ask ourselves: Why am I keeping this? What future version of me will need this? If a note doesn’t serve a purpose—if it’s just digital clutter taking up space—then we must let it go. We must be intentional about what we capture and why. Our notes should be working for us, not against us, moving you toward our goals and supporting our growth rather than just existing because we felt like writing something down. 🛰️

These principles help us become more mindful when we write new notes. They help us step out of chaos and live within a cosmic web of connected thoughts.

Should you review your old notes and rewrite everything?
That’s up to you! There may be hidden gems waiting to shine—ideas ready to find their place in space. Perhaps it’s worth dedicating some time to sift through that pile.

Why not give those forgotten thoughts a chance to become stars in your organized universe? 🌌

Chessurisme
The Curator and The Creator of RandomNiceStuff