As a life-long learner obsessed with growing knowledge across many subjects, I create and save lots of notes in my note-taking software (Obsidian, as of right now). While each note must be saved under a single directory, I can add metadata to my notes, tagging them with keywords, which allows me to group similar notes that may reside in different directories. For instance, one note might be saved under the “daily notes” directory and a different note tucked away in a distant directory such as “mastering my own health,” but since both notes contain content related to fasting and diabetes, I might tag both notes with the keyword “fasting to cure type II diabetes.” As a result, my knowledge of the topic just grew by two notes!
When I initially discover and dive into unexplored topics, I might start with tagging only a single note with that keyword. However, if I never revisit that topic and never learn more about that subject, then that single note keyword association remains as what I call a “sparse keyword.”
For the remainder of this article, we’ll discuss the problem with “sparse keywords,” how to identify them in our note-taking systems, and what steps we can take to eliminate them.
The pitfall of having too many sparse keywords
Susan Fowler described the inextinguishable curiosity and passion that lives within me:
“My life is so different. I have no singular destiny, no one true passion, no goal. I flutter from one thing to the next. I want to be a physicist and a mathematician and a novelist and write a sitcom and write a symphony and design buildings and be a mother. I want to run a magazine and understand the lives of ants and be a philosopher and be a computer scientist and write an epic poem and understand every ancient language. I don’t just want one thing. I want it all.”
If that sounds like you, then I’m guessing that you might also have an issue with sparse keywords.
I’m rarely (if ever) focused on learning about a single topic. On any given day, I might spend a few hours obsessing over how the body produces insulin and how insulin production (or lack thereof) impacts type II diabetes. Then, the very next day, I’ll completely abandon that topic, redirecting all my attention to reading material related to writing beautiful prose.
Can you relate to this constant context switching?
A byproduct of gravitating toward so many topics is that one can easily fall into the trap of becoming a jack of all trades and master none — someone who only superficially scratches the surface of many subjects. A good sign of falling into this trap is that the number of sparse keywords have multiplied significantly over time.
Identifying sparse keywords
Most note-taking systems will let you navigate to a list of all your keyword, view them and sort them by hit count. Here’s an example of what that looks like in my system:
Right now, I have two sparse keyword notes: “consider the context when judging is good or bad” and “price you pay for context switching.” I need to take action on these two sparse keywords, so let’s look at how we do that.
Taking action
Once identified, sparse keywords should be dealt with by taking one of the following four actions:
Find your existing notes and attach them to the keyword
Rename the keyword
Delete the keyword
Develop the topic associated with the sparse keyword
Find relevant notes and tag them with the sparse keyword
There’s a chance that there’s already an existing related note laying around that relates to the sparse keyword. Perhaps when the note was first created, you just forgot to tag it with an existing keyword.
One way to find these notes is by searching for other similar keywords. For instance, if the sparse keyword is “intermittent fasting for managing weight,” I might search my notes for keywords containing “nutrition,” “health,” or “fasting.” Any note found in the search results might be a good candidate to tag with the keyword.
Another way to find potentially relevant notes would be to simply wander through them, bouncing from one to the next, searching organically and less systematically for a note that fits.
Rename the keyword
Check for mistakes, such as mistyping the keyword or entering both the singular and plural versions of the keyword. Either convert the singular version to plural or the plural version to singular. Whatever you choose, be consistent throughout your entire note-taking system: stick to either all plural or all singular to avoid unnecessary duplication.
There might be two similar enough keywords that can be combined into a single keyword. Let’s say I have four notes tagged with “building software that can handle failures” and another two notes tagged with “building fail-safe programs.” In this case, I would update the latter two notes, removing “building fail-safe programs” and tagging them with “build fail-safe programs.” What initially seemed like two separate topics really belong as one.
Sometimes there’s a closely related word that’s similar enough in meaning. For example, I might have a topic named “making trade-offs” that doesn’t have a lot in it and another topic named “trade-offs when making decisions.” The two are semantically equivalent: both have essentially the same meaning. In this case, I would choose one of those topic names and rename the other.
Develop the topic associated with the sparse keyword
In one of the examples above, one of my sparse keywords was “price you pay for context switching.” Now that I’ve recognized this topic as one that is underdeveloped, I would begin researching this topic in more depth. I could search for “context switching” in my computer science literature textbooks or whitepapers; or I might search the internet for “context switching” as it relates to cognitive science. I would pour more time and energy into creating notes on this topic. As soon as I create another note and tag it with “price you pay for context switching,” that makes this keyword no longer sparse and, as a result, means I am gaining a little deeper understanding of the topic.
Delete the sparse keyword
Removing a keyword declutters your digital note taking system. This can often be mentally difficult: A lot of us have difficulty with getting rid of things because we feel itmust have been important to have been said in the first place. However, rest assured: if it’s an area that truly interests you, the topic will return.
“I never write ideas down. Because all you do when you write ideas down is kind of immortalize something that should go away. If they’re bad ideas, they go away on their own” – Stephen King
Remember: A metric is a tool, not a goal
Above is a graph of my note-taking system’s sparse keyword percentage. You can see that on September 17-18, the sparse keyword rate hovered at about 27%. I applied the previously mentioned four actions — associating existing notes, renaming keywords, deleting keywords, and researching and adding more notes to keywords — and reduced the percentage of sparse keywords down to 18%.
Although I monitor sparse keyword growth over time, I don’t have a specific target.
Once a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure – Goodhart’s Law
Remember: The actual goal is to write and publish content.
Wrapping it up
By nature, I’m a digital hoarder. I bookmark websites that I never revisit even a second time. I save articles that sit unread. I flood my knowledge management system with sparse keywords.
Keeping an eye on the number of sparse keywords is part and parcel of my digital organization hygiene. I have found, and you will too, that it helps build new habits and keeps my digital clutter to a minimum.