Seedling
A hunch with one honest sentence behind it. It may be incomplete, and it may be wrong. It earns its place by being clear enough to argue with.
Ready to grow when it has an example and a neighbour.
Principles of tending
A garden is kept, not finished
Notes do not become useful by being written. They become useful by being returned to, linked, trimmed and sometimes left alone. These are the habits we lean on.
Three honest stages
Every note wears one of three labels. They are not grades. They tell a reader how much to trust the note and tell us where to spend our attention next.
Budding
Taking shape. It has at least two links, a concrete example, and has been rewritten once. The main claim is visible, though the edges are still soft.
Ready to settle when a later reread changes nothing important.
Evergreen
Reread across several sittings and still standing without apology. Links run in both directions. Changes from here on are small, rare and deliberate.
Even evergreens can be demoted if a better idea arrives.
Seven principles
Read them down the stem, one leaf at a time. None needs software; all of them work with a notebook.
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Plant small, plant often
A note does not need to be impressive to deserve a place. Small notes are cheap to write, so we write more of them, and the garden gets the variety it needs to surprise us.
In practiceSet a ten-minute limit for a first draft and file it as a seedling.
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Link before you file
A note without links is a seed left in a drawer. Before storing anything, we ask which existing note it touches and write one sentence saying why. The sentence is the real work; the link is only its address.
In practiceDo not close a new note until it points to at least one neighbour.
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Name the stage honestly
Growth stages are a promise to the reader about how much weight a note can bear. A seedling may be wrong in interesting ways. An evergreen has been reread, challenged and left standing. Mislabelling either one erodes trust.
In practicePromote a note only after it survives a reread you did not plan.
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Water by returning
Attention is the water. A note that is revisited gathers examples, corrections and links; one that is not stays exactly as it was. We keep return visits light and let curiosity choose which notes to visit.
In practiceAt the end of a session, reopen one note you did not touch today.
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Prune without guilt
Cutting a sentence is not an insult to whoever wrote it. A pruned note lets light through to the idea that matters, and a trimmed note is almost always easier to link.
In practiceCut one sentence per reread, and keep it in the compost file.
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Leave paths between beds
A garden is walkable by design. Titles, tags and links are the paths that let a reader wander from a note on repair to one on enough without a guide. When a path is overgrown, it needs clearing.
In practiceCheck one dead end each week: a note that links to nothing and is linked from nowhere.
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Let seasons pass
Some ideas need to rest. Leaving a seedling alone for a while often shows what it was missing, and the pressure to finish everything at once is simply a form of overwatering.
In practiceWhen a note stalls, write down when you last visited and move on to another bed.
The loop
Five moves, repeated
Tending is a loop, not a line. Choose a move to see what it asks of us. Use the arrow keys to move between them.
Try it
Tend for a little while
Choose how much time you have and get a short tending plan. The checklist beside it remembers what you have ticked on this device only, and you can wipe it from the how-it-works page.
This week’s tending
Tick what you have done. Nothing here is required.
Nothing tended yet.