I used to break into seemingly infinite tangents when I would talk about ideas because I would follow the associations my mind made in real time. This is the train of thought.
Think about it, it’s a train of thought because when we’re speaking it’s forced into linear structure. Therefore it’s important not to jump too much or else you “lose” it. Track of where you are. A tangent is an offense to the cohesion of a message.
Atomic notes have largely solved this problem because I was able to practice whittling away at side-bars and find clear stopping points for each idea.
Imagine clicking onto every link as soon as I placed them in these notes. This is how I spoke. I tried to cast a bigger and bigger net in my attempts to capture a few ideas and bundle them together. Working on the ideas, making them simpler and smaller, that is what now allows me to bundle them together more nicely.
I still have a wildly associative brain, but my practice within the zettelkasten helps me to articulate my associations and save other people from suffering through my own Rough drafters speak.
It makes so much sense to me now why I was drawn to obsidian and never made good use of other organization structures, sure, I could have taken the time to learn them, but this seems so natural for me. It’s closer to the way I think in my head.