Notes - Emergence Levels

Nick Milo describes the ARC ideation workflow process as idea emergence across various levels: sparks, ideas, notes, maps, and outputs.

This is an appropriate way to think about the process of making notes and maps. It's a powerful combination that enables linking my thinking.

1: Creating notes from sparks

Arc Browser, Reader, and Drafts really help me in Level 1 to capture all the individual sparks and interests and create notes with my ideas and thoughts (dots).

Arc browser, Reader, and Drafts help me with Idea Emergence in Level 1 to discover and gather all those interesting sparks from the world around me.

I have a few Arc browser spaces to help me manage the Add part of the ARC ideation workflow: Web (browsing), Read (reading), Focus (active work), Add (to Obsidian), and Efforts (for interests).

I use Obsidian in Level 1 to make those unique atomic notes in my PKM system.

2: Linking related ideas

At Level 2, Arc Browser helps me with collecting links as tabs and clustering them into groups related to my efforts.

Level 2 is represented by all the links between those tabs discovered in my browsing focus.

3: Collecting and clustering notes into maps

In Level 3, Arc Browser spaces and groups work nicely with LYT Efforts and Obsidian maps.

Level 3 starts to emerge for these related links as I cluster their tabs into folders to move to the Add space. These folders of Markdown links are pasted into Obsidian maps or notes.

4: Connecting maps for organization and navigation

For Level 4 & 5, Obsidian integrates my maps with each other and my Home note; Arc Browser integrates my maps and notes with external links from the internet web.

At level 4, I might even gather related groups of folders together around a particular effort.

5: Sharing knowledge with others

In level 5, I use effort, topic, and output maps to guide the further development of notes as I shape them for sharing in my digital garden, website, and social media.