Note-first approach

I propose we make the design of individual notes the primary factor, instead of tags or notebooks. This has many advantages:

It works well with any other organizational system, without depending on them (including but not limited to tags and notebooks, if you want to use those)
It makes all work you do on your notes value-added, because you’re spending close to 100% of the time engaging directly with the content itself
It can more easily survive migrations to other devices, storage locations, and even programs, because note content is much more likely to be preserved than overarching structure
It cultivates skills (succinct communication, finding the core of an idea, visual thinking, etc.) that are inherently valuable and highly transferrable to other activities
It makes your notes more legible and useful to others (unlike your internal notebook structure, which is only for 

your use), promoting collaboration and sharing

With a note-first approach, your notes become like individual atoms — each with its own unique properties, but ready to be assembled into elements, molecules, and compounds that are far more powerful. – Progressive Summarization: A Practical Technique for Designing Discoverable N…