Atomic notes

An atomic note is a note that contains a single concept. Its size is not defined by length, but by focus: atomic notes are usually short because they capture only one idea at a time. Atomicity, therefore, refers to the number of concepts in a note, not its word count.

The idea comes from Sönke Ahrens’ book How to Take Smart Notes (How to Take Smart Notes: One Simple Technique to Boost Writing, Learning and Thinking – for Students, Academics and Nonfiction Book Writers: Ahrens, Sönke: 9781542866507: Amazon.com: Books), which presents an implementation of Niklas Luhmann’s Zettelkasten Method (Zettelkästen).

For longer notes that combine multiple concepts, I use the term Molecular notes.