The Balance of Capturing and Documenting Human Thought

Human thought is endlessly complex, it’s fluid, inexact, and at times, messy. 47% of the time, the thoughts a person has are completely unrelated to the task they’re engaged in. Yet at the same time, thoughts are at the basis of creative and practical actions. It’s fundamentally because of this that the documentation of ideas is so important.

Documentation, at its core, is meant to turn ideas into a reality. Writing down a goal makes it more likely the goal will be achieved. Documenting the steps to a procedure makes it easy to repeat and engage in consistently. It’s important to take notes, important to capture unique ideas.

However this is a balance to be struck in how one engages in documenting ideas. Physical note taking, for instance, is notably slow and, at times, messy. It allows for more freeform documentation, with different styles of writing and drawings adding a layer of complexity. Yet fundamentally taking notes through vocal transcription or by simply typing is faster and more precise.

Speed is one of the most important qualities of documentation. It is useful to take the time to capture ideas, but if it takes too much time it feels burdensome. This is where things like AI come in as a middle ground between speed and creativity. AI can ask informational questions, add onto text, and expand on ideas. This helps to foster creativity in the documentation process. Simultaneously, AI interacts online and responds very quickly. This helps to ensure the note taking process is efficient, and quick.

The balance that is struck then is found in the combination of creativity and quickness. AI expands the borders of idea capture through interactive elements with content creator tools. Yet it doesn’t do so at the sacrifice of speed as paper documentation does. AI note taking is instead quite quick, easy to store, and easy to refer back to. It’s not a perfect balance as services like chatGPT have shown how speed can be prioritized over creativity. Yet AI ultimately acts as a tool, and it has the potential to strike a balance in a very unique way.