Emergent scholarship

Course Lessons

Temporary notes

10 min read

Info

Objective: Use temporary notes to capture fleeting information

Summary: Temporary notes capture the ideas, tasks, and information that arise when you can’t immediately act on them or don’t yet know where they belong in your system. Unlike daily notes that organise your day or permanent notes that preserve lasting insights, temporary notes are explicitly designed to be processed and then discarded. This lesson explores how to create a simple, reliable system for capturing temporary information without letting it accumulate into another source of anxiety.

Key habits:

  • Capture temporary notes in a single, dedicated location rather than across multiple systems
  • Process your temporary notes at least weekly, moving information into your workflow or discarding it
  • Delete temporary notes once you’ve acted on the information they contain
  • Use simple tools that load quickly and work across all your devices

Introduction

Fleeting [temporary] notes are only useful if you review them within a day or so and turn them into proper notes you can use later. Fleeting literature notes can make sense if you need an extra step to understand or grasp an idea, but they will not help you in the later stages of the writing process, as no underlined sentence will ever present itself when you need it in the development of an argument. - Sönke Ahrens (2017)

Fleeting thoughts tend not to have a ‘home’. You’re walking between meetings and remember you need to call the finance office. You’re in a seminar and someone mentions a relevant article. You’re making dinner and think of a way to restructure your module. You’re reviewing a manuscript and spot a methodological approach to explore further.

These moments of insight, tasks, and ideas arise constantly, but they rarely appear when you’re in a position to act on them immediately. Without a reliable system for capturing them, you face an uncomfortable choice: interrupt what you’re doing to deal with it now, try to hold it in your head until later, or let it disappear entirely. The first option destroys your focus, the second creates anxiety and cognitive load, and the third means losing potentially valuable information.

Temporary notes provide a designated home for information that’s important enough to capture but doesn’t yet have a clear destination in your system. The key word here is ‘temporary’ – these notes are not meant to accumulate forever. They’re a holding space, a buffer between the moment something occurs to you and the point when you can properly process it into your workflow.

The nature of temporary notes

Temporary notes are fundamentally different from other types of notes in your system. While daily notes organise your day, literature notes capture your understanding of sources, and permanent notes preserve lasting insights, temporary notes are operational and transient. They exist to capture information at the point of origin and then be processed into something else or discarded entirely.

Think of temporary notes as the intake valve for your entire note-taking system. They’re where information first enters before you’ve had time to think about where it should ultimately live. This makes them the simplest kind of note to create – there’s no need for structure, context, or formatting. You’re just getting the information out of your head and into a reliable external system.

The test for a temporary note: Ask yourself “What will I do with this note once I’ve processed it?” If the answer is “throw it away” or “delete it,” then it’s temporary.

What belongs in temporary notes

CategoryExamplesProcessing approach
Immediate action reminders”Call finance office about expense claim"
"Email Sarah by Wednesday re: conference”		Move to daily notes for specific days, then delete
Content to consumeArticle links, podcast episodes, book referencesAdd to reference manager or delete if not consumed within a week
Half-formed ideasTeaching observations, research connections, conceptual insightsDevelop into permanent notes or project notes, or discard
Information fragmentsRoom numbers, deadlines, phone numbers, referencesMove to appropriate system (calendar, contacts, project notes) then delete

Key principle for content capture

Just because something caught your attention doesn’t mean you must engage with it. When processing temporary notes about content to consume, be honest: if a week has passed and you haven’t felt compelled to open that article, you probably never will. Delete it and move on.

Creating your temporary notes system

Choosing your capture method

Physical notebook advantages:

  • Works everywhere, never runs out of battery
  • No digital distractions
  • Small pocket notebook you carry everywhere
  • Creates cognitive buffer when writing by hand

Digital capture requirements:

  • Loads quickly (if you wait for an app to open, you won’t use it consistently)
  • Works across all devices
  • Synchronises reliably
  • Simple, without unnecessary features
  • Apps like Joplin or Simplenote work well

Critical decision: Avoid using the same app for temporary notes and permanent notes unless it allows clear separation. You don’t want fleeting captures mixed with carefully developed permanent notes.

Establishing a review schedule

Weekly review is the natural rhythm for processing temporary notes. During your weekly review, work through all temporary notes created during the past week and make decisions about each one:

  • Some become tasks in your daily notes for the coming week
  • Some get moved into project notes or literature notes
  • Some spark ideas for permanent notes
  • Many simply get deleted because they no longer seem important

This weekly rhythm prevents temporary notes from becoming overwhelming while being frequent enough that you can remember the context around each note.

Processing effectively

When reviewing temporary notes, use this decision tree:

  1. Is this still relevant? → If not, delete immediately
  2. If relevant, what’s the next action?
    • Action reminder → Move to daily notes for specific day
    • Content to consume → Add to reference manager or delete
    • Developing idea → Create project/permanent note or delete
    • Information to file → Move to appropriate system, then delete

Be willing to delete liberally. If you captured something a week ago and haven’t acted on it, and it’s not immediately clear why it’s important, the default should be deletion. You’re not losing valuable information; you’re clearing space for what actually matters.

Temporary notes in academic contexts

During conferences

You’re in a conference session and the presenter mentions a useful methodology. Quick temporary note: “Bayesian network analysis – check applicability to survey data project.” In the coffee break, a colleague mentions a funding opportunity. Another note: “ESRC call – collaborative projects – deadline November – talk to Maria.”

You’re not processing this information in the moment; you’re ensuring it gets captured for proper consideration during your weekly review.

Between teaching sessions

After a lecture, a student asks about meeting to discuss their dissertation. You don’t have your calendar available, but you capture: “Schedule meeting with Alex re: dissertation proposal – prefers Tuesdays.” In the corridor, a colleague mentions the curriculum meeting moved to Thursday. Quick note: “Curriculum meeting moved Thursday 14:00 – check conflicts.”

When you’re back at your desk, you process these notes – scheduling the meeting and updating your calendar.

During reading and research

You’re reading a journal article and come across a relevant reference. Rather than interrupting your flow: “Find Patel & Chen 2023 on mixed methods triangulation.” Halfway through a chapter when you need to leave: “Chapter 4 page 87 – connection to threshold concepts – compare with Meyer & Land.”

These captures ensure insights don’t get lost when you need to shift contexts.

Pause and reflect

Reflection: managing temporary notes systems

The simplicity of temporary notes can be deceptive. Many academics find their temporary note systems become yet another source of stress rather than relief.

Common pitfalls:

Capturing too much: With low-friction capture systems, it’s easy to save every interesting article, every potential research direction, every passing thought. When you have hundreds of temporary notes to process, the review becomes overwhelming. Be more selective: before creating a temporary note, ask yourself “Am I genuinely likely to act on this?”

The perfectionist trap: Spending time optimising your temporary notes system instead of using it. A simple notebook and pen, or a basic notes app on your phone, is sufficient. Optimise only after you’ve built the habit of consistent use.

Holding onto notes too long: If you’re keeping temporary notes for months “just in case,” they’ve ceased being temporary and have become a collection of information you feel obligated to do something with. Regular, ruthless processing with liberal deletion is essential.

The goal is to keep the system small enough that reviewing it feels manageable rather than daunting.

Activity

Key takeaways

  • Design temporary notes to be deleted, not accumulated: The defining characteristic of a temporary note is its impermanence. Once you’ve processed the information – moving it into your workflow, pursuing the idea, or acknowledging it’s no longer relevant – the temporary note should be deleted. This isn’t just tidying; it’s essential to keeping the system sustainable. A temporary notes system that grows indefinitely becomes another source of stress.

  • Create a single, dedicated location: When temporary information is scattered across sticky notes, margins of documents, draft emails, multiple apps, and scraps of paper, you lose the benefits of having a system at all. The cognitive load of tracking where you might have captured something often exceeds just keeping it in your head. Choose one capture method and commit to using only that method for temporary notes.

  • Use weekly processing to transform temporary notes: The capture is only half of the system; regular review and processing is what makes temporary notes effective. Without weekly processing, temporary notes accumulate and become overwhelming. The weekly rhythm is long enough that you can remember context but short enough that you won’t be drowning in unprocessed notes.

Resources

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