[Epistemic Status: Scroll to the bottom for my follow-up thoughts on this from
months/years later.]
Early this year, Conor White-Sullivan introduced me to the Zettelkasten method
of note-taking. I would say that this significantly increased my research
productivity. I’ve been saying “at least 2x”. Naturally, this sort of thing is
difficult to quantify. The truth is, I think it may be more like 3x, especially
along the dimension of “producing ideas” and also “early-stage development of
ideas”. (What I mean by this will become clearer as I describe how I think about
research productivity more generally.) However, it is also very possible that
the method produces serious biases in the types of ideas produced/developed,
which should be considered. (This would be difficult to quantify at the best of
times, but also, it should be noted that other factors have dramatically
decreased my overall research productivity. So, unfortunately, someone looking
in from outside would not