How do you find connections between notes you have already written?
Search only finds what you already know to look for, so it is useless for connections you have forgotten you could make. What works instead is looking at what your notes have in common: two notes sharing an unusual tag are far more likely to be genuinely related than two sharing a common one.
Why rare tags matter more than common ones
If forty of your notes are tagged "writing", that tag tells you almost nothing about any pair of them. If two are tagged "mutual-aid", that is a real signal — you only used the tag twice, months apart, and the fact that both notes earned it is the connection. Weighting rare tags above common ones is what separates a useful suggestion from a list of everything you have ever written.
Doing it in Yarnboard
- Tag notes as you write them, without worrying about a taxonomy. Specific tags are more useful here than tidy ones.
- Open Discovery, or click the thread icon on any note card to jump straight to that note's connections. Discovery is a Pro feature.
- Follow the threads out from a note you are working on rather than browsing the whole graph — the useful path is usually two or three hops from where you started.
When this does not help
This approach needs a body of notes to work on. With thirty notes there is not much to discover that you do not already remember. It starts earning its keep somewhere in the hundreds, which is also the point at which searching stops being enough.
Common questions
How is this different from search?
Search answers a question you already have. This surfaces pairs you would not have thought to search for, because the link is a tag you used twice rather than a phrase you remember.
Do I need a consistent tagging system?
No, and a strict taxonomy actually works against it. Specific, occasionally messy tags produce better connections than a small set of tidy categories.