My Digital Garden

Mind Garden Framework

Mind Garden Framework

An expression of a taxonomy used by many authors of Digital Gardens to identify where a given note sits on the Continuum of continual note growth.

Describes the process of progressive summarisation of ideas and further linking,aggregation and synthesis.

Expressed by Soundarya Balasubramani a.k.a Pooja as a five-level hierarchy:

  • A seed equals a source of information, in the form of an article, video, book, podcast, or even just a conversation with a friend.
  • A leaf equals extracting insights from a source of information, in the form of extracting highlights of an article, video, book, podcast, or conversation, and writing it in your own words.
  • A seedling equals building a new insight from existing insights, by spotting a connection between two leaves.
  • A plant equals aggregating insights to form a well-researched idea, by connecting seedlings with leaves and seeds. The output of a plant is generally an article or long-form essay.
  • A tree equals an entirely new body of work filled with ideas, which could be in the form of a book, course, thesis, and more. Trees take years to be nurtured in the mind garden.

See also