Everything starts as an idea. From the most humble napkin drawings of sliced bread to modern graph databases, it all started with an idea. Inspiration. A key concept.
While ideas are the spark of change, the right fuel must exist for the fire to grow. If an idea is to ever evolve past a stained napkin drawing, the concept must find comradery with action, passion, and connection with ideas. Otherwise, no matter how brilliant, a lonely idea will always fizzle out and die on its own.
That makes us all sad at RamSync. We believe in ideas, we love the inspiration, cherish learning, and wish everyone a fascinating journey of discovery.
Since we want ideas to thrive, we must feed them. There are three fundamental pieces that make up ideal-fuel. Let’s take a look.
Action: Action moves the needle, is born of grit, and often is disguised as work. Collaboration with others accelerates and multiplies the advantages of action.
Passion: What do you believe? Passion stems from the heart, so dare to be remarkable.
Connection With Other Ideas: The essence of RamSync is to provide connection between ideas and thoughts, providing structure and organization so that creativity can grow.
RamSync Foundation Notes: Connection Hubs
Over years of research and industry work, we’ve found that groups of Notes tend to organically develop key concepts. These central ideas provide the framework for other thoughts. We find ourselves continually referring back to these same thoughts, making sure the connected ideas align.
For this reason, RamSync Collections offer the ability to “star” these key notes: just select the star icon in the bottom left corner!
Starring a Note does more than just add a pretty icon: these starred Notes automatically float up to the top of the Collection, letting you quickly refer back to the foundational ideas of your Collection.
By sorting these starred Notes, they become the first ideas in your collection, the Foundation on which other topics revolve. We refer to these as Foundation Notes.
Foundation Notes hold the critical role as central hubs on which other ideas can branch and grow. Foundation Notes play a variety of roles, the starting point, the beginning of inspiration as well as the index Note documenting key icons and colors in a graph. We think it is a tragedy when good ideas die a lonely death of isolation. Which is why we built RamSync!
Foundation Notes: Idea Hubs
The first way to leverage the power of Foundation Notes is use these Notes as the central hubs of a Collection. Almost like the center of the spider web, Grand Central Station, or the nexus of thought on a topic.
Finding the hub or key idea is a skill, and one worth practicing. It helps to unlock related concepts, hone focus, spark creativity through connections, and improve communications.
Just like any number of key concepts can exist for a plan or strategy, a Collection can incorporate any number of Foundation Notes. Each Collection will be different, based on topic and needs so experiment and see what works best for you!
These Notes should help provide at-a-glance context, re-centering head-space around the most important pieces in a Collection. From there additional Notes can further support, explore, or shape topics and ideas.
Foundation Notes: Distilling Ideas
A second way to leverage Foundation Notes is to use them as focal points to distill key ideas down into the most basic building blocks. This is great for learning, sharing/teaching, and sparking creativity.
“If you can’t explain it to a six year old, you don’t understand it yourself.” Albert Einstein, or possibly, Lord Ernest Rutherford who shared his thoughts with barmaids.
Extracting key concepts is critical for learning. Synthesizing information so that knowledge transcends rote memorization is the first step to true mastery.
The ability to hone in on the important core not only speeds up learning, but it helps communicate ideas with others, build mental clarity, and streamline decision making processes.
Foundational Examples
Sometimes you know which Notes will be Foundation Notes ahead of time, while other times these key ideas reveal themselves throughout the Note creation process. Let’s take a look both occurrences.
Known Foundation Notes
Known Foundation Notes can come from key initiatives in a business meeting, key concepts in a class, or main themes in novel.
Metrics and missions are the bread and butter of many modern businesses. Setting these key metrics and missions as Foundation Notes ensures that actions are aligned to these desired outcomes.
In a STEM class, such as Calculus, your instructor may tell you there are three units you will cover: limits (how things behave), differentiation (how things change), and integration (how things add up). These form our Foundation Notes and we will connect new ideas to them throughout the class to form a comprehensive and practical view of Calculus.
When writing a story with long arcs, you may need to ensure each segment of the saga connects to the central unifying ideas. In Harry Potter, each book has connections back to the prophecy, which would be a Foundation Note in a Harry Potter story arc Collection.
Not all Foundation Notes are planned from the very beginning. Sometimes, they emerge throughout the process.
Emerging Foundation Notes
For example, we were outlining a fictional space novel, and we know the story is going to follow the daring space pilot Captain Annie, then our heroine would get her own Note as a Foundation Note in the space novel Collection.
As the story pieces are constructed and connected across Notes, we may realize that Captain Annie’s slightly crazy Uncle Mrumph is the perfect comic relief for our gritty adventure. Making him a foundational character in the storyline. Our planning of the story may not have started with Uncle Mrumph as a key character, but over time, his increased importance in the story means his Note needed to become a Foundation Note, connecting to our two main characters and their daring space escapades.
We’ve found that a Collection may have up to a dozen Foundation Notes before it begins to become too cluttered (this number does vary depending on the subject matter and individual). Try starting out with a few Foundation Notes and then adjust as needed. In no time, your Collections will begin to take on a life of their own, and the right number of Foundation Notes will organically develop; listen to your Collections and you’ll be amazed at what they tell you!
Action, Passion, Connection
At the nexus of Action, Passion, and Connection we can find the leverage to move the world.
We can focus our ideas, cultivating our Passion from within. By focusing our thoughts and grounding ideas we can share our passion with others, kindling the spark of learning and excitement.
Connection is all around us, it is up to us to find it and cultivate those relationships. Relationships with others, with ideas, with growth itself. We believe in the power of connection, it is why we built RamSync to ensure everyone has a framework to connect and collaborate on ideas. Also, feel free to connect with us any time, it is what we are all about!
So we tip our hats to you, and wish everyone luck with a bit of passion, with drive, with the desire to learn and leverage to build a brighter tomorrow!
RamSync: Notes Evolved!
RamSync embraces the concept of foundation notes, providing the first intuitive platform on which to structure ideas for faster learning and creativity.
Throw down endless numbers of Foundation Notes, connect ideas, build mental models, weave knowledge webs or start growing your own Zettelkasten.
We believe everyone should be able to quickly stay organized and recall any information, exactly when they need it. That’s why we made RamSync simple and intuitive.
Take a look at the RamSync Quick Start guide to see how RamSync can power your own Foundation Notes and ideas.
Do you have questions about what RamSync can do for you? Drop us a note and we’ll get back to you quickly!
