Question
How do I practice tag taxonomy?
Quick Answer
Open your note system and pick 10 recent atoms. For each one, add 1–3 tags that answer this question: 'If I had this same insight again in a different context, what word would I search for?' Do not overthink. Do not build a taxonomy first. Tag by instinct, then review your tags as a batch. Notice which tags recur.
Notice which atoms are now connected that were not connected before.
Common pitfall: Creating a tag taxonomy before you have enough atoms to need one. You design a careful hierarchy — #work/meetings/retrospectives — and then spend more energy maintaining the structure than writing the notes. The system collapses under its own organizational weight. The opposite failure is never tagging at all, leaving your atoms as isolated fragments that cannot find each other.
This practice connects to Atomicity and Decomposition — building it as a repeatable habit compounds over time.
Learn more in these lessons
- Tags are lightweight relationships
A tag is the simplest way to declare that two atoms share something in common.
Go beyond the answer
This topic is part of Build Your AI Second Brain — a guided sequence of 16 lessons.
After completing this path you will have a capture habit that catches thinking before it decays, notes structured so both you and an AI can retrieve them (atomic, identified, context-rich), a personal knowledge graph AI tools can answer from, and the review loop that keeps the system alive. Ask-don't-search becomes your default.
Start the path →