Why does good questions fail?

The most common reason good questions fails: Storing only answers — highlights, summaries, conclusions — and never capturing the questions that drove you to the material in the first place. The result is a knowledge base full of dead endpoints. No tension, no open loops, no reason to return. Your system becomes an archive instead of an engine.

The fix: Open your notes or knowledge system. Find three claims or facts you've stored recently. For each one, write the question it answers — and then write a second question it raises but doesn't resolve. You now have three answered atoms and three open atoms. Notice which set feels more generative.

The underlying principle is straightforward: A well-formed question is as valuable an atom as a well-formed answer.