Contemporaneous Notes

What is the significance of contemporaneous notes and how can they impact our thoughtful knowing 'the next right thing' to do?

We are continuously processing sensations from our perceptions of the world. It doesn't matter if we are asleep or awake, it doesn't matter if we are 'paying attention' or distracted. Our sensations of our experiences are processing below the experiences that specifically come to consciousness.

We experience more sensations of the world than we are able to bring to consciousness. What comes to consciousness are experiences that are so impactful that we make the cognitive and mental effort to put those experiences into words - first to ourselves, and later, if warranted, to others. The point is that it takes effort to put our experiences into words, and there are many experiences we process at a subconscious level that don't reach the level of significance to require conscious processing.

Contemporaneous note-taking provides a real-time process for articulating experiences into words that may have gone without notice. At the same time, those experiences that do not rise to the significance of contemporaneous note-taking shift slightly closer to consciousness as other cognitive and emotional 'notes' are externalized in writing.

The process of writing contemporaneous notes relieves our cognitive and emotional systems of carrying significant experiences in memory, it also makes it possible for us to get closer to the subterranean experiences that are aggregating over time but have not risen to consciousness. 

In this discussion, contemporaneous notes are assumed to be written, the process of turning experiences into words, sentences, paragraphs and essays. Another way we can write up our contemporaneous notes is to make drawings, videos, diagrams, and paintings of our experiences. Any of these forms of rendering have the capacity to reveal the hidden patterns of micro-aggregations that are becoming significant over time.