How can I allow my thinking to accrete over time?

I am a big fan of the concept of Evergreen notes from Andy Matuschak. I very much believe in Build systems to revisit ideas over time – the unit of knowledge work should be non-transient, accrete over time, actively sharpen your thinking, and allow connections between ideas to emerge organically.

However, every time I have tried to write notes in this format, it has felt like an uphill battle. I end up with some notes but it feels like I am forcing myself to write them.

My interests right now are in the research realm, where I believe judgement about which questions to ask & pursue, the sharpness of those questions, and overall question quality are key. I find questions more interesting than answers, and want to Treat answers as tools more.

So for now, I am trying out organizing my thinking primarily in the form of Evergreen questions (called probes), with standard Evergreen notes (called traces) as the building blocks for these longer question-notes. Probes are still intended to be (relatively) atomic, concept-oriented, and densely linked, as the original Evergreen notes prescribes.

One potential failure mode is ending up with a ton of vague untestable questions, which may be worse than useless because Ideas are not knowledge until they are tested or experienced. I don’t yet know how to solve for this, but I will keep it in mind & revisit once the terrain is more populated.