Forgetting things makes the things you do actually know/remember important.
See also: right to be forgotten, lost knowledge
What if books and essays needed their words to be marked up/scribbled on/highlighted regularly or they would fade away? (demo by Winnie Lim)
Writing
I think a lot about how a lot of people who use Notion/Obsidian/tool for thought try to write everything down but maybe forgetting is what allows us to remember what is actually salient
We don’t write things down to remember them. We write them down to forget.
We did the most important work when we wrote the ideas down. “I’m not writing it down to remember it later,” declares every Fields Notes notebook, “I’m writing it down to remember it now.” The action of writing is what counts, what imprints important ideas in our brain. The note itself is a permission slip to let things go.
See also: tools for thought