Outliner — block structure as the atom of every note
Why you should not think in sentences, but in blocks — and how that carries every later link.
Transcript
What if a note did not begin with a sentence, but with a bullet — and the whole rest took shape only as you type? That is where the outliner comes in, and over the next few minutes you will hear why it is the foundation under everything else in mium.
If you learn only one feature in mium, make it the outliner. Block references, tags, backlinks, queries, templates — every one of them assumes that a statement is addressable. And a statement becomes addressable only once it is a block of its own. As long as your thoughts stay glued into long sentences, you can read them, but you cannot reuse them.
The first rule is the only one that truly counts: one statement equals one block. If a block carries two statements, you can reference only one of them — the other gets lost in the backlink noise. Atomicity is not pedantry; it is the condition for a statement to stand elsewhere later without loss of context.
You make the hierarchy with Tab and Shift-Tab, not with keyboard choreography and not with the mouse. Bullet lists out of Word are not outlines — they are itemised points at the same depth. And the address of a statement is never its path in the outline, but the block ID, the UUID. You may move the path any time you like; the backlink follows on its own.
Expanding is reading, not editing. A collapsed outline is your table of contents; you edit only what you need right now. Depth four is the reading limit — anything below that needs a sub-page of its own. And unlike the final Word document, an outline is never closed. It grows, shrinks, shifts, and stays referenceable throughout. That is the point, not the bug.
In the pilot a strategy team migrated fourteen quarterly Word documents onto outlines. Drafting the next quarter afterwards took two hours instead of one and a half days — not because anyone typed faster, but because the arguments were already in place as blocks and only needed re-framing.
The honest question at the end: which statement from your last document would you have reused elsewhere, but had to copy instead of reference? Write once, use everywhere. Your second brain keeps every statement addressable — a companion that thinks along with you, not a filing cabinet.
Why the outliner comes first
If you use only one feature in mium, make it the outliner. Block references, tags, backlinks, queries, templates — every one of them assumes that a statement is addressable. And it becomes addressable only once it is a block of its own.
The rules
Atomicity is the only discipline that counts. If a block carries two statements, you can reference only one of them — the other gets lost in the backlink noise.
Tab and Shift-Tab are the only tools for parent-child relationships. Bullet lists out of Word are not outlines — they are itemised points at the same depth.
The path of a statement in the outline is a view — the block’s UUID is the truth. You may move it any time, and the backlink follows.
A collapsed outline is a table of contents. You edit only what you need right now. Depth 4 is the reading limit — anything below that needs a sub-page.
Unlike the final Word document, an outline is a living document. Statements migrate into concept pages, return as a backlink, get restructured. That is the point — not the bug.
Before / after
| Before | After |
|---|---|
| Q2_competitor_analysis.docx··12 pages of running text··quarter change = a refactoring project | page Q2-competitor··outline of 38 blocks··every statement ((blockref)) citable in Q3, Q4, … |
When one block should become two
- When the block carries an “and” that joins two separate statements.
- When the block holds a citation in brackets — the citation belongs in a child block.
- When the block carries a “but” — the counter-position needs a block of its own, or it gets lost.
- When you already reference the block from three other places — it is a concept and belongs on its own page.
- When the block runs over two screen lines without being a list.
- Atomicity
- A note is atomic when it holds exactly one self-contained statement. Atomicity is the precondition for reuse — only an atomic statement can stand in another place without loss of context.
The human side
Outliner discipline is a writing technique, not a feature of the product. At first the extra Tab keystroke feels like bureaucracy. After four weeks you see that linear, sentence-style writing only seemed quicker because the next-quarter effort stayed invisible.
Atomic notes are not an end in themselves. They are the basis for every reuse — and so for every hour you do not work twice.
Done in three weeks
- Week 1: learn outliner discipline — keep one note a day deliberately atomic.
- Week 2: migrate three existing Word documents — deliberately “one statement = one block”.
- Week 3: set your first block refs — reference a statement from document A in document B instead of copying it.
Atom by atom, not page by page.
Write once, use everywhere. Your second brain keeps every statement addressable — a companion that thinks along with you, not a filing cabinet.
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