Okay, so let’s talk about this Harper Hempel thing I tried out a while back.
I first stumbled across the name, Harper Hempel, on some obscure online forum. People were talking about this supposedly revolutionary way to organize project notes, some kind of personal knowledge management system. Sounded fancy, but the description was super vague. No solid manuals, no clear website, just whispers and mentions here and there. Curiosity got the better of me, you know how it is.
So, I decided to give it a shot. My first step was just trying to figure out what it actually was. That was a job in itself. I spent a good few evenings digging through forum archives and random blog comments. It felt like searching for a ghost. Bits and pieces emerged, suggesting some kind of tag-based system mixed with daily journaling prompts related to your work.
Trying to Make it Work
Alright, I thought, let’s piece this together. I grabbed a plain notebook and my usual note-taking app. Based on the fragments I found, I tried to implement the ‘Harper Hempel method’:
- Started tagging every little thought or task with multiple, often overlapping, keywords. The idea seemed to be about creating a dense web of connections.
- Tried the ‘daily prompt’ thing – starting each day by writing answers to supposedly Hempel-designed questions like “What is the single most unclear thing about your main project today?”.
- Attempted to link physical notebook pages to digital notes using some weird referencing system I saw mentioned. Like, page 5 of notebook ‘A’ connects to digital note tag ‘#ProjectXChaos’.
Honestly, it felt incredibly clunky. The tagging took way more time than just writing the note. I was spending ages thinking about how to tag something instead of focusing on the actual work. The daily prompts were okay sometimes, but often felt forced and didn’t really lead anywhere useful. They just generated more notes to tag.
The physical-digital linking thing? A total mess. Keeping track of which notebook page referred to which digital tag became a nightmare. It was supposed to create some kind of ‘holistic view’ or whatever, but it just created more hassle. My desk ended up cluttered with notebooks with cryptic codes scribbled in the margins.
What Happened in the End
After about three weeks of trying to force this system into my workflow, I just stopped. It wasn’t making me more productive; it was doing the opposite. I spent more time managing the system than getting actual stuff done. It felt like busywork disguised as organization.
Looking back, I think the whole Harper Hempel thing might just be one of those internet myths. Maybe someone somewhere found a system that worked for them, gave it a name, and the details got warped and exaggerated as people talked about it online. There was no solid foundation, just fragments. It wasn’t a real, usable method, more like a collection of half-baked ideas someone threw together.
So yeah, that was my practical experience with ‘Harper Hempel’. Tried it, wrestled with it, and eventually ditched it. Went back to my simpler, maybe less ‘revolutionary’, but actually functional way of taking notes. Sometimes, the fancy, mysterious stuff is just… not worth the trouble.
