What does it mean that sequences emerge from atoms?

Ordered series are built by linking atoms together not by writing one long document.

Example: You have 40 separate notes about improving your team's decision-making process. Individually, each is an observation or a principle. But when you lay them out and start linking — this one follows that one, this cluster forms an argument, these five become a sequence on pre-mortem techniques — a coherent framework emerges that you never could have outlined in advance. The structure was always latent in the atoms. You just had to connect them.

Try this: Pick a topic you've been thinking about for weeks. Gather every atomic note you have on it — even tangential ones. Spread them out (physically or digitally) and start arranging them into a linear sequence. Don't force an outline. Move the atoms around until you find an order that produces a 'train of thought' — where each note leads naturally to the next. Write down the sequence. You now have the skeleton of an argument you discovered rather than designed.