What is note granularity?

Note granularity is a concept in personal epistemology: The smallest useful unit is the level of decomposition where each piece carries independent meaning — small enough to be precise, large enough to be self-contained.

Example: You take notes during a strategy meeting. One note reads: 'We need to rethink our approach to customer onboarding, retention metrics, and pricing tiers.' That's three ideas fused into one sentence. Split it into three separate notes — each about one concern — and suddenly each note can link to different projects, attract different evidence, and evolve on its own schedule. The compound note was smaller than a transcript but still too big. The three atomic notes are the smallest useful units.

This concept is part of Phase 2 (Atomicity and Decomposition) in the How to Think curriculum, which builds the epistemic infrastructure for atomicity and decomposition.