Rubber Ducking as a Cognitive Phenomenon

Many software engineers share a familiar experience:
while explaining a problem to someone else, the solution suddenly becomes obvious.

This does not happen because the other person provided the answer.
It happens because, in order to make the problem understandable to another mind, one must reorganize the relevant knowledge internally.
Very often, the act of re-articulation itself resolves the issue.

A well-known folk technique emerged from this observation: placing a yellow rubber duck on the desk and explaining the problem to it.
No feedback is required.
The duck merely serves as a minimal external listener that forces cognitive reorganization.

From Encyclopedic Notes to Question-Form Notes

My earlier note-taking style resembled an encyclopedia:
entries organized by topics, definitions, and static descriptions.

Over time, this proved inefficient for retrieval.
For example, a note describing how to fold clothes existed, but when I later wanted to do the folding, it did not naturally surface in my search process.

I realized that when I want to find a note, my mind does not recall a topic.
It generates a question.

As a result, I shifted my how-to notes into question-form titles—phrases that resemble what would naturally appear in my internal dialogue.
Flutter development notes, for example, are titled as questions rather than categories.

This allows instant search to surface notes through recognition rather than recall.

Search as a Cognitive Exercise, Not an Optimization Problem

There is further room to strengthen real-time search:

  • expanding synonyms of “how to”
  • moving from keyword matching to semantic interpretation
  • deliberately avoiding overly precise retrieval

A note system should not aim to minimize search effort.
Instead, it should encourage repeated searching, because searching itself reinforces deep memory.

Conceptually, this resembles spaced repetition—but driven by search impulse rather than scheduled prompts.

Finding information may be inefficient.
Entering deep thinking is efficient.

Against Recommendation Algorithms in Personal Notes

Many discussions warn about the psychological risks of variable reward mechanisms in search and recommendation systems.

In a personal note system, recommendation algorithms are undesirable.

Notes should surprise you.
Recommendation systems create filtering bubbles that narrow cognitive exploration.

Search should be initiated by intent, not shaped by optimization.

Digital tools easily alienate their users.
The relationship between the thinker and the tool requires constant awareness.

Notes Are Toys; Thinking Is the Practice

It is not wrong to say that note-taking software is an electronic toy.
The mistake lies in treating it as a substitute for thinking.

Rather than building a “second brain,” the more important task is training the first one.

A note system should function as an expert system that answers questions posed by your future self—often in moments of internal conflict or disagreement.

Toward a Constructed Rubber Duck

With the rise of large language models, it becomes technically possible to construct an explicit rubber duck:
a conversational counterpart that supports articulation without preemptive optimization.

The challenge is not intelligence.
The challenge is restraint.

The system must help reorganize thought without replacing it.

Closing Note

This text is not a prescription.
It records an evolving relationship between cognition, search, and tools.

It remains intentionally inefficient, incomplete, and open-ended.