💭 in your head · nothing to type
Four units ago the notebook was someone else's tool. Now you have: a working notebook, an understanding of the mechanics underneath, an inspection checklist, and a rule for choosing formats.
One transition remains — from course material to your own. Bring to mind a task from your life where you are drowning in sources right now. A work topic you must get into; a decision with a dozen tabs collected around it; a field you track in fits and starts.
Got one? That is the module's final exam.
💭 in your head · nothing to type
Before building — size up the boundaries you can now see.
Whatever part of your task lives in text (articles, documents, subtitles) — the notebook will take. Whatever lives in images, demonstrations, or personal experience stays overboard, and you want to know that in advance, not discover it during an inspection verdict.
Second: which of this notebook's answers will become grounds for decisions? Those get the full unit-3 checklist. The rest can live with spot checks.
1. A topic with a question, not "in general." A notebook "about marketing" is dead on arrival. A living notebook answers a question: "which newsletter format fits my product," "what is actually known about X."
2. Sources — 5–15, selected with the three looks. Every candidate goes through the module 0 check: license/availability, freshness, author. Ballast in a notebook is worse than emptiness: it dilutes every answer. If you skipped module 0, first spend five minutes on the unit "The Source or the Packaging". Without the three looks this step can't be done.
3. First question — a disagreement question. "Where do the sources argue?" is the fastest proof the notebook was worth assembling. If there is nothing to argue about, you may have loaded ten retellings of one primary source.
4. Inspection — by stakes. Answers that ground decisions get the full checklist. Background answers get spot checks: a citation click, a control question.
5. Format — by scenario. One session, one format, per unit 4.
A notebook is a workbench, not an archive. A new source appeared — add it. The question closed with a decision — the notebook did its job; do not turn it into a "just in case" graveyard.