Writing for an imagined audience changes what you write. You add context you wouldn’t need, smooth out the rough edges, avoid the honest uncertainty that makes notes useful for thinking. A note written for yourself can be partial, provisional, and contradictory: that’s closer to how thinking actually works. [[Writing the way you think]] describes the same thing: follow the association before imposing structure. The audience question can come later.
[[Evergreen notes should be atomic]] works better when written privately because atomicity requires honest judgment about what the note is actually claiming, and that judgment is harder to make when you’re also managing how it will land with a reader. The pressure to write clearly for others too early turns [[Zettelkasten as a modular architecture]] into a publishing system rather than a thinking one.