Maps of content: hub notes that gather, connect and navigate your ideas

Maps of content, or MOCs, are notes that gather links to other notes on a topic and arrange them so you can see, and think about, how the ideas fit together. A MOC is not just a list of links. It groups them, orders them and says in a few words why each one is there. When a topic grows past the point where you can hold it in your head, a MOC becomes the place you start from.

This guide covers where the idea comes from, when to make a MOC, the three phases a MOC goes through, the mistakes that turn it into a dull index, and how to build maps of content in Barside, a free desktop app for Windows, Linux and Mac.

Where maps of content come from

Maps of content were popularized by Nick Milo through Linking Your Thinking (LYT), especially among people who keep their notes in Obsidian. LYT describes a MOC as "a cluster of information that maps 'things' in context with other 'things'."

Its stated purpose is practical: "MOCs can help you gather, develop, and navigate ideas." MOCs sit inside LYT's wider framework, called ARC, short for Add, Relate and Communicate.

The idea works in any app that links notes. It needs no special feature, only notes, links and the habit of writing a few words around them.

When to make a map of content: the Mental Squeeze Point

You do not need a MOC for every topic, and you should not make them in advance. LYT names the right moment the Mental Squeeze Point: "when your unsorted knowledge becomes so messy it overwhelms and discourages you."

You will recognize it. A search for a topic returns twenty notes and you no longer know which matter. You keep re-reading the same notes to remember how they relate. You avoid a topic because opening it feels like walking into a messy room.

LYT's fix is to "create a new safe space to assemble and organize the knowledge you're currently working on". That new space is the MOC.

The three phases of a MOC

LYT describes three overlapping phases a MOC moves through. In our own words:

Gather

Bring the scattered notes on the topic into one note, as links. At this stage it can look like a rough list. That is fine.

Collide

Put the ideas next to each other and let them interact. Group related links under headings, notice which notes agree, which contradict and which are missing. Write a sentence beside a link when you see a connection.

Navigate

Once the MOC has a shape, it becomes a way into the topic. You open it to find your way around, to pick up where you left off, or to start writing. A MOC in this phase is a map in the plain sense.

The phases overlap. A MOC you navigate today still gathers new links next week.

Common maps of content mistakes

• Making a boring index. LYT is explicit that a MOC is not "a boring index" but "a new kind of thinking tool that supports and extends cognition". An alphabetical list of fifty links does not help you think.
• Making MOCs before you need them. A MOC built for a topic with three notes adds a layer with no benefit. Wait for the squeeze point.
• Links with no context. A link with a few words of why is worth more than a bare title.
• Never revisiting. A MOC that stopped growing two years ago may point at stale thinking. Update it when you work on the topic.
• Treating MOCs as folders. A note can belong to several MOCs. If you are moving notes into a MOC rather than linking them, you are rebuilding folders.

How to build maps of content in Barside

Barside's notes are built around links. Type [[ in any note to link another note, and every note shows a Linked from list with the sentence around each link. The Note map draws every link as a line. Those three pieces are all a MOC needs.

Spot the squeeze point

• Search. Press Alt+Shift+Space in any app, or Ctrl+K in Barside, and type the topic. If the list of notes is long and blurry, you are there.
• The note map. Open Note map and type the topic in Find a note…. Matching dots stay bright and the rest fade. A scattered constellation of bright dots with few lines between them is a topic waiting for a MOC. See the note graph view.

Gather

1. Create a note and title it clearly, like Pricing MOC, or Map · Pricing.
2. Type [[ and a few letters of each related note's title, and pick it from the list. The list searches every workspace, so a MOC can gather notes from projects, research and meetings at once.
3. For an idea that has no note yet, choose Create note at the end of the list. Barside creates it and links it in one step.

If you connected an AI in Settings → AI, Ask library in Library & briefing can help you find passages on the topic across your notes and Reading, with each source cited. Barside has no AI of its own; it uses the Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini or OpenRouter account you connect.

Collide

• Group the links under headings, such as What customers say, What competitors do, Open questions.
• Write a sentence with each link, such as "Annual plans lower churn, per [[Q2 retention review". That sentence shows up under the linked note, in its Linked from list, so the context travels both ways.
• For side-by-side comparison, add a plain table from More formatting and put links in its cells. Plain table cells hold formatted writing, links and lists.

See linked notes and backlinks for how links behave.

Navigate

• Pin your MOCs. Open Note options and choose Pin to the top, so MOCs lead their workspace and All notes.
• Give them a color. In Note options, pick a Note color for every MOC. Their cards and their dots on the note map then stand out.
• Make a home note. One note that links all your MOCs gives you a single starting point. Pin it too.
• Keep one on screen. Pin a MOC to your desktop, or dock it at the edge of your screen as a slim tab, while you write from it.

An example MOC

Say you run a small online shop and have written notes about pricing for a year: call notes with customers, a few articles saved to Reading and kept as notes, a competitor comparison, two experiments and a dozen loose ideas. Searching "pricing" returns thirty notes, and you have stopped looking. That is the squeeze point.

You make Map · Pricing and gather the thirty links in one pass. Then you sort them under four headings: What customers told us, What we tried, What others charge and Open questions. While sorting, you notice that two experiments point the opposite way from a customer call, so you write one line about it and link all three. Five notes turn out to repeat each other, so you merge them. Two links lead nowhere useful, so you drop them.

An hour later, the MOC is a page you can read top to bottom before your next pricing decision. Each note it links shows the MOC in its own Linked from list, so you can get back to the map from anywhere in the topic.

Watch the map grow

On the Note map, a note's dot grows with its number of links, so your MOCs become the large dots at the center of their clusters. Choose Show all notes now and then to spot loose notes with no links, and add them to the MOC where they belong.

Who maps of content suit

• Writers and researchers with big topics that grow over years.
• Students pulling a semester of notes together before an exam or a thesis.
• Consultants and product people who keep returning to the same themes across projects.
• Anyone who keeps linked notes and has started to feel lost in them.

They suit people less if their notes are few, short-lived or mostly tasks. A MOC pays off once a topic has more notes than you can keep in your head.

Related methods

• The Zettelkasten method, small linked notes with structure notes as entry points.
• Building a Second Brain, Tiago Forte's cycle of Capture, Organize, Distill and Express.
• The PARA method, folders by actionability, which MOCs can cut across.
• Johnny.Decimal, numbered categories whose index notes work much like a MOC.