Word of advice: don't do what the author has done. He has gone from one extreme (categorizing all notes obsessively) to the other extreme (wiping all notes, to start fresh).
The answer, as usual, is in the middle: keep all notes, archived. Feel free to restart old projects/ideas by archiving old projects to old/2024/legacy, and starting with a fresh page/folder, occasionally looking back at archived notes, if needed.
> He has gone from one extreme (categorizing all notes obsessively) to the other extreme (wiping all notes, to start fresh).
No, he went from extreme to "in the middle", if you find yourself in their place you should do EXACTLY what he did.
> I’m planning on using it again. From scratch. And with a deeper level of curation and care - not as a second brain, but as a workspace for the one I already have.
You can't categorize a gazillion notes you obsessively picked up over years. Do anything required to become functional again, in this case, delete it all if it is psychologically weighing on you
The answer, as usual, is in the middle: keep all notes, archived. Feel free to restart old projects/ideas by archiving old projects to old/2024/legacy, and starting with a fresh page/folder, occasionally looking back at archived notes, if needed.