reply to u/Insomnia_Incarnate at tk

A zippered Lochby Pocket Journal could work reasonably well for this and the notebook could be slipped into the pocket or simply sit inside the wallet zippered.

Perhaps a bit larger, but still functional, you could consider the Flatty Works #5460 which fits up to A6 notebooks. As an A7 notebook is smaller/thinner, this would potentially be more comfortable as a wallet than for A6 notebooks.

A quick search on Etsy will find some interesting variety as well as potential custom options.

reply to u/noobinPython at https://www.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/12u8gbv/is_zotero_a_reliable_software_to_transcribe/

Zotero is incredibly powerful and you could use it as a full end-to-end solution if you wanted to. It's particularly good if you're also using .pdf or other digital documents as it has the ability to pull in notes you've made digitally in a variety of .pdf annotation tools including Adobe's Acrobat (free version) which includes highlighting and notes you've made. It does have its own .pdf viewer now which also allows one to read, highlight, annotate, and tag individual pieces of text and then aggregate them into a single file. In addition to pulling in all the annotations into a single note file, one could break them into smaller individual notes per document if desired and these have addressable locations within the system.

Because Zotero is so powerful and can be dovetailed with a variety of other plugins specific to it as well as with other note taking tools like Obsidian, Logseq, etc. I'd highly recommend you try using it with a single document and take some notes to see if it'll work for you. There are surely some tutorials for using it as well as other useful plugins like Zotfile, MDnotes, etc. for your note taking workflows. It's open source and been in heavy use by many academics for over a decade and is actively developed, so it's one of the more robust systems out there. There are ways to do almost anything you'd want to with it from a note taking, reading, and citation management perspective, so searching and learning a bit about its features and functionality will get you a long way. Out of the box, it's reasonably intuitive, but there are lots of advanced features internally and even more features using a variety of plugins. Just the ability to have a browser extension and a keyboard shortcut to save all the bibliographic metadata of a source in a second or less and the ability to spit out full references for sharing with others has made it a godsend for me even if it did nothing else. Searching around will provide you with a huge amount of video tutorials and ways of using it either by itself, in conjunction with Zotfile, or dovetailing it with dozens of other tools.

Personally I use it in combination with a variety of other tools including Hypothes.is and Obsidian for a comprehensive workflow, but it could do incredibly well as a note taking tool just by itself.

Reply to u/PanasheP_24 at https://www.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/12t0qk6/learning/

You might find this framing interesting: The Zettelkasten Method of Note Taking Mirrors Most of the Levels of Bloom’s Taxonomy

reply to Sara Martínez at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wQPvrcksjUA&lc=UgzbdJ1cdxkjnN0DBOl4AaABAg

Sara, here are some creative/art-related examples that might help:<br /> Dancer/Choreographer Twyla Tharp used a slightly modified slip box method that included much more than notes on cards for her dance-related work. She describes the process well in chapter 6 of her book "The Creative Habit: Learn It and Use It for Life".

If you're into art and image-based work, Aby Warburg had a zettelkasten with images. Search for details on his "Mnemosyne Atlas" at The Warburg Institute at the School of Advanced Study University of London which has some material you may appreciate.

Product designer khimtan has a visual zettelkasten practice you can find examples of on Reddit in the "Antinet" sub.

A variety of comedians like Phyllis Diller, Joan Rivers, Bob Hope, and George Carlin had zettelkasten practices for their comedy work.

Eminem has a fantastic, but tremendously simple zettelkasten for songwriting. Taylor Swift has a somewhat similar digital version which she has talked about using, though she doesn't use the word zettelkasten to describe it.

syndication link

reply to u/all_flowers_in_time_ at https://www.reddit.com/r/NoteTaking/comments/12g3idj/any_easy_strategies_to_improve_my_notetaking/

In many ways I was just like you in school...

Some of it depends on what your notes are for. Are you using them to write things in your own words to increase understanding and tie them into other ideas? Are you using them as reminders? Are you using them to build material for later (papers, articles, write a book, other?) For memorization?

Your notes look like they've got a Cornell Notes appearance, so perhaps more formally structuring your pages that way will help? Creating sample test questions afterward for practice and recall can be highly useful and force you to create answers which is dramatically more productive than simply reviewing over notes which usually creates a false sense of familiarity.

If you're using them for memorization, then perhaps convert the notes after lecture into flash cards (physical cards, Anki, Mnemosyne, etc.) that you can use for spaced repetition.

If you're using them to later create other content, then perhaps a commonplace book or zettelkasten structure may be helpful for cross indexing ideas. If you're not familiar with these, try out the following book which covers all of these use cases and mores:

Ahrens, Sönke. How to Take Smart Notes: One Simple Technique to Boost Writing, Learning and Thinking – for Students, Academics and Nonfiction Book Writers. Create Space, 2017.

I wish I had been able to do so when I was a student.

reply to u/bestlunchtoday at https://www.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/12gadut/benefits_of_sharing_permanent_notes/

I love the diversity of ideas here! So many different ways to do it all and perspectives on the pros/cons. It's all incredibly idiosyncratic, just like our notes.

I probably default to a far extreme of sharing the vast majority of my notes openly to the public (at least the ones taken digitally which account for probably 95%). You can find them here: https://hypothes.is/users/chrisaldrich.

Not many people notice or care, but I do know that a small handful follow and occasionally reply to them or email me questions. One or two people actually subscribe to them via RSS, and at least one has said that they know more about me, what I'm reading, what I'm interested in, and who I am by reading these over time. (I also personally follow a handful of people and tags there myself.) Some have remarked at how they appreciate watching my notes over time and then seeing the longer writing pieces they were integrated into. Some novice note takers have mentioned how much they appreciate being able to watch such a process of note taking turned into composition as examples which they might follow. Some just like a particular niche topic and follow it as a tag (so if you were interested in zettelkasten perhaps?) Why should I hide my conversation with the authors I read, or with my own zettelkasten unless it really needed to be private? Couldn't/shouldn't it all be part of "The Great Conversation"? The tougher part may be having means of appropriately focusing on and sharing this conversation without some of the ills and attention economy practices which plague the social space presently.

There are a few notes here on this post that talk about social media and how this plays a role in making them public or not. I suppose that if I were putting it all on a popular platform like Twitter or Instagram then the use of the notes would be or could be considered more performative. Since mine are on what I would call a very quiet pseudo-social network, but one specifically intended for note taking, they tend to be far less performative in nature and the majority of the focus is solely on what I want to make and use them for. I have the opportunity and ability to make some private and occasionally do so. Perhaps if the traffic and notice of them became more prominent I would change my habits, but generally it has been a net positive to have put my sensemaking out into the public, though I will admit that I have a lot of privilege to be able to do so.

Of course for those who just want my longer form stuff, there's a website/blog for that, though personally I think all the fun ideas at the bleeding edge are in my notes.

Since some (u/deafpolygon, u/Magnifico99, and u/thiefspy; cc: u/FastSascha, u/A_Dull_Significance) have mentioned social media, Instagram, and journalists, I'll share a relevant old note with an example, which is also simultaneously an example of the benefit of having public notes to be able to point at, which u/PantsMcFail2 also does here with one of Andy Matuschak's public notes:

[Prominent] Journalist John Dickerson indicates that he uses Instagram as a commonplace: https://www.instagram.com/jfdlibrary/ here he keeps a collection of photo "cards" with quotes from famous people rather than photos. He also keeps collections there of photos of notes from scraps of paper as well as photos of annotations he makes in books.

It's reasonably well known that Ronald Reagan shared some of his personal notes and collected quotations with his speechwriting staff while he was President. I would say that this and other similar examples of collaborative zettelkasten or collaborative note taking and their uses would blunt u/deafpolygon's argument that shared notes (online or otherwise) are either just (or only) a wiki. The forms are somewhat similar, but not all exactly the same. I suspect others could add to these examples.

And of course if you've been following along with all of my links, you'll have found yourself reading not only these words here, but also reading some of a directed conversation with entry points into my own personal zettelkasten, which you can also query as you like. I hope it has helped to increase the depth and level of the conversation, should you choose to enter into it. It's an open enough one that folks can pick and choose their own path through it as their interests dictate.

reply to u/Accomplished-Tip-597 at https://www.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/12fowjy/to_buy_or_not_to_buy_a_course_and_if_the_latter/

Which "industry", though? Productivity? Personal Knowledge Management? Neither of these are focused on the idea of a Luhmann-esque specific zettelkastenare they?

For the original poster, what is your goal in taking a course? What do you want to get out of it? What are you going to use such a system for? The advice you're looking for will hinge on these.

Everyone's use is going to be reasonably idiosyncratic, so not knowing anything else, my general recommendation (to minimize time, effort, and expense) would be to read one of the following (for free), practice at some of it for a few weeks before you do anything else. Then if you need it, talk u/taurusnoises into a few consultations based on what you'd like to accomplish. He's one of the few who does this who's got experience in the widest variety of traditions in addition to expertise in the platform you want (though I'd still recommend him if you were using something else.)

• https://zettelkasten.de/posts/overview/
• https://minnstate.pressbooks.pub/write/ (just 1-7, though the rest is profitable)
• https://www.academia.edu/35101285/Creating_a_Commonplace_Book_CPB_

reply to u/apricotsareweird at r/Zettelkasten - How best to incorporate a book of terms?

This sounds a bit like it might fit into the mold of an example like Brian Eno and Peter Schmidt's "Oblique Strategies" which are bits of creative advice that one draws out at random to help improve their work. You could have a custom deck for potential writing work and attempt the recipes at random to see where it takes you. At worst a collection of them could be used for spaced repetition to memorize or familiarize yourself with them. At a later date you could give them numbers and install them into a larger collection, but keeping them as a stand alone collection certainly couldn't hurt at least to start.

reply to u/iamharunjonuzi at https://www.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/12bvcmn/how_do_i_store_when_coming_across_an_actual_fact/

How central is the fact to what you're working at potentially developing? Often for what may seem like basic facts that are broadly useful, but not specific to things I'm actively developing, I'll leave basic facts like that as short notes on the source/reference cards (some may say literature notes) where I found them rather than writing them out in full as their own cards.

If I were a future biologist, as a student I might consider that I would soon know really well what a cell was and not bother to have a primary zettel on something so commonplace unless I was collecting various definitions to compare and contrast for something specific. Alternately as a non-biologist or someone that doesn't use the idea frequently, then perhaps it may merit more space for connecting to others?

Of course you can always have it written along with the original source and "promote" it to its own card later if you feel it's necessary, so you're covered either way. I tend to put the most interesting and surprising ideas into my main box to try to maximize what comes back out of it. If there were 2 more interesting ideas than the definition of cell in that documentary, then I would probably leave the definition with the source and focus on the more important ideas as their own zettels.

As a rule of thumb, for those familiar with Bloom's taxonomy in education, I tend to leave the lower level learning-based notes relating to remembering and understanding as shorter (literature) notes on the source's reference card and use the main cards for the higher levels (apply, analyze, evaluate, create).

Ultimately, time, practice, and experience will help you determine for yourself what is most useful and where. Until you've developed a feel for what works best for you, just write it down somewhere and you can't really go too far wrong.

reply to ZH215 at https://forum.zettelkasten.de/discussion/2545/lit-review-template-or-not#latest

For a literature review, you might find Adler & Van Doren more immediate and interesting (compared to Ahrens), particularly chapter 20 on syntopical reading. This may help you to better focus your annotating and note making practices. Consider it a big conversation, but all the participants are writing instead of speaking.

Adler, Mortimer J., and Charles Van Doren. How to Read a Book: The Classical Guide to Intelligent Reading. Revised and Updated edition. 1940. Reprint, Touchstone, 2011.

While the more significant notes can be useful in the long run and can be used as the backbone of your work, I often personally find that my shorter annotations and highlights/tags in a literature review are incredibly helpful for comparison and contrast later, so don't discount the value of these.

reply to Christoph Thiede at https://norden.social/@LinqLover/110011970287271976

@LinqLover@norden.social @academia@a.gup.pe @zettelkasten@a.gup.pe @zettelkasten@mobilize.berlin @academicchatter@a.gup.pe @academicsunite@a.gup.pe If I understand your question properly, you're presumably using a paper zettelkasten and not a digital one? The issue is that of "multiple storage". Niklas Luhmann solved this by numbering his cards (using a Dewey-like system) and then creating an index for the subjects to be able to find them. John Locke did roughly the same thing with his indexing method for commonplace books.

cf. https://hypothes.is/users/chrisaldrich?q=tag%3A%22multiple+storage%22 and https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/john-lockes-method-for-common-place-books-1685

In the digital domain I rely on relational databases or heavy tagging and digital search. For an example, see again the Hypothesis link above.

"Classical" ZK prior to Luhmann simply made multiple copies and distributed them, though updating them was nearly impossible.

reply to u/zleonska at https://www.reddit.com/r/commonplacebook/comments/1223a2e/comment/jdp8nbl/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=web2x&context=3

Thanks for sharing this u/zleonska! More people might consider using a card index to index their commonplace books for future search and discovery. The first person I'd ever come across doing this was W. Ross Ashby whose commonplace and index have been digitized and are now searchable online at http://www.rossashby.info/journal/index/index.html. It seems a nice change of pace to have a centralized index over keeping one in each book and having to search in multiple books over time as described in John Locke's commonplacing method, though it obviously seems to have made a significant impact.<br /> If folks find it interesting/useful I did come across https://www.indxd.ink, a digital, web-based index tool for your analog notebooks. Ostensibly allows one to digitally index their paper notebooks (page numbers optional). It emails you weekly text updates, so you've got a back up of your data if the site/service disappears. This could potentially be used by those who have analog commonplace/zettelkasten practices, but want the digital search and some back up of their system.

reply to u/taurusnoises at https://www.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/11ov8qp/comment/jbvdyx8/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=web2x&context=3

Thanks for the tip Bob, JSTOR was a reasonably quick/easy search (compared to the larger list I've got that'll take some manual digging.) The vast majority of instances I found within JSTOR were in full German contexts, and many definitely were in a negative contextual light (generally as an epithet—one went so far as to mention a smell— describing authors' poor structure, over-reliance on ZK, argument, or writing style, potentially as not providing appropriate context.) Fascinatingly the number of appearances of zettelkasten in any language began in the early 1900s and have grown from a dozen every decade to 150 this past decade with a marked increase in the 1980s and 90s.

The oldest one I found in an English language article was from:

Hayes, William C. Review of Historical Records of Rameses III, by William F. Edgerton and John A. Wilson. American Journal of Archaeology 40, no. 4 (1936): 558–59. https://doi.org/10.2307/498809. (JSTOR https://www.jstor.org/stable/498809)

All available earlier copies and parallel texts have been diligently consulted and compared with the present versions and the authors have also availed themselves of the invaluable material contained in the Zettelkasten of the Berlin Wörterbuch der ägyptischen Sprache.

Potentially not the very first English appearance, but 1936 is reasonably early. I wasn't surprised that it appeared in an archaeology journal.

Of particular interest is that it provides an indication that the "Berlin Dictionary" or the Dictionary of the Egyptian Language, which was begun in 1897 just two years after the beginning of the Mundaneum by Paul Otlet and Henri La Fontaine, began life as a multi-user zettelkasten. For those who are looking for the rare versions of collaborative zettelkasten, this is a new version for folks to research.

reply to u/dotphrasealpha at https://www.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/11z08fq/what_type_of_note_did_niklas_luhmann_average_6/

The true insight you're looking for here is: Forget the numbers and just aim for quality followed very closely by consistency!

Of course most will ignore my insight and experience and be more interested in the numbers, so let's query a the 30+ notes I've got on this topic in my own zettelkasten to answer the distal question.

Over the 45 years from 1952 to 1997 Luhmann produced approximately 90,000 slips which averages out to:

• 45 years * 365 days/year = 16,425 days
• 90,000 slips / 16,425 days = 5.47 slips per day

In a video, Ahrens indicates that Luhmann didn't make notes on weekends, and if true, this would revise the count to 7.69 slips per day.

260 working days a year (on average, not accounting for leap years or potential governmental holidays)

• 45 years x 260 work days/year = 11,700 days
• 90,000 slips / 11,700 days = 7.69 slips per day

Compare these closer numbers to Ahrens' stated and often quoted 6 notes per day in How to Take Smart Notes.

I've counted from the start of '52 through all of '97 to get 45 years, but the true amount of time was a bit shorter than this in reality, so the number of days should be slightly smaller.

Keep in mind that Luhmann worked at this roughly full time for decades, so don't try to measure yourself against him. (He also published in a different era and broadly without the hurdle of peer review.) Again: Aim for quality over quantity! If it helps, S.D. Goitein created a zettelkasten of 27,000 notes which he used to publish almost a third more papers and books than Luhmann. Wittgenstein left far fewer notes and only published one book during his lifetime, but published a lot posthumously and was massively influential. Similarly Roland Barthes had only about 12,500 slips and loads of influential work.

I keep notes on various historical practitioners' notes/day output over several decades using these sorts of practices. Most are in the 1-2 notes per day range. A sampling of them can be found here: https://boffosocko.com/2023/01/14/s-d-goiteins-card-index-or-zettelkasten/#Notes%20per%20day.

Anecdotally, I've found that most of the more serious people here and on the zettelkasten.de forum are in the 4-10 slips per week range.

<whisper>quality...</whisper>

reply to u/mouseVed at https://www.reddit.com/r/NoteTaking/comments/11xu4vh/what_do_you_guys_think_of_this_note_taking_style/

Looks a tad messy to me, but I'm not the audience for it, you are. Some additional empty space on the page could potentially help. If this style works for you, perhaps take a look at the sketchnotes space. This book might be a good place to start (especially the sections on Visual Direction, Headers, and Layouts:<br /> Mills, Emily. The Art of Visual Notetaking: An Interactive Guide to Visual Communication and Sketchnoting. Illustrated edition. Walter Foster Publishing, 2019.

If you're keen on location as a key to memory and learning, you should also take a look at the idea of the 'method of loci'/memory palaces/songlines. The best modern coverage of this and various methods can be found in:<br /> Kelly, Lynne. Memory Craft: Improve Your Memory Using the Most Powerful Methods from around the World. Pegasus Books, 2019.

reply to u/jaybestnz https://www.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/11xcnqg/if_i_have_many_notes_is_it_more_effective_to_load/

Part of the benefit of having a Luhmann-esque structured ZK, which is what I'm presuming your definition of a zettelkasten is, is that you're doing some of the interconnecting and building links and structures along the way. Instead, you'll now be doing that work after the fact and en-masse.

The underlying question is: do you plan on keeping and maintaining a more Luhmann-esque zettelkasten after your book? If you do, then it may be useful to take that step, otherwise, you're likely doing additional work that you may not see benefit from.

Making some broad assumptions about what you may have so far... If you've got physical index cards, things will be easier to collate and arrange. In your case, the closest (easy) workflow is that of Ryan Holiday who outlines his process in this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dU7efgGEOgk

Beyond this, your next best bets might be informed by:

• Dustin Lance Black: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vrvawtrRxsw
• Victor Margolin: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kxyy0THLfuI

If you prefer your writing structural advice in written form, then perhaps you're already in the latter part of the process broadly described by Umberto Eco in How to Write a Thesis (MIT, 2015).

Don't be blinded by availability bias. It was historically almost always thus! Especially in Germany. (The French have traditionally called it a fichier boîte and in English it's the card index.) It's only been since the rise in popularity of the use of the German word in English (beginning in late 2013 with zettelkasten.de) where it has almost always been associated with Niklas Luhmann that has has most people now associating Luhmann's method with the word Zettelkasten.

If you look back at the 2013 exhibition "Zettelkästen. Machines of Fantasy" at the Museum of Modern Literature, Marbach am Neckar, you'll notice that there were six zettelkasten featured there including those of Arno Schmidt, Walter Kempowski, Friedrich Kittler, Aby Warburg, Paul, Blumenberg, and Luhmann. Of those, the structure of Luhmann's was the exception which wasn't primarily organized broadly by subject heading. You'll also find some historians and sociologists organizing theirs by date or geographic regions as well as other custom arrangements as their needs and work might dictate.

The preponderance of books talking about these note taking methods suggest a topic heading arrangement for filing, including the book by Johnannes Erich Heyde from which Luhmann's son has indicated he learned an old technique from which he evolved his own practice.

See also:

• The Two Definitions of Zettelkasten https://boffosocko.com/2022/10/22/the-two-definitions-of-zettelkasten/

• Heyde, Johannes Erich. Technik des wissenschaftlichen Arbeitens: zeitgemässe Mittel und Verfahrungsweisen. Junker und Dünnhaupt, 1931.

Rarely does a week go by that I don't run across another new/significant example of a zettelkasten. Thanks u/atomicnotes for keeping up the pace with James Peter Zollinger. (Though this week may be a twofer given my notes on Ludwig Wittgenstein's over the last few days.)

Not sure of the truth of the story either @Josh, but thanks for the trip down memory lane. My math teacher gave me that article when I was in the 12th grade because he knew I had been variously killing time in his math classes since 9th grade memorizing the first 8,000 digits of pi and reading for fun.

reply to jameslongley at https://forum.zettelkasten.de/discussion/2532/personal-knowledge-management-is-bullshit

I find that these sorts of articles against the variety of practices have one thing in common: the writer fails to state a solid and realistic reason for why they got into it in the first place. They either have no reason "why" or, perhaps, just as often have all-the-reasons "why", which may be worse. Much of this is bound up in the sort of signaling and consumption which @Sascha outlines in point C (above).

Perhaps of interest, there are a large number of Hypothes.is annotations on that original article written by a variety of sense-makers with whom I am familiar. See: https://via.hypothes.is/https://www.otherlife.co/pkm/ Of note, many come from various note making traditions including: commonplace books, bloggers, writers, wiki creators, zettelkasten, digital gardening, writers, thinkers, etc., so they give a broader and relatively diverse perspective. If I were pressed to say what most of them have in common philosophically, I'd say it was ownership of their thought.

Perhaps it's just a point of anecdotal evidence, but I've been noticing that who write about or use the phrase "personal knowledge management" are ones who come at the space without an actual practice or point of view on what they're doing and why—they are either (trying to be) influencers or influencees.

Fortunately it is entirely possible to "fake it until you make it" here, but it helps to have an idea of what you're trying to make.

Oh, but it is ZK furniture in every sense! The narrow definition of zettelkasten in common use (in this subreddit and in many other locations on the internet) to describe only card indexes/digital software which have the numbering scheme and form of Niklas Luhmann's only works for his and a number of imitators from roughly 2007/2013 to the present. Prior to this it is a much more generic term in Germany and elsewhere known in English as a card index or card file, but academics and others have been using practices broadly similar to Luhmann's for centuries in a variety of forms.

You're likely right that this particular piece of furniture had a business-specific market use case for the majority of its users, but I'm sure there was a subset of customers, particularly those in academia, which may have used it primarily as a note storage or personal knowledge management tool in a way highly similar to Luhmann's. Because it was in America, it was unlikely to have been called by the German name zettelkasten, though there were many German-Americans (Gotthard Deutsch and S. D. Goitein come to mind) who had this practice and may have done so, though I've seen no direct evidence of this at present in their writings. Not all card indexes were used for business or library purposes. In addition to academic researchers, we know a variety of mid-century comedians used their card indexes for collation and storage of jokes over their careers.

The quality of the advertisement is hard to make out, but on close examination it appears to have four drawers and the scale leads me to think that this would likely have accommodated 3 x 5" index cards. Some upcoming research work may uncover the manufacturing specifics and I'll share them as I find them.

As for Harrison and Placcius they're definitely there and people talk about them occasionally, though few seem as interested in the historical aspects despite the fact that they have a lot to demonstrate about the pros/cons of various practices. I remember adding them both to the English wikipedia page in July 2021. Certainly they could stand to be more widely known for their work, as could Leibniz. More on both can be found mentioned in the following: - Cevolini, Alberto. “Where Does Niklas Luhmann’s Card Index Come From?” Erudition and the Republic of Letters 3, no. 4 (October 24, 2018): 390–420. https://doi.org/10.1163/24055069-00304002. - Blair, Ann M. Too Much to Know: Managing Scholarly Information before the Modern Age. Yale University Press, 2010. https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300165395/too-much-know. - Blei, Daniela. “How the Index Card Cataloged the World.” The Atlantic, December 1, 2017. https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2017/12/how-the-index-card-catalogued-the-world/547271/. - Vincentius Placcius. De arte excerpendi. Vom Gelahrten Buchhalten Liber singularis, quo genera et praecepta excerpendi... Gottfried Liebezeit, 1689. http://archive.org/details/bub_gb_IgMVAAAAQAAJ.

There's also a bit on Placcius in: - Krajewski, Markus. Paper Machines: About Cards & Catalogs, 1548-1929. Translated by Peter Krapp. History and Foundations of Information Science. MIT Press, 2011. https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/paper-machines.

The bigger hero, in my opinion, is Konrad Gessner and his work from 1548 which outlined much of the common "rules" note takers, practitioners of ars excerpendi, zettelers, and card indexers have been using ever since, including an early idea which many would now call "atomic notes". Much of his work, however was transferring ideas of commonplace book practices of his day into the form of paper slips which were heavily used until mass manufacture of index cards in the 20th century made them cheap and plentiful. Within the note taking space online the community also broadly ignores influential figures like Agricola, Erasmus, and Melanchthon who make some big strides in popularizing a variety of methods in the 1400-1500s.

Many of the specifics you address aren't well covered in much of the literature, and as a result often cause a lot of confusion.

The use of the / or the . in these numbers is broadly only to improve readability.

One of the major benefits of Luhmann's particular numbering method was specifically to cut way back on the overcrowding of his index in comparison with other commonplacing book indexing schemes (like that of John Locke in particular). If you look at Luhmann's index it will usually only have a 1-3 entries for each word as related material will be found in neighboring cards within a particular branch.

In point 1, it would appear that your issue is mentally equating the "top level" number with a category/topic in the first place. It's just an idea and the number is a location. Start by separating the two. You manage to do this in your own dating system by creating an abstract number, but you're simultaneously requiring yourself (or a computer) to build up a date-based number which requires additional, unnecessary work. Your system is equivalent to all the others if you cut off the date-based root.

Perhaps the following two articles may be of some help in thinking through what you're doing: - On The Interdisciplinarity of Zettelkasten: Card Numbering, Topical Headings, and Indices https://boffosocko.com/2023/01/19/on-the-interdisciplinarity-of-zettelkasten-card-numbering-topical-headings-and-indices/ - Thoughts on Zettelkasten numbering systems https://boffosocko.com/2022/10/27/thoughts-on-zettelkasten-numbering-systems/

Of course at the end of the day, it's the system that works for you and the way you think that works best, so if none of it makes sense, then definitely use your own method.

I don't think it requires a plugin, but you can go to Settings >> Hotkeys and search for "fold" to create/change custom hotkey settings to fold up/down as necessary.

Another approach with a potentially similar affordance: Obsidian has a core plugin called "Outline" that you can enable. Then open the palette to search/select: "Outline: Show Outline" which will display in a sidebar (you can drag/drop it where you find most convenient). This side outline will allow you to easily jump around your document for various views as well as show you the overarching outline while you're working on a document. It will also allow you to conveniently collapse parts of the outline too.

I'm curious what benefit, if any, you get out of the YYYYMMDDhhmm title format other than a simple date ordered listing of files?

Beyond having "notes", what are you really trying to accomplish by doing this?

How are you defining "zettelkasten"? Is your conceptualization closer to that of a commonplace book/wiki/linked notes or a Luhmann-esque structure? If you're going the Luhmann route, then it really helps to have a specific reason, output, or a goal in mind for what you're doing and then keep it as simple as possible. I'd recommend you keep it separate (perhaps using folders) from your to do lists/productivity/projects type material or you'll risk the issue of zettelkasten overreach.

If you don't need the "full Luhmann", then perhaps ease your way in?

Some useful resources/thinking that go beyond the hundreds of one-page zettelkasten blog post intros:

• https://writing.bobdoto.computer/zettelkasten/
• https://zettelkasten.de/posts/overview/
• https://boffosocko.com/research/zettelkasten-commonplace-books-and-note-taking-collection/

After you've read a bit you may have some idea of some of the topics you'd like to cover and can begin creating an outline of what you'd like to express. Create a blank page and start the shape of the outline. As you proceed, you'll have an idea of a few specific notes that will fit under individual areas. What are those notes linked to? Perhaps add them as well if appropriate. As you outline you can add markup like ![[noteA]] to your outline which, in preview mode, will render or transclude the contents of that note and any others similarly formatted. Once you've done this with lots of notes you can copy/paste the contents into a draft which you can massage into finished form. Perhaps Obsidian's Canvas functionality might be helpful for you as well for mapping out the ideas/outline? It's at this point that many people realize how useful physical paper cards are for doing this process. The user interface and affordances in this last mile of output with respect to a digital tool is definitely a general drawback. This short video may be somewhat helpful for some of the process: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kxyy0THLfuI

reply to jo-king

https://en.forum.saysomethingin.com/t/slow-learner/38360/8

I don't do it as much as I did when I started out, but I would put the audio files into a podcatcher that allowed me to speed up or slow down the audio. The first time through I would slow the audio down to 75% of full speed so I didn't need to fiddle so much with the pause button (especially when I was listening while commuting or doing other household chores). Then I'd speed it up a bit each time until I was able to do 1.10 or 1.25x speed at which point the pauses weren't long enough to get a word in edgewise. At this point I move on to the next. Be careful here though as on some of the longer sentences at the ends of some lessons, if you play them too slowly, you'll forget what the beginning of the sentence was by the time they get to the end.

Based on a trick in my daughter's dual immersion Japanese class which used the word "wakanai" (Japanese for "I don't know"), I also formed the practice of saying "ddim gwybod" in place of words I couldn't immediately remember so that I could focus on the ones I did know instead of getting too tripped up on the ones I didn't. Eventually on repetition and revision they would slowly seep into my brain. Fortunately the kind and patient instructors on the tape never made fun of me or judged me for my mistakes and that made it much easier to eventually pick things up.

Sticking with it has become quite fun and it definitely gets easier with time. pob lwc!

reply to u/laystitcher at https://www.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/11ay28d/how_did_you_teach_yourself_zettelkasten/

Roughly in order: - Sixth grade social studies class assignment that used a "traditional" index card-based note taking system. - Years of annotating books - Years of blogging - Havens, Earle. Commonplace Books: A History of Manuscripts and Printed Books from Antiquity to the Twentieth Century. New Haven, CT: Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, 2001. - Locke, John, 1632-1704. A New Method of Making Common-Place-Books. 1685. Reprint, London, 1706. https://archive.org/details/gu_newmethodmaki00lock/mode/2up. - Erasmus, Desiderius. Literary and Educational Writings, 1 and 2. Edited by Craig R. Thompson. Vol. 23 & 24. Collected Works of Erasmus. Toronto, Buffalo, London: University of Toronto Press, 1978. https://utorontopress.com/9781487520731/collected-works-of-erasmus. - Kuehn, Manfred. Taking Note, A blog on the nature of note-taking. December 2007 - December 2018. https://web.archive.org/web/20181224085859/http://takingnotenow.blogspot.com/ - Ahrens, Sönke. How to Take Smart Notes: One Simple Technique to Boost Writing, Learning and Thinking – for Students, Academics and Nonfiction Book Writers. Create Space, 2017. - Sertillanges, Antonin Gilbert, and Mary Ryan. The Intellectual Life: Its Spirit, Conditions, Methods. First English Edition, Fifth printing. 1921. Reprint, Westminster, MD: The Newman Press, 1960. http://archive.org/details/a.d.sertillangestheintellectuallife. - Webb, Beatrice Potter. Appendix C of My Apprenticeship. First Edition. New York: Longmans, Green & Co., 1926. - Schmidt, Johannes F. K. “Niklas Luhmann’s Card Index: The Fabrication of Serendipity.” Sociologica 12, no. 1 (July 26, 2018): 53–60. https://doi.org/10.6092/issn.1971-8853/8350. - Hollier, Denis. “Notes (On the Index Card).” October 112, no. Spring (2005): 35–44. - Wilken, Rowan. “The Card Index as Creativity Machine.” Culture Machine 11 (2010): 7–30. - Blair, Ann M. Too Much to Know: Managing Scholarly Information before the Modern Age. Yale University Press, 2010. https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300165395/too-much-know. - Krajewski, Markus. Paper Machines: About Cards & Catalogs, 1548-1929. Translated by Peter Krapp. History and Foundations of Information Science. MIT Press, 2011. https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/paper-machines. - Goutor, Jacques. The Card-File System of Note-Taking. Approaching Ontario’s Past 3. Toronto: Ontario Historical Society, 1980. http://archive.org/details/cardfilesystemof0000gout.

And many, many others as I'm a student of intellectual history.... If you want to go spelunking on some of my public notes, perhaps this is an interesting place to start: https://hypothes.is/users/chrisaldrich?q=tag%3A%22note+taking%22 I also keep a reasonable public bibliography on this and related areas: https://www.zotero.org/groups/4676190/tools_for_thought

I should mention that the Stockroom Plus 4 x 6" cards I got a while back are great with even my juiciest fountain pens. They're some of the least expensive gridded cards I've been able to find and are a fraction of the cost of the Exacompta.

• The Ultimate Guide to Zettelkasten Index Card Storage
• Index Card Accessories for Note Taking on the Go
• Be sure to check the comments for other options; I ended up binding my own using glue and chipboard which is both easy and inexpensive.
• For cost, custom made/printed slips may be the way to go for great paper if you're all-in. Many stationery/paper shops can help you custom design something.
• I've heard good things about Exacompa/Bristol index cards for fountain pens, but not tried them personally. They can tend toward the expensive side.
• Card bleachers and desk-based display options
• This playing card set is what I ultimately opted for

I've done something like this when I think a particular reference(s) can answer a question related to a train of thought. But I keep cards of unread sources at the front of my sources section so that it's easier to pull it out frequently to prioritize and decide what I should be reading or working on next. These will then have links to the open questions I've noted, so that I can go back to those sections either as I'm reading/writing or to add those ideas into the appropriate folgezettel. These sorts of small amounts of work documented briefly can add up quickly over time. Source cards with indications of multiple open questions that might be answered is sometimes a good measure of desire to read, though other factors can also be at play.

That to-read pile of bibliographic source notes (a mini antilibrary) is akin to walking into a party and surveying a room. I may be aware of some of the people I haven't met yet and the conversations we might have, but if there are interesting questions I know I want to ask of specific ones or conversations I already know I want to have, it can be more productive to visit those first.

This sort of practice has been particularly helpful for times when I want to double check someone's sources or an original context, but don't have the time to do it immediately, don't want to break another extended train of thought, have to wait on materials, or may have to make a trip to consult physical materials that are singular or rare. For quick consultative reading, this can be a boon when I know I don't want or need to read an entire work, but skimming a chapter or a few pages for a close reading of a particular passage. I'll often keep a pile of these sorts of sources at hand so that I can make a short trip to a library, pick them up, find what I need and move on without having to recreate large portions of context to get the thing done because I've already laid most of the groundwork.

reply https://forum.zettelkasten.de/discussion/comment/16622/#Comment_16622

Adler has an excellent primer on this subject that covers a lot of the basics in reasonable depth: - Adler, Mortimer J. “How to Mark a Book.” Saturday Review of Literature, July 6, 1940. (https://stevenson.ucsc.edu/academics/stevenson-college-core-courses/how-to-mark-a-book-1.pdf)

Marking books can be useful not only to the original reader, but future academics and historians studying material culture (eg: https://apps.lib.umich.edu/online-exhibits/exhibits/show/marks-in-books), and as @GeoEng51 indicates they might be shared by friends, family, romantic interests, or even perhaps all of the above (see: https://newcriterion.com/issues/2017/4/mrs-custers-tennyson).

For those interested in annotation marks and symbols (like @ctietze's "bolt" ↯) I outlined a few ideas this last month at: https://www.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/10qw4l5/comment/j6vxn6a/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=web2x&context=3

reply lifted from my notes:

Henry David Thoreau kept both a commonplace book (essentially a traditional (non-Luhmann-esque) zettelkasten in notebook form) and a separate writing journal where he did what most would consider typical 'journaling', but where he also tried out phrasing, writing, and other experimental work that would ultimately become part of his published written output. This may be a useful model for some. His journals ran to multiple volumes, but a good edited version with a nice introduction to some of his work and methods can be found in:

• Thoreau, Henry David. The Journal: 1837-1861. Edited by Damion Searls. Original edition. New York: NYRB Classics, 2009.

Similarly Roland Barthes used his card index as more than the traditional bibliographical, excerpting, and note taking tool that many had before him. He also used it to accumulate notes on what he had seen and heard in his daily life, phrases he liked, and plans. It came to serve the function, particularly in the last two years of his life, of a diary or what biographer Tiphaine Samoyault came to call his fichierjournal or index-card diary. Published posthumously on October 12, 2010, Mourning Diary is a collection from Roland Barthes' 330 index cards focusing on his mourning following the death of his mother in 1977.

• Barthes, Roland. Mourning Diary. Macmillan, 2010. https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780374533113/mourningdiary.
• Budelis, Kristina. “Barthes’s Hand.” The New Yorker, September 8, 2010. http://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/barthess-hand.
• Samoyault, Tiphaine, and Jonathan Culler. Barthes: A Biography. Translated by Andrew Brown. 1st edition. Cambridge ; Malden, MA: Polity, 2017.

https://jan.boddez.net/articles/giving-credit

🤩

reply to Share the ideas dancing in your ZK with us. February 17, 2023

Congratulations @Will on the milestone! @ctietze's analogy with smithwork is fantastic. I might also liken it to the point in acquiring a new language when one begins dreaming in their new target language. So many talk about the idea of increased productivity associated with having a zk, but most spend an inordinate amount of time on shiny object syndrome or over complicating it and never get to the point of quickly writing things out, filing them, and being able to trust that their system will just work™. When you no longer notice it anymore and it has become second nature is when the real fun (and magic) begins to happen. It also seems easier and more natural to break the "rules" once you've internalized the basics. We should spend more time talking about the value of 'zettelkasten fluency'.

I'm excited this week to be doing some work in areas of the history of misinformation, cultural myths, and 'American exceptionalism' in preparation for Dan Allosso's upcoming book club on Kruse and Zelizer's new edited book. I suspect he'll announce it shortly at https://danallosso.substack.com/ if folks are interested in joining in the discussion/sensemaking.

Kruse, Kevin M., and Julian E. Zelizer. Myth America: Historians Take On the Biggest Legends and Lies About Our Past. Basic Books, 2023.

reply to michaljjwilk (edited) Feb 18

Some systems require a unique identifier, but the people who are using a datetime stamp or random number anywhere in their (Luhmann-esque) zettelkasten title (here's a good example) are leading you astray. […] The point of a zettelkasten is to provide one help in ordering and building their knowledge, not in ordering their notes by time created. —via chrisaldrich

Nadrzędny cel robienia notatek metodą Zettelkasten jest organizacja wiedzy, a nie organizacja notatek, stąd potrzeba odpowiedniego systemu łączenia informacji, a nie poszczególnych notatek.

(eng, for reply purpose only) btw, i do not see any way to annotate the annotation in hipothesis or any way to save someone's highlight or note.

(edit) It is so annoying and tedious i can not view this comment in my profile. I understand social aspect of Hypothes.is (and needs for that), but it is hard to track your activity this way. And it is not intuitive to annotate someone's annotation. So i assume - Hypothes.is masters can correct me if i am wrong - the better way is copy someone's quote with a link to Hypothes.is and put it in the page note, but the problem is i view this annotation in separation of the source material, so i have to go to source (context) and there find what interests me and do my work. Some time to time maybe it is no problem, but i do not want to imagine how it feels in bigger scale. And i do not get why there is tagging option for replies if you can not search them in the main page…

You've definitely come across a well known issue with respect to Hypothes.is: https://github.com/hypothesis/h/issues/7317 Feel free to comment on it to help it get some attention from developers.

I pull most of my content into an Obsidian notebook, so I always include the URL for any individual page into at least one of my annotations. Then I can use the API to pull in all of my own annotations (including replies) using that.

Alternately you might reply to someone's annotation and then cut/paste a version as a page note so that it's more easily searchable.

Surely there are other potential workarounds, but it depends on what you need out of your practice.

reply to u/m_t_rv_s__n at https://www.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/112k929/how_long_do_you_spend_in_a_single_notetaking/

Quite often my sessions can be in small 5-10 minute blocks doing one or more individual tasks that compose reading, writing, or filing/linking things together. Usually I don't go over a couple of hours without at least a small break or two.

Like Luhmann “I only do what is easy. I only write when I immediately know how to do it. If I falter for a moment, I put the matter aside and do something else.” Incidentally by "easy" here, I think Luhmann also includes the ideas of fun, interesting, pleasurable, and (Csikszentmihalyi's) flow.

For my lowest level reading I'll only quickly log what I've read along with a few index terms and a short note or two, if at all. For deeper analytical reading (as defined by Adler & van Doren) those sessions are more intense and I aim to have a direct "conversation with the text". Notes made there can sometimes be 2 - 10 minutes in length. I can often average about 50 annotations in a given day of which maybe 2 or 3 will be longer, fileable zettels. Most of my notes start as digital public annotations which one can view at https://hypothes.is/users/chrisaldrich if they like. On the topic of notes per day, I have a collection for that, some of which is given as a synopsis with some caveats here: https://boffosocko.com/2023/01/14/s-d-goiteins-card-index-or-zettelkasten/#Notes%20per%20day%20comparison.

reply to u/Turbulent-Focus-1389 at https://www.reddit.com/r/antinet/comments/1132e2r/your_antinet_walkthrough/

Examples like this would certainly be useful/helpful, but you may be waiting a while. Until then some extant (if possibly longer or even written) examples are always helpful. Some may be a bit less Antinet in shape, but the examples are useful none-the-less: - See comment thread here: https://boffosocko.com/2022/07/12/call-for-model-examples-of-zettelkasten-output-processes/ - https://boffosocko.com/research/zettelkasten-commonplace-books-and-note-taking-collection/#historical-examples - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DGcs4tyey18 with notes at https://notes.andymatuschak.org/ (though perhaps a deeper view into them is more illustrative: https://notes.andymatuschak.org/z4AX7pHAu5uUfmrq4K4zig9x8jmmF62XgaMXm?stackedNotes=z4KZ9973AoHhvM9Pj5Qrds48JXNbMEwVJmVRw&stackedNotes=z8RTzukqNLKFXzqLwx25HrUrg5E5jiziGznWB&stackedNotes=z6UDDkom8Aifg6mLdjT1sPtbMBweCmpyTwmJT - Scott Scheper has a LOT here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLSofW8L-FnU-Z8BFXqv8JZt5Cp0mj2_Eb - Ryan Holiday https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dU7efgGEOgk - Robert Greene https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ueMHkGljK0

We should also acknowledge that when revisiting some of our references again later, we're doing so with a dramatically increased knowledge and context of a particular problem which we may not have had when we first read a piece or took the notes.

Not many here are writing or talking about these small sorts of insights into learning and writing or generating new work. Perhaps we should do more to acknowledge this hermeneutic cycle in our work?

reply to u/stjeromeslibido at https://www.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/10wj6tv/comment/j7uexbk/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=web2x&context=3

reply to u/stjeromeslibido at https://www.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/10wj6tv/what_are_your_two_favourite_articles_videos_or/

My favorite video for its utter brevity and compactness combined with complexity and trueness to the historical record, not to mention the spectacular production value - The Process of Writing World History of Design, 2015. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kxyy0THLfuI.

Runner up video, which I love for the supreme simplicity of the method—literally slips and a box - “The Speed Traders/Mandela/Eminem.” 60 Minutes. CBS, October 10, 2010. https://youtu.be/pPXBwy3JgVo?t=64

My favorite article for its practicality and some studied perspective - Thomas, Keith. “Diary: Working Methods.” London Review of Books, June 10, 2010. https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v32/n11/keith-thomas/diary.

This framing makes me think you'd appreciate: <br /> https://hapgood.us/2015/10/17/the-garden-and-the-stream-a-technopastoral/

syndication link: https://mastodon.social/@chrisaldrich/109833797235024284

reply to stjeromeslibido at https://www.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/10qw4l5/comment/j6x52ce/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=web2x&context=3

Luhmann often used the shorthand of red numbers to indicate a link to nearby card in the current branch/stem, which Scott Scheper calls "stemlinks" in Antinet Zettelkasten (2022) p234. So, for example, on card ZKII 9/8 there is a red "1" which indicates the branching card ZKII 9/8,1. Scott uses a more computer science oriented notation of "/1" to indicate this as if he were traversing up or down a folder structure. Since there isn't really a (useful) idea of a root or home folder, and one wouldn't often want to refer to their zettelkasten itself, one might consider using the solidus "/" to indicate the current card? I personally do this, but not very frequently, though I might do it more often with respect to indicating argumentation within and among other cards.

Some languages have location/proximity identifiers or markers (similar to here/there/over there). I'll sometimes use the Japanese markers (ko-so-a-do) as shorthand to provide rough approximation of idea relationships particularly when I have open questions. (example: kore, sore, are, dore -> this one, that one, that one over there, which one?) Many ideas are marked あ to indicate "just out of reach" or "needs additional thought". When ideas are adjacent or nearby, but by happenstance are relatively far away within my ZK (with respect to physical card distance in the box) they'll be pre-pended like こ/510/4b/3 (aka "ko"/510/4b/3).

reply to u/stjeromeslibido at https://www.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/10qw4l5/are_there_symbols_for_supported_by_or/

In addition to the other excellent suggestions, I don't think you'll find anything specific that that was used historically for these, but there are certainly lots of old annotation symbols you might be able to co-opt for your personal use.

Evina Steinova has a great free cheat sheet list of annotation symbols: The Most Common Annotation Symbols in Early Medieval Western Manuscripts (a cheat sheet).

More of this rabbit hole:

• Steinová, Evina. Notam Superponere Studui: The Use of Annotation Symbols in the Early Middle Ages. Brepols, 2019.
• Cappelli, Adriano. The Elements of Abbreviation in Medieval Latin Paleography. University of Kansas Libr., 1984.
• Coulson, Frank, and Robert Babcock. The Oxford Handbook of Latin Palaeography. Oxford University Press, 2020.
• Lindsay, W. M. Notae Latinae. Cambridge University Press, 2013. https://archive.org/download/notaelatinaeacco00lindrich/notaelatinaeacco00lindrich.pdf.
• Bains, Doris. A Supplement to Notae Latinae (Abbreviations in Latin Mss. of 850 to 1050 A.D.). Cambridge [England] University Press, 1936. http://archive.org/details/supplementtonota0000bain.

(Nota bene: most of my brief research here only extends to Western traditions, primarily in Latin and Greek. Obviously other languages and eras will have potential ideas as well.)

Tironian shorthand may have something you could repurpose as well: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tironian_notes

Some may find the auxiliary signs of the Universal Decimal Classification useful for some of these sorts of notations for conjoining ideas.

Given the past history of these sorts of symbols and their uses, perhaps it might be useful for us all to aggregate a list of common ones we all use as a means of re-standardizing some of them in modern contexts? Which ones does everyone use?

Here are some I commonly use:

Often for quotations, citations, and provenance of ideas, I'll use Maria Popova and Tina Roth Eisenberg's Curator's Code:

• ᔥ for "via" to denote a direct quotation/source— something found elsewhere and written with little or no modification or elaboration (reformulation notes)
• ↬ for "hat tip" to stand for indirect discovery — something for which you got the idea at a source, but modified or elaborated on significantly (inspiration by a source, but which needn't be cited)

Occasionally I'll use a few nanoformats, from the microblogging space, particularly

• L: to indicate location

For mathematical proofs, in addition to their usual meanings, I'll use two symbols to separate biconditionals (necessary/sufficient conditions)

• (⇒) as a heading for the "if" portion of the proof
• (⇐) for the "only if" portion

Some historians may write 19c to indicate 19th Century, often I'll abbreviate using Roman numerals instead, so "XIX".

Occasionally, I'll also throw drolleries or other symbols into my margins to indicate idiosyncratic things that may only mean something specifically to me. This follows in the medieval traditions of the ars memoria, some of which are suggested in Cornwell, Hilarie, and James Cornwell. Saints, Signs, and Symbols: The Symbolic Language of Christian Art 3rd Edition. Church Publishing, Inc., 2009. The modern day equivalent of this might be the use of emoji with slang meanings or 1337 (leet) speak.

reply to u/FastSascha at https://www.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/10nolg3/comment/j6naobz/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=web2x&context=3

Let those who have not folded an index card to use it as a fork for eating food (vegan or otherwise), throw the first pack of index cards.

Is this the correct zettelkasten translation of John 8:7? Should I number this ZKII, 9/8k?🗃️😉

reply to u/sscheper at https://www.reddit.com/r/antinet/comments/10o4jnl/comment/j6ii64d/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=web2x&context=3

Is this about as close as Scott Scheper comes to recommending taking Cornell Notes?!? 😂

Let's be honest that this is roughly what this (and Bibcards) ultimately is. You take some general notes on a lecture (book or other material) as a sense making tool to help you better understand the material. You write down some bits you want to remember and use for some brief spaced repetition perhaps. You write down some pointed questions to help review for a test later. The subtle difference is that Cornell notes were designed to do the sense making, summary, and repetition portions well for students and learners, but didn't focus as much on the longer tail of knowledge creation using analysis, and synthesis. To fill in the last mile for your card index, take the best idea(s) (maybe one or two at most) and flesh it out to create a useful maincard.

If it's useful try some 8 x 12" paper for your lecture notes, and take them Bibcard or Cornell Notes style. Once you've excerpted your main card notes, you can fold your sheet in half twice and file it with your Bibcards, naturally taking care to have the paper's spine face up to prevent other slips from becoming lost in between. (This obviously works best for those using 4 x 6" index cards though if you're in the 3 x 5" camp, then use 6" x 10" sheets for folding.) For those with middle grades or high school students, this may be a more profitable method for introducing these methods to their study, learning, and creation patterns.

Summary: Cornell Notes can be an excellent method for capturing session-based fleeting notes and distilling them down into permanent notes. Cornell Notes focus on the lower levels of Bloom's Taxonomy rather than the broader spectrum that a zettelkasten method might.

reply to u/IamOkei at https://www.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/10mha0u/what_are_your_goals_for_creating_your_zettelkasten/

The gloriousness of combinatorial creativity!

https://www.reddit.com/r/antinet/comments/10nlu4l/how_do_you_deal_with_biographical_and_timeline/

reply to u/stjeromeslibido at https://www.reddit.com/r/antinet/comments/10nlu4l/comment/j6dhx2t/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=web2x&context=3

It's relatively easy since it's all hiding in my notes. lt may become a book one of these days, I'm just not sure how to approach it quite yet, though I'm getting close to the philosophy I think is missing from the bigger space. I find it somewhat useful to use my notes to create longer responses in spaces like this that I expect I'll reuse in a book.

One can find utility in asking questions of their own note box, but why not also leverage the utility of a broader audience asking questions of it as well?!

I've seen that same copy of Webb's book floating around in various places. In fact, it's the exact same fingerprinted version of the .pdf that I originally read, which can be seen by appending https://via.hypothes.is/ to the URL like this https://via.hypothes.is/http://digamoo.free.fr/webb1926.pdf which will quickly reveal my own notes in the margins. (It may help some to find the small portions outside of Appendix C which relate to note making. 😀)

If you want to follow me down the rabbit hole on some of the intellectual history and examples, try: https://boffosocko.com/research/zettelkasten-commonplace-books-and-note-taking-collection/ which I try to keep updated with new pieces as they arrive.

reply to u/stjeromeslibido at https://www.reddit.com/r/antinet/comments/10nlu4l/comment/j6bdgma/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=web2x&context=3

I've used data from my own cards to create timelines before using the Knightlab's TimelineJS tool: https://cdn.knightlab.com/libs/timeline3/latest/embed/index.html?source=18QD2-Kx0WdFBzqDv1sTkQWOJLGHGXsvr4NBLYNiX9FA&font=Default&lang=en&initial_zoom=2&height=650%27%20width=%27100%%27%20height=%27650%27%20webkitallowfullscreen%20mozallowfullscreen%20allowfullscreen%20frameborder=%270%27

You'll note that it's got a fun card-like flavor to its design. 🤩

Historically, while they had certainly done so much earlier, historians began doubling down on slip-based research work flows in the late 1800's. Many in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries were heavily influenced by the idea of "historical method" or the German "Wissenschaftlichen Arbeitens". Primary sources going back over a century have included:

• Bernheim, Ernst. Lehrbuch der historischen Methode und der Geschichtsphilosophie : mit Nachweis der wichtigsten Quellen und Hilfsmittelzum Studium der Geschichte ... völlig neu bearbeitete und vermehrte Auflage. 1889. Reprint, Leipzig : Duncker, 1903. http://archive.org/details/lehrbuchderhisto00bernuoft.
• Langlois, Charles Victor, and Charles Seignobos. Introduction to the Study of History. Translated by George Godfrey Berry. First. New York: Henry Holt and company, 1898. http://archive.org/details/cu31924027810286.
• Dow, Earle Wilbur. Principles of a Note-System for Historical Studies. New York: Century Company, 1924.
• Barzun, Jacques, and Henry F. Graff. The Modern Researcher. New York, Harcourt, Brace, 1957. http://archive.org/details/modernreseracher0000unse.
• Eco, Umberto. How to Write a Thesis. Translated by Caterina Mongiat Farina and Geoff Farina. 1977. Reprint, Cambridge, MA, USA: MIT Press, 2015. https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/how-write-thesis.

A few prime examples of historians practicing this sort of card index method (though not necessarily in the same form as Niklas Luhmann) include:

• Thomas, Keith. “Diary: Working Methods.” London Review of Books, June 10, 2010. https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v32/n11/keith-thomas/diary.
• Pomeroy, Earl. “Frederic L. Paxson and His Approach to History.” The Mississippi Valley Historical Review 39, no. 4 (1953): 673–92. https://doi.org/10.2307/1895394.
• Aldrich, Chris. “S.D. Goitein’s Card Index (or Zettelkasten).” BoffoSocko (blog), January 15, 2023. https://boffosocko.com/2023/01/14/s-d-goiteins-card-index-or-zettelkasten/.
• Lustig, Jason. “‘Mere Chips from His Workshop’: Gotthard Deutsch’s Monumental Card Index of Jewish History.” History of the Human Sciences 32, no. 3 (July 1, 2019): 49–75. https://doi.org/10.1177/0952695119830900.
• Goutor, Jacques. The Card-File System of Note-Taking. Approaching Ontario’s Past 3. Toronto: Ontario Historical Society, 1980. http://archive.org/details/cardfilesystemof0000gout.
• Margolin, Victor. The Process of Writing World History of Design, 2015. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kxyy0THLfuI.

Margolin's short video is particularly lovely for its incredible depth despite its brevity.

Beyond this there is also a very rich history of sociologists, anthropologists, philosophers, linguists, and others in the humanities using similar methods.

Beatrice Webb has a fairly good description of how she created her "scientific notes" in the late 1880/1890s in a database-like fashion in the appendix to her memoir My Apprenticeship and expanded on some of the ideas in a more specific text a few years later.

• Webb, Beatrice. My Apprenticeship. First Edition. New York: Longmans, Green & Co., 1926.
• Webb, Sidney, and Beatrice Webb. Methods of Social Study. London; New York: Longmans, Green & Co., 1932. http://archive.org/details/b31357891.

https://www.reddit.com/r/ObsidianMD/comments/10jsrma/the_leap_into_atomic_notes/

reply to u/m_t_rv_s__n at https://www.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/10m3abl/interested_in_seeing_what_others_referencebib/

An example of my digital "bib notes" for: Sayers, Dorothy L. The Lost Tools of Learning. E. T. Heron, 1948.

https://hypothes.is/users/chrisaldrich?q=url%3Aurn%3Ax-pdf%3A13447fd092edd947b775ba269de28ee6

There are some other good anecdotal examples here too.

reply to u/pipepistolnoscope at https://www.reddit.com/r/antinet/comments/10lqfsn/comment/j62dp7o/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=web2x&context=3

These are slightly easier to find in a variety of styles, colors, and materials if you're using European A5 or A6 slip sizes. Search for 6 ring binders which usually come in A5 or A6 sizes for a variety of planners, calendars, and general notes with accessories. Franklin Covey has a variety of binders for their 4.25" x 6.75" note pages and planners which will likely work with index cards, but I haven't tried that.

If you use US standard index cards 4 x 6" or 3 x 5", you'll want an appropriate 6 ring hole punch to pre-punch your cards as appropriate, but keep in mind the two standard sizes can be slightly off with respect to the binder you find but they're probably close enough it shouldn't be a big issue as most of the binders are slightly larger in both directions to protect the paper inside.

I recently posted about note taking on the go, so you might find some interesting ideas, methods, modifications or even DIY options there or in the comments: https://boffosocko.com/2022/12/01/index-card-accessories-for-note-taking-on-the-go/

If you really want to go crazy you can get 6-hole punches to make your own cards.

And if you like you can co-opt those holes in your notebox by using them for taxonomy terms and removing/or not the connective pieces to indicate membership of a group. Then by putting a knitting needle through large groups of cards, you can sort through your collection to find related items the way they used to in early computing with edge-notched cards. 😉🗃️

He's got a collection of ideas around the area with some useful history: https://boffosocko.com/research/zettelkasten-commonplace-books-and-note-taking-collection/

His practical advice is usually to quit reading about the theory and do the thing. Choose the simplest path and stick with it a while. See what happens. What's useful? What's not? Practice, practice, practice.

Reply to Will at https://forum.zettelkasten.de/discussion/2490/what-ideas-are-you-wrestling-with-this-week-january-19-2023#latest

There's so much great looking material here, it's almost overwhelming on where to start. I almost feel like I should be reading all this in addition to everything else I've got on my list.

Some of the direction with respect to writing, writing practice, and even your woodworking makes me think you'd appreciate the subtle idea hiding in this old blogpost I ran into in April 2021: https://jsomers.net/blog/dictionary.

reply to IvanFerrero at https://forum.zettelkasten.de/discussion/1740/anybody-using-this-approach-to-manage-contacts-how#latest

Many of the digital note taking tools that run off of text allow you to add metadata to your basic text files (as YAML headers, inline with a key:: value pair, or via #tags). Many of them have search functionality or use other programmatic means like query blocks, DataView, DataViewJS, etc. for doing queries on your files to get back lists, tables, charts, etc. of the data you're looking for.

The DataView repository has some good examples of how this works with something like Obsidian. Fortunately if you're using simple text files you can usually put them into one or more platforms to get the data and affordances you want out of them individually.

As an example, I have a script block in my daily note in Obsidian for birthdays in my notes that fall on today's date:

```dataview LIST birthday FROM "Lists/People" WHERE birthday.day = date(2023-01-18).day ```

If I put the text birthday:: 1927-12-08 into a note about Niklas Luhmann, his name and birthday would appear in my daily note on his birthday. One can use similar functionality to create tables of books they read with titles, authors, ratings, dates read, etc. or a variety of other data input which parses through your plaintext files. Services like Obsidian, Logseq, et al. are getting better about allowing these types of programmatic searches for users without backgrounds in programming and various communities usually provide help for pre-made little snippets like the one above that one can cut and paste into their notes to get the outputs that they need. Another Obsidian based example that uses text files for tracking academic journal articles can be found at https://nataliekraneiss.com/your-academic-reading-list-in-obsidian/; I'm sure there are similar versions for other text-based platforms.

In pre-digital times, for a manual version of a rolodex like this in paper, one could use different color cards as pseudo-tags (doctors are on yellow cards, family members on blue cards, friends on green cards, etc.) or adding edge notches or even tabs to represent different types of metadata. See for example the edge colored cards in Hawkexpress' Pile of Index Cards: https://www.flickr.com/photos/hawkexpress/albums/72157594200490122

A lovely quote I ran into this morning, perhaps for a future 3 pack, potentially featuring Thoreau, Thoreau and writing, Thoreau and nature, the Concord writing group, etc., etc.:

"Might not my Journal be called 'Field Notes?'" —Henry David Thoreau, March 21, 1853 via The Journal of Henry David Thoreau, 1837-1861. Edited by Damion Searls. Original edition. New York: NYRB Classics, 2009. https://www.amazon.com/Journal-Thoreau-1837-1861-Review-Classics/dp/159017321X/

There's also another writerly tie-in here as when he returned to Concord, Thoreau worked in his family's pencil factory(!!), which he would continue to do alongside his writing and other work for most of his adult life. Replica Thoreau factory pencils anyone?!

Given the fact that he was an inveterate journaler as well as someone who who kept multiple commonplace books, perhaps a tie-in to a larger journal or commonplace book format product? (I'm reminded that the famous printer, publisher and typeface designer John Bell published blank commonplace books along with instructions from John Locke on how to keep and index them. See an example: https://www.google.com/books/edition/Bell_s_Common_Place_Book/3XCFtwAACAAJ?hl=en )

At a minimum I'm pretty sure we all want this Thoreau quote on a Field Notes brand t-shirt...

Thanks for all the years of solid design and great paper!

Warmest regards, Chris Aldrich

reply to u/phil98f at https://www.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/10dbza7/equations_and_formulas_in_mathematics_physics_and/

Perhaps you've not gotten far enough in your studies to see the pattern yet, but most advanced mathematics texts (Hungerford's Algebra or Rudin's Real Analysis for example) and many physics texts are written as if they were pre-numbered zettelkasten. Generally every definition, theorem, corollary, proposition, and lemma in the text will be written out succinctly with its own unique number and arranged in some sort of branching order. Most of these texts you could generally cut up and paste onto cards and have something zettelkasten-like without any additional work.

I generally follow this same pattern and usually separate proofs on cards behind their associated theorems (typically only for those I've written out myself). Individual equations can be numbered, but I rarely give an equation its own card and instead reference them by card number with a particular equation line in parenthesis when necessary. I can then cross reference definitions, theorems, etc. easily as I continue building things up. Over time you can eventually cross reference various branches of math, physics, chemistry, biology, etc. For example I've got a dozen different proofs and uses of Schwartz' inequality in six different branches of mathematics which goes toward showing how closely knit various disparate branches of math can be.

In most cases I might also suggest against too heavy a focus on the equations, but on what they may say/mean, and what you can use it for. Alternately drawing diagrams or pictures of the relationships can be valuable. Understand it first then write it down. As an example you can look at Boyle's Law, Charles' law, Avogadro's Law and Gay-Lussac's law, but if you know and understand them properly then you should be able to write down and understand the more generic Ideal Gas Law, which shows how they're interlinked. Later in your studies you might also then be able to derive it from microscopic kinetic theory with statistical mechanics as well, then you'll be able to link up those concepts at that time.

Sometimes having examples of others' work can be helpful. In your case, perhaps perusing some zettelkasten work by previous users within the art/image space? In this respect some of the work by Aby Warburg may be interesting to you. I might suggest starting with his archive here: https://warburg.sas.ac.uk/archive/archive-collections/verknüpfungszwang-exhibition/mnemosyne-materials

reply to u/IamOkei https://www.reddit.com/r/antinet/comments/10bjqjq/how_do_you_generate_unique_notes_i_feel_weird_to/

You may find value in re-framing your active reading and note taking/annotating as "having a conversation with the text". Adler's essay How to Mark a Book is a good short introduction. If you try this for a while and still have trouble, watch the movie Finding Forrester and try again. If you're still having trouble after this, read through Adler and Van Doren's How to Read a Book: The Classic Guide to Intelligent Reading with a pen(cil) in hand and then try a third time.

reply to Ryan Randall and Matt Stine at https://hcommons.social/@ryanrandall/109677171177320098

@mstine@mastodon.sdf.org @ryanrandall It won't go as far back as we may like, but I'm hoping Mark Bernstein's upcoming talk will help to remedy some of the lost knowledge: https://lu.ma/2u5f7ky0

In part I blame Vannevar Bush for erasing so much history in As We May Think (1945).

https://forum.artofmemory.com/t/new-anthropology-archaeology-research-on-some-of-the-earliest-potential-writing-systems-with-relation-to-artificial-memory-systems-ams-external-memory-systems-ems/79786

Those interested in archaeology and anthropology with respect to art and memory may appreciate this new paper which could push the date of our earliest writing systems back several thousands of years. (cc @LynneKelly)

Upper Palaeolithic Proto-writing System and Phenological Calendar<br /> https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/cambridge-archaeological-journal/article/an-upper-palaeolithic-protowriting-system-and-phenological-calendar/6F2AD8A705888F2226FE857840B4FE19

https://forum.zettelkasten.de/discussion/2488/zettel-feedback-podcast-with-children?

To extend, it could be an interesting exercise to have the kids call up grandmother and grandfather to interview them with questions about when they were growing up, about their parents, and their grandparents. Then you're also getting some of the family oral history together not only for yourself, but for your children as well as future generations.

I have a nascent card very much like yours, but not as well fleshed out yet.

Process is important and I suspect we need more concrete examples for people to see. I'm reminded of Andy Matuschak's note taking live stream a while back: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DGcs4tyey18 though some editing, time compression, and inserted images can make it a bit more interesting than watching paint dry.

Anecdotally, I feel like mate has become at least marginally more popular in the United States in the last few years, or at least enough to enter the consciousness of the cultural zeitgeist at a liminal level.

https://cplong.org/2023/01/return-to-blogging/<br /> reply to https://hcommons.social/@sramsay/109660599682539192

IndieWeb, blogging, fountain pens?!? I almost hate to mention it for the rabbit hole it may become, but: https://micro.blog/discover/pens. Happy New Year!

reply to u/theinvertedform at https://www.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/zkguan/is_zettelkasten_gamification_of_notetaking/

Social media and "influencers" have certainly grabbed onto the idea and squeezed with both hands. Broadly while talking about their own versions of rules, tips, tricks, and tools, they've missed a massive history of the broader techniques which pervade the humanities for over 500 years. When one looks more deeply at the broader cross section of writers, educators, philosophers, and academics who have used variations on the idea of maintaining notebooks or commonplace books, it becomes a relative no-brainer that it is a useful tool. I touch on some of the history as well as some of the recent commercialization here: https://boffosocko.com/2022/10/22/the-two-definitions-of-zettelkasten/.

reply to u/alcibiad https://www.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/1054a49/has_anyone_read_this_too_much_to_know_managing/

I don't know everything, but reasonable portion of it comes from Ann M. Blair who is one of the senior scholars in the area of intellectual history. If you want a crash course on the space her book and Markus Krajewski's are probably the two best you can start out with, though keep in mind that they're written for a more scholarly crowd and can be somewhat dense in some places. For those who are fans, below is a quick bibliography of her related work in the space. For those who don't want to wade through several hundred pages of a relatively dense book, some of her shorter journal articles can be quite interesting.

Blair, Ann M.. “Humanist Methods in Natural Philosophy: The Commonplace Book.” Journal of the History of Ideas 53, no. 4 (1992): 541–51. https://doi.org/10.2307/2709935.

———. “Humanist Methods in Natural Philosophy: The Commonplace Book.” In Jean Bodin. Routledge, 2006.

———. “Note Taking as an Art of Transmission.” Critical Inquiry 31, no. 1 (September 2004): 85–107. https://doi.org/10.1086/427303.

———. “Reading Strategies for Coping with Information Overload ca. 1550-1700.” Journal of the History of Ideas 64, no. 1 (2003): 11–28. https://doi.org/10.2307/3654293.

———. “Annotating and Indexing Natural Philosophy,” January 1, 2000.

———. “Conrad Gessner’s Paratexts” 73, no. 1 (January 1, 2016): 73–122. https://doi.org/10.24894/gesn-en.2016.73004.

———. “Manuals on Note-Taking (Ars Excerpendi).” In Brill’s Encyclopaedia of the Neo-Latin World. Brill, May 7, 2014. https://referenceworks.brillonline.com/entries/encyclopaedia-of-the-neo-latin-world/manuals-on-note-taking-ars-excerpendi-B9789004271029_0058.

———. “Textbooks and Methods of Note-Taking in Early Modern Europe,” January 1, 2008.

———. “The Rise of Note-Taking in Early Modern Europe.” Intellectual History Review 20, no. 3 (August 4, 2010): 303–16. https://doi.org/10.1080/17496977.2010.492611.

———. The Theater of Nature: Jean Bodin and Renaissance Science. Princeton Legacy Library. Princeton University Press, 2017. https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691654386/the-theater-of-nature.

———. Too Much to Know: Managing Scholarly Information before the Modern Age. Yale University Press, 2010. https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300165395/too-much-know.

Blair, Ann M., Paul Duguid, and Anja-Silvia Goeing. Information: A Historical Companion. Princeton University Press, 2021. https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691179544/information.

reply to u/Echo_Delta17 at https://www.reddit.com/r/antinet/comments/103r4j0/requesting_antinet_hivemind_assistance_analog/

You should read Paper Machines closer as the accounting uses of Library Bureau products are what made it fantastically profitable in the early 1900s. Ann Blair has some useful references in Too Much to Know. Broadly there is lots of heavy influence of accounting principles in history as applied to note taking evolution, and particularly that of double entry bookkeeping. The idea of waste books plays particularly heavy here.

I've previously posted some early 1900s photos from Yawman & Erbe of uses of index card filing systems for CRM and other business related purposes: https://www.reddit.com/r/antinet/comments/yka3ro/vintage_yawman_and_erbe_card_index_filing_systems/

Melvil Dewey/Library Bureau ultimately partnered up with Herman Hollerith in a predecessor of what became IBM to supply early versions of punch cards for government contracts. (See Krajewski for this.)

Feel free to troll some of my other notes for some related references across time: https://hypothes.is/users/chrisaldrich?q=accounting

Curious what you're looking to discover here? A hard target library search for references should get you swimming in details pretty quickly here. I'd love to see what you come up with.

Sorry, I'm only just seeing this now Jan. I tag a lot in Hypothes.is to help make things a bit more searchable/findable in the future. Everything in Hypothes.is gets pulled into my Obsidian vault where it's turned into [[WikiLinks]] rather than tags. (I rarely use tags in Obsidian.) Really I find tagging is better for broad generic labels (perhaps the way many people might use folders) though I tend to tag things as specifically as I can as broad generic tags for things you work with frequently become unusable over time. I recommend trying it out for yourself and seeing what works best for you and the way you think. If you find that tagging doesn't give you anything in return for the work, then don't do it. Everyone can be different in these respects.

reply to u/BlackSwan8043 on https://www.reddit.com/r/antinet/comments/102gt6i/what_are_the_technicalities_of_the_antinet/

I'm not sure anyone has written "the" book on these things (yet), but Dan has certainly written a very good and concise one (and particularly the first half with respect to your question): https://boffosocko.com/2022/08/02/how-to-make-notes-and-write-a-handbook-by-dan-allosso-and-s-f-allosso/. His definitions of source notes and point notes along with examples are in chapter 4 if I recall: https://minnstate.pressbooks.pub/write/chapter/highlighting-and-note-taking/

Another good source for the sorts of reading practices and thinking/writing involved can be found in:<br /> Adler, Mortimer J., and Charles Van Doren. How to Read a Book. 1940. Reprint, New York: Simon & Schuster, 1972.

It sounds like you're almost there, if not already, so I would recommend spending more time actually reading and writing and you'll refine things for yourself as you go.

reply to u/shibbywiggy on https://www.reddit.com/r/antinet/comments/zzlje4/what_makes_this_special_for_me/

In his book Sönke Ahrens mentions the Zeigarnik effect and that it works for the slip box method in much the same way that Zeigarnik works for David Allen's GTD, but to my knowledge he wasn't making any sort of attempt to integrate GTD with the slipbox there. Where are you drawing this inference with respect to his work?

I've noticed the "frankenbaby" phenomenon too and have called it zettelkasten overreach in the past. HawkExpress' original Pile of Index Cards is the closest I've seen to pure GTD with index cards.

reply to u/Subject_Industry1633 at https://www.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/zwgeas/is_the_zk_method_worth_it_and_how_it_helped_you/ (and further down)

ZK is an excellent tool for literature reviews! It is a relative neologism (with a slightly shifted meaning in English over the past decade with respect to its prior historical use in German) for a specific form of note taking or commonplacing that has generally existed in academia for centuries. Excellent descriptions of it can be found littered around, though not under a specific easily searchable key word or phrase, though perhaps phrases like "historical method" or "wissenschaftlichen arbeitens" may come closest.

Some of the more interesting examples of it being spelled out in academe include:

• Thomas, Keith. “Diary: Working Methods.” London Review of Books, June 10, 2010. https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v32/n11/keith-thomas/diary.
• Webb, Sidney. Methods of Social Study. London; New York: Longmans, Green & Co., 1932. http://archive.org/details/b31357891.
• Eco, Umberto. How to Write a Thesis. Translated by Caterina Mongiat Farina and Geoff Farina. 1977. Reprint, Cambridge, MA, USA: MIT Press, 2015. https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/how-write-thesis.
• Sertillanges, Antonin Gilbert, and Mary Ryan. The Intellectual Life: Its Spirit, Conditions, Methods. First English Edition, Fifth printing. 1921. Reprint, Westminster, MD: The Newman Press, 1960. http://archive.org/details/a.d.sertillangestheintellectuallife. (Particularly ch 7 if I recall correctly)

For academic use, anecdotally I've seen very strong recent use of the general methods most compellingly demonstrated in Obsidian (they've also got a Discord server with an academic-focused channel) though many have profitably used DevonThink and Tinderbox (which has a strong, well-established community of academics around it) as much more established products with dovetails into a variety of other academic tools. Obviously there are several dozens of newer tools for doing this since about 2018, though for a lifetime's work, one might worry about their longevity as products.

reply to u/ManyNothings at https://www.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/zwkkm9/linking_two_notes/

I've seen more sources that suggest creating a link and then adding a quick note for the reason if it isn't obvious. Bob Doto does something like this if I recall correctly. I'm curious what specific sources you've seen that suggest a third note? I want to look at those and their reasoning.

reply to u/lichtbogen at https://www.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/zwp4a2/finished_the_manuscript_do_you_go_back_to_the/

A few potentially interesting examples from my notes:

Hans Blumenberg had a habit of striking out note cards either once or twice in red ink as a means of indicating to himself that he had used them in his writing work. He also wrapped them up and hid them away to prevent the risk of over-using his ideas in publications. [#]

He was also cognizant of the potential of over-use of ideas in his own work and in at least one case accused Montaigne of having over used a Lucretius quote to illustrate a small point rather than saving it for a major point in his argument on the failure of states where Blumenberg thought it was "compulsory". [#]

Much like Umberto Eco (How to Write a Thesis), in the closing paragraphs of his essay The Card-File System of Note-Taking, historian Jacques Goutor finally indicates that note cards can potentially be reused for multiple projects because each one "contains a piece of information which does not depend on a specific context for its value." While providing an example of how this might work, he goes even further by not only saying that "note-cards should never be discarded" but that they might be "recycled" by passing them on to "another interested party" while saying that their value and usefulness is dependent upon how well they may have adhered to some of the most basic note taking methods. (p35)

---

Helbig, Daniela K. “Life without Toothache: Hans Blumenberg’s Zettelkasten and History of Science as Theoretical Attitude.” Journal of the History of Ideas 80, no. 1 (2019): 91–112. https://doi.org/10.1353/jhi.2019.0005.

Goutor, Jacques. The Card-File System of Note-Taking. Approaching Ontario’s Past 3. Toronto: Ontario Historical Society, 1980. http://archive.org/details/cardfilesystemof0000gout.

Reply to u/ManuelRodriguez331 on https://www.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/zvvuke/are_hyperlinks_needed_for_a_zettelkasten/

Eminem would indicate it's a clear no.

By direct translation zettelkasten = slips + box. There is no word in the name to indicate links of any sort. 😁🗃️🤣

I gave some examples of uses in arts/media a while back that you might find interesting for your use case: https://www.reddit.com/r/antinet/comments/xdrb0k/comment/iofo5vv/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=web2x&context=3

In particular, a more commonplace book approach or something along the lines of Chapter 6 of Twyla Tharpe's book may be more useful or productive for your use case.

reply to: https://www.reddit.com/r/antinet/comments/znbvw3/ephemeral_sources/

If it makes you feel better, this is a long standing problem of document and source loss. As just a small historical example from a fellow, but very early, note taker and practitioner of the ars excerpendi (art of excerpting):

Presumed to have been written in the fifth century Stobaeus compiled an extensive two volume manuscript commonly known as The Anthologies of excerpts containing 1,430 poetry and prose quotations of classical ancient works from Greece and Rome of which only 315 original sources are still extant in the 21st century.[1] Large portions of our knowledge of many famous classical texts and plays are the result of his notes. Perhaps your notes will one day serve as the only references to famous documents of our time?

Often for digital copies of things, I'll use a browser bookmarklet to quickly save archive copies of pages to the Internet Archive as I'm excerpting or annotating them. See https://help.archive.org/help/save-pages-in-the-wayback-machine/ for some ways of doing this.

[1] Moller, Violet. The Map of Knowledge: A Thousand-Year History of How Classical Ideas Were Lost and Found. 1st ed. New York: Doubleday, 2019. https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/546484/the-map-of-knowledge-by-violet-moller/.

reply to: https://www.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/zhyu5i/comment/izuew08/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=web2x&context=3

Often the context to properly illustrate these new insights can be more than they're worth. However this self-contained one linked here, may be useful: https://www.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/zhyu5i/comment/j02niq3/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=web2x&context=3

Reply to:

Who is Zettelkasten note-taking system for? <br /> u/Beens__<br /> https://www.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/zhyu5i/who_is_zettelkasten_notetaking_system_for/

Perhaps your use case may benefit from knowing the longer term outcomes of such processes, particularly as they relate to idea generation and innovation within your areas of interest? Keeping notes which you review over periodically and between which you create potential links will help to foster more productive long term combinatorial creativity, which will help you create new and potentially useful ideas much more quickly than blank page-based brainstorming.

Her method was much more ad hoc than the more highly refined methods of Luhmann which allowed him to write, but perhaps there's something you might appreciate from the example of the character Tess McGill in the movie Working Girl. Even more base in practice is that of Eminem, which shows far less structure, but could still have interesting long term creativity effects, though again, it bears repeating that one should occasionally revisit their notes (even if they're only in "headline form") in attempts to refresh their memory and link old ideas to new to generate completely new ideas.

reply to: https://www.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/zixzgj/should_i_use_a_zettelkasten_if_im_just_intending/

If you're considering less work upfront, you might consider a closely related form by maintaining a commonplace book, or a pared down version of what folks here are calling a zettelkasten.

https://boffosocko.com/2022/06/10/reframing-and-simplifying-the-idea-of-how-to-keep-a-zettelkasten/

reply to u/I_saw_the_Aleph<br /> https://www.reddit.com/r/antinet/comments/zgx3pv/i_published_an_article_about_the_zettelkasten/

Thanks for adding to the tradition in another language. This is great.

I'm obviously not a fan of the commonly held Luhmann "zettelkasten origin myth", but since you don't cite a source for "otros métodos de tomar notas similares se originan en el siglo XVII" (translation: other similar note taking methods in the 17th century), I'm curious what and potentially who you're referring to here? I've seen a handful of online sources nebulously mention this same 17th century time period without any specific evidence, so I'm curious if you're following that crowd, or if there's something more specific you have in mind or could point to from a historical standpoint?

reply to https://www.reddit.com/user/thomasteepe/

Luhmann's method is certainly an evolution on prior methods, but only has a few differences. Sadly there aren't a broader array of other options that are open in the solution space to create an actual Cambrian explosion here. At the end of the day, one still has to do actual reading, note taking, thinking, and work to make the system go. It this hurdle of work that most often dampens people's spirits and despite it's ability to be more easily sustainable, it's really not very sexy, so people move on to the next shiny, new thing.

I'm aware of that series of videos and a few others, though my German is almost non-existent which makes them a slow slog. I suppose I should use Google's auto-transcription/translation, but that often muddies things further. I've had a few people translate pieces of things like that for me, but it becomes cost prohibitive after a while.

I wish Manfred Kuehn had left his site up, but I understand why he did it. I still delve back into Archive.org every now and then to find new things. If I had some extra time, I'd contact him to see if he'd be willing to publish archived versions of his blog as a book and do the collation/editing to get it out, but it's a lot of work, even with large portions automated.

One of these days I'll find a copy of the Marbach catalog to read...

Based on Luhmann's ZKII 9,8.3 (aka The Ghost in the Machine) and various other video and anecdotal sources, his colleagues saw his system and generally didn't care. His influence has primarily only been influential after-the-fact beginning online with mentions by Manfred Kuehn after 2007 with more interest following the Marbach zettelkasten exhibition in 2013 and the launch of zettelkasten.de. You're living amidst his greatest influence on the space, particularly asking this question just two days before Scott Scheper's book Antinet Zettelkasten, focusing on the specifics of Luhmann's method, is set to be released.

With respect to zettelkasten, I would posit that it was Luhmann himself who was actually standing on the shoulders of other giants which preceded him in these broader traditions including Desiderius Erasmus, Rudolph Agricola, Phillip Melanchthon, Konrad Gessner, John Locke, Ernst Bernheim, Charles Langlois, Charles Seignobos, Antoine Sertillanges, Beatrice Webb, Johannes Heyde, and C. Wright Mills, etc. See: https://boffosocko.com/2022/10/22/the-two-definitions-of-zettelkasten/ for more on the history here.

While I'm thinking about influence, has anyone named their children after the method yet? Is there a baby named Slip, Zeke, or Luhmann in honor yet? Perhaps this is the week that may have happened? 😉

I'm enamored of this idea as well and this is a fascinating example.

It seems similar to the related (and also difficult-to-name) concept which I've called combinatorial creativity. One of the earliest versions I've seen is that of Raymond Llullus' work with respect to combinatorial mnemonics described in Frances Yates' The Art of Memory (1966). Farnam Street's post is a good start https://fs.blog/networked-knowledge-and-combinatorial-creativity/, but I've been collecting other examples: https://hypothes.is/users/chrisaldrich?q=tag%3A%22combinatorial+creativity%22 and other names for it over time.

I can't help but wonder what Ericsson's role of deliberate practice would look like with arts as the subject? What motivates long term deliberate practice?

Yates, Frances A. The Art of Memory. 1966. Reprint, Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2001. https://www.amazon.com/Art-Memory-Frances-Yates/dp/0226950018.

Ericsson, K. Anders, Ralf Th. Krampe, and Clemens Tesch-Romer. The Role of Deliberate Practice in the Acquisition of Expert Performance. Psychological Review, 1993.

https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2022/12/the-ethics-of-syndicating-comments-using-webmentions/

Not an answer to the dilemma, though I generally take the position of keeping everything unless someone asks me to take it down or that I might know that it's been otherwise deleted. Often I choose not to delete my copy, but simply make it private and only viewable to me.

On the deadnaming and related issues, it would be interesting to create a webmention mechanism for the h-card portions so that users might update these across networks. To some extent Automattic's Gravatar system does this in a centralized manner, but it would be interesting to see it separately. Certainly not as big an issue as deadnaming, but there's a similar problem on some platforms like Twitter where people will change their display name regularly for either holidays, or lately because they're indicating they'd rather be found on Mastodon or other websites.

The webmention spec does contain details for both editing/deleting content and resending webmentions to edit and/or remove the original. Ideally this would be more broadly adopted and used in the future to eliminate the need for making these choices by leaving the choice up to the original publisher.

Beyond this, often on platforms that don't have character limits (Reddit for example), I'll post at the bottom of my syndicated copy of content that it was originally published on my site (along with the permalink) and explicitly state that I aggregate the replies from various locations which also helps to let people know that they might find addition context or conversation at the original post should they be interested. Doing this on Twitter, Mastodon, et al is much harder due to space requirements obviously.

While most responses I send would fall under fair use for copying, I also have a Creative Commons license on my text in an effort to help others feel more comfortable with having copies of my content on their sites.

Another ethical layer to this is interactions between sites which both have webmentions enabled. To some extent this creates an implicit bi-directional relationship which says, I'm aware that this sort of communication exists and approve of your parsing and displaying my responses.

The public norms and ethics in this area will undoubtedly evolve over time, so it's also worth revisiting and re-evaluating the issue over time.

reply to u/deafpolygon at https://www.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/z5haa9/comment/iy6yowi/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=web2x&context=3

It's been reported by his son that Luhmann did learn about a method (which either he heavily modified or someone else showed him their modification thereof) from Johannes Erich Heyde. There's sure to be more details on this in Scott Scheper's upcoming book Antinet Zettelkasten.

see: Heyde, Johannes Erich. Technik des wissenschaftlichen Arbeitens: zeitgemässe Mittel und Verfahrungsweisen. Junker und Dünnhaupt, 1931.

See: https://hyp.is/4wxHdDqeEe2OKGMHXDKezA/www.reddit.com/r/antinet/comments/wryt4t/the_secret_book_luhmann_read_that_taught_him/

Post at https://www.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/z5haa9/victor_margolins_zettelkasten_process_for_writing/

It's not as refined or as compartmentalized as Luhmann's process, but art Historian Victor Margolin broadly outlines his note taking and writing process in reasonable detail in this excellent three minute video. (This may be one of the shortest and best produced encapsulations of these reading/note taking/writing methods I've ever seen.)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kxyy0THLfuI

Though he indicates it was a "process [he] developed", it is broadly similar to that of the influential "historical method" laid out by Ernst Bernheim and later Seignobos/Langlois in the late 1800s.

https://www.dalekeiger.net/on-being-a-gentleman-well-unread/

Both your 積ん読 game and master level antilibrary skills are on wonderful display here.

Your observations here ring true to me. They're also supported by similar observations by Malcolm Gladwell in chapters 8 and 9 (I believe) of Miracle and Wonder. There he's got stories of Wilt Chamberlain and Paul Simon which provide additional examples though he's also attributing some of the success to memory and the idea of situational awareness. He quotes his own researcher there who makes some comments on short versus long artistic careers and how they relate to creativity and longevity. See also this "zettel": https://hypothes.is/a/Kd7X4lvPEe250Gvn57Pbdg

Gladwell, Malcolm, Bruce Hedlam, and Paul Simon. Miracle and Wonder: Conversations with Paul Simon. Audiobook. Pushkin Industries, 2021. https://amzn.to/3ENU32D

Reply to Andy https://forum.zettelkasten.de/discussion/comment/16865#Comment_16865

Andy, I'll take you at your word. You're right that none of it requires extraordinary genius--though many who seem to exhibit extraordinary genius do have variations of these practices in their lives, and the largest proportion of them either read about them or were explicitly taught them.

With these patterns and practices being so deeply rooted in our educational systems for so long (not to mention the heavy influences of our orality and evolved thinking apparatus even prior to literacy), it's a bit difficult for many to truly guarantee that they've done these things independently without heavy cultural and societal influence. As a result, it's not a far stretch for people to evolve their own practices to what works for them and then think that they've invented something new. The common person may not be aware of the old ideas of scala naturae or scholasticism, but they certainly feel them in their daily lives. Commonplacing is not much different.

By analogy, Elon Musk might say he created the Tesla, but it's a far bigger stretch for him to say that he invented a new means of transportation, or a car, or the wheel when we know he's swimming in a culture rife with these items. Humans are historically far better at imitation than innovation. If people truly independently developed systems like these so many times, then in the evolutionary record of these practices we should expect to see more diversity than we do in practice. We might expect to see more innovation than just the plain vanilla adjacent possible. Given Margolin's age, time period, educational background, and areas of expertise, there is statistically very little chance that he hadn't seen or talked about versions of this practice with several dozens of his peers through his lifetime after which he took that tacit knowledge and created his own explicit version which worked for him.

Historian Keith Thomas talks about some of these traditions which he absorbed himself without having read some of the common advice (see London Review of Books https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v32/n11/keith-thomas/diary). He also indicates that he slowly evolved to some of the often advised practices like writing only on one side of a slip, though, like many, he completely omits to state the reason why this is good advice. We can all ignore these rich histories, but we'll probably do so at our own peril and at the expense of wasting some of our time to re-evolve the benefits.

Why are so many here (and in other fora on these topics) showing up regularly to read and talk about their experiences? They're trying to glean some wisdom from the crowds of experimenters to make improvements. In addition to the slow wait for realtime results, I've "cheated" a lot and looked at a much richer historical record of wins and losses to gain more context of our shared intellectual history. I'm reminded of one of Goethe's aphorisms from Maxims and Reflections "Inexperienced people raise questions which were answered by the wise thousands of years ago."

https://brainsteam.co.uk/2022/11/26/one-week-with-hypothesis/

I too read a lot of niche papers and feel the emptiness, but because I'm most often writing for myself anyway, its alright. There are times, however, when I see a growing community of people who've left their associative trails behind before I've found a particular page.

I've used the phrase "digital exhaust" before, but I like the more positive framing of "learning exhaust".

If you've not found it yet, my own experimentations with the platform can largely be found here: https://boffosocko.com/tag/hypothes.is/

https://readwriterespond.com/2022/11/commonplace-book-a-verb-or-a-noun/

Sometimes the root question is "what to I want to do this for?" Having an underlying reason can be hugely motivating.

Are you collecting examples of things for students? (seeing examples can be incredibly powerful, especially for defining spaces) for yourself? Are you using them for exploring a particular space? To clarify your thinking/thought process? To think more critically? To write an article, blog, or book? To make videos or other content?

Your own website is a version of many of these things in itself. You read, you collect, you write, you interlink ideas and expand on them. You're doing it much more naturally than you think.

I find that having an idea of the broader space, what various practices look like, and use cases for them provides me a lot more flexibility for what may work or not work for my particular use case. I can then pick and choose for what suits me best, knowing that I don't have to spend as much time and effort experimenting to invent a system from scratch but can evolve something pre-existing to suit my current needs best.

It's like learning to cook. There are thousands of methods (not even counting cuisine specific portions) for cooking a variety of meals. Knowing what these are and their outcomes can be incredibly helpful for creatively coming up with new meals. By analogy students are often only learning to heat water to boil an egg, but with some additional techniques they can bake complicated French pâtissier. Often if you know a handful of cooking methods you can go much further and farther using combinations of techniques and ingredients.

What I'm looking for in the reading, note taking, and creation space is a baseline version of Peter Hertzmann's 50 Ways to Cook a Carrot combined with Michael Ruhlman's Ratio: The Simple Codes Behind the Craft of Everyday Cooking. Generally cooking is seen as an overly complex and difficult topic, something that is emphasized on most aspirational cooking shows. But cooking schools break the material down into small pieces which makes the processes much easier and more broadly applicable. Once you've got these building blocks mastered, you can be much more creative with what you can create.

How can we combine these small building blocks of reading and note taking practices for students in the 4th - 8th grades so that they can begin to leverage them in high school and certainly by college? Is there a way to frame them within teaching rhetoric and critical thinking to improve not only learning outcomes, but to improve lifelong learning and thinking?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zCLCIw-HSJc

I'm curious if you knew if Nelson, Engelbart or any of their contemporaries had/maintained/used commonplace books or card indexes as precursors of their computing work? That is, those along the lines of those most commonly used by academics, for example as described by Markus Krajewski in Paper Machines (MIT Press, 2011) or even Beatrice Webb's Appendix C on Note Taking in My Apprenticeship (Longmans, 1926) in which she describes a slip (or index card)-based database method of scientific note taking. I've always felt that Vannevar Bush held things back unnecessarily by not mentioning commonplace book traditions in As We May Think.

https://mastodon.social/@tbeseda@indieweb.social/109368520955574335

At a base level, the Fediverse is a subset within the bigger IndieWeb. Parts of the Fediverse, have and support some of the IndieWeb building blocks, but none that I'm aware of support them all. Example: Mastodon has microformats markup, but doesn't support sending webmentions or have micropub support. Currently it's easier for the IndieWeb to communicate into and read the Fediverse, but the Fediverse doesn't do a good job of seeing or interacting with things outside it.

reply to thread: https://mastodon.social/@mathew@campaign.openworlds.info/109371453439113339

Perhaps underneath the My Library you need to have an alternate path labeled "Antilibrary". Perhaps that will alleviate a lot of your cognitive dissonance and guilt.

https://micro.blog/JohnPhilpin/14165886

@JohnPhilpin Recommendations can often come cheap, particularly on iTunes where everyone begs for reviews. I prefer hearing about what people actually listened to. What did you invest your time in/on? This is why I sporadically maintain what I call a faux-cast or a feed of podcasts and audio I've actually listened to: https://boffosocko.com/2018/03/08/podcasts-of-things-ive-listened-to-or-want-to-listen-to/

https://johnjohnston.info/blog/feedreaderfriday-1/?unapproved=219279&moderation-hash=55729efd4574d8ca6035df0c3a66bdb5#comment-219279

Thanks for the follow within FeedLand today btw. I saw it pop up in the group list. 🙂

https://micro.blog/manton/14045523

@manton When I was looking at Fediverse instances the other day I noticed that one of the biggest platforms within it was Write.as, which are more blog centric. Is there a better/easier way for m.b. to federate/interact or serve as a reader for that part of the ecosystem? Perhaps worth exploring?

https://analogoffice.net/2022/10/28/a-life-in.html

@Guy Reminds me instantaneously of this collection of farm themed pocket notebooks which inspired Field Notes: https://fieldnotesbrand.com/from-seed 📓

@danielsantos Almost everyone in the space exclusively associates ZK with Luhmann, in part because of the use of the foreign (unfamiliar) German word and the lost cultural memory of the use of card indexes as note taking tools or as commonplace books in index card form. Hopefully we can change this misperception which also opens up these practices to a lot more people with a lot less confusion.

@jessekelber @collin I'll second the Diamond 580, though if they're completely new, the ECO T may be a useful choice as the grip design helps to nudge a better grip for beginners. It's also a little less expensive (if they have fear of breaking or losing their nice new pen), and gives them space to dream upwards without breaking their own bank when you've turned them into a lifelong collector.