- Jan 2024
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www.youtube.com www.youtube.com
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Without seeming to realize the split between the two ideas, Cahall seems to have organically discovered the basic difference between a topically oriented commonplace book method (on index cards) and a Luhmann-artig method of numbering cards as folgezettel.
He recommends picking one or the other, or potentially doing both and not worrying.
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It would seem like a zettelkasten joke, but Cahall has an index entry on "singular focus", yet it has two entries in disparate places in his zk. [14:02]
🤣
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Cahall has a practice of using Luhmann-artig numbering, but having tabbed cards which section his box into broad categories. Yet in an example relating to the Eisenhower Matrix, which he would naturally categorize as "productivity", he instead places it next to a card in "creativity" about dealing with tasks.
Generally I would advise people specifically not to practice this way, but presumably it works for him....
He says he never understood branching and as a result of his practice, he needs to spend much more time indexing.
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Curly Gurene Cahall calls his zettelkasten "Sherlock".
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Hiya - I'm just curious about how people use Obsidian in academia. I guess you could say I'm looking for examples of what it's used for (e.g. to take short notes or to link ideas) and in what kind of systems may guide people's vaults (e.g. Zettelkasten). I'm also just keen on connecting with other PhD candidates through these blogs. No one at my uni that I know of is currently using Obsidian for academic work
Reply to Couscous at https://discord.com/channels/686053708261228577/722584061087842365/1197392837952684052
A quick survey of currently active academics, teachers, and researchers who are blogging about note taking practices and zettelkasten-based methods.
Individuals
Dan Allosso is a history professor at Bemidji State University who has used Obsidian in his courses in the past. He frequently writes about related topics on his Substack channels. One can also find related videos about reading, writing, and research process as well as zettelkasten on his YouTube channel. In addition to this, Dan has a book on note taking and writing which focuses on using a card index or zettelkasten centric process.
Shawn Graham has both a blog as well as a prior course on the history of the internet using Obsidian. In the course materials he has compiled significant details and suggestions for setting up an Obsidian vault for students interested in using the tool.
Kathleen Fitzpatrick has a significant blog which covers a variety of topics centered around her work and research. Her current course Peculiar Genres of Academic Writing (2024) focuses on writing, note taking (including Zettelkasten) and encourages students to try out Obsidian, which she's been using herself. A syllabus for an earlier version of the course includes some big name bloggers in academia whose sites might serve as examples of academic writing in the public. The syllabus also includes a section on being an academic blogger and creating platform as a public intellectual.
Morganeua is a Ph.D. candidate who has a fairly popular YouTube channel on note taking within the academic setting (broadly using Obsidian, though she does touch on other tools from time to time).
Chris Aldrich is independent research who does work at the intersection of intellectual history and note taking methods and practices. He's got an active website along with a large collection of note taking, zettelkasten, commonplace books, and sense-making related articles. His practice is a hybrid one using both analog and digital methods including Obsidian and Hypothes.is.
Bob Doto is a teacher and independent researcher who focuses on Luhmann-artig zettelkasten practice and writing. He uses Obsidian and also operates a private Discord server focused on general Zettelkasten practice.
Manfred Kuehn, a professor of philosophy at Boston University, had an influential blog on note taking practices and culture from 2007 to 2018 on Blogspot. While he's taken the site down, the majority of his work there can be found on the Internet Archive.
Andy Matuschak is an independent researcher who is working at the intersection of learning, knowledge management, reading and related topics. He's got a Patreon, YouTube Channel and a public wiki.
Broader community-based efforts
Here are some tool-specific as well as tool-agnostic web-based fora, chat rooms, etc. which are focused on academic-related note taking and will have a variety of people to follow and interact with.
Obsidian runs a large and diverse Discord server. In addition to many others, they have channels for #Academia and #Academic-tools as well as #Knowledge-management and #zettelkasten.
Tinderbox hosts regular meetups (see their forum for details on upcoming events and how to join). While their events are often product-focused (ways to use it, Q&A, etc.), frequently they've got invited speakers who talk about their work, processes, and methods of working. Past recorded sessions can be found on YouTube. While this is tool-specific, much of what is discussed in their meetups can broadly be applied to any tool set. Because Tinderbox has been around since the early 00s and heavily focused on academic use, the majority of participants in the community are highly tech literate academics whose age skews to the over 40 set.
A variety of Zettelkasten practitioners including several current and retired academicians using a variety of platforms can be found at https://forum.zettelkasten.de/.
Boris Mann and others held Tools for Thought meetups which had been regularly held through 2023. They may have some interesting archived material for perusal on both theory, practice, and a wide variety of tools.
Others?
I've tried to quickly tip out my own zettelkasten on this topic with a focus on larger repositories of active publicly available web-based material. Surely there is a much wider variety of people and resources not listed here, but it should be a reasonable primer for beginners. Feel free to reply with additional suggestions and resources of which you may be aware.
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forum.zettelkasten.de forum.zettelkasten.de
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Software and applications for creating visualizations of zettelkasten contents: - Tinderbox (Mac) - Apple's Freeform (app) - Obsidian Canvas - Excalidraw (plugin for Obsidian) - Scrintal - Heptabase - Card Buddy (Mac) - AFFiNE (https://github.com/toeverything/AFFiNE)
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Local file Local file
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This is why choosing an external system that forces us todeliberate practice and confronts us as much as possible with ourlack of understanding or not-yet-learned information is such a smartmove.
Choosing an external system for knowledge keeping and production forces the learner into a deliberate practice and confronts them with their lack of understanding. This is a large part of the underlying value not only of the zettelkasten, but of the use of a commonplace book which Benjamin Franklin was getting at when recommending that one "read with a pen in your hand". The external system also creates a modality shift from reading to writing by way of thinking which further underlines the value.
What other building blocks are present in addition to: - modality shift - deliberate practice - confrontation of lack of understanding
Are there other systems that do all of these as well as others simultaneously?
link to Franklin quote: https://hypothes.is/a/HZeDKI3YEeyj9GcNWKX4iA
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pileofindexcards.org pileofindexcards.org
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Nearly 5 years ago, I read Watanabe Shoichi‘s “知的生活の方法 (Chiteki seikatsu no houhou = A way to intellectual life)”. His episode was very first time I realize what is card system, and it is used in academic world for long time.
Hawk Sugano was introduced to index cards circa 2001 by means of Watanabe Shoichi's book “知的生活の方法” (A Method of Intellectual Life".
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pileofindexcards.org pileofindexcards.org
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You can order Correct’s indexcard, dock, and Kokuyo’s fieldnote via the Service page.
Hawk Sugano apparently offered the Pile of Index Cards as a physical product offering by combining Correct's index card dock and Kokuyo's fieldnotes in late December 2006.
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forum.zettelkasten.de forum.zettelkasten.de
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bavatuesdays.com bavatuesdays.com
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I could totally see this UI with a video generated version of Niklas Luhmann answering questions using the training set of notes in his online zettelkasten at https://niklas-luhmann-archiv.de/bestand/zettelkasten/tutorial
syndication link: https://bavatuesdays.com/ai106-long-live-the-new-flesh/comment-page-1/#comment-388943
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www.reddit.com www.reddit.com
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Agreed. Go with the FamedBearian numbering scheme.
At least Scott Scheper is advising people to ignore the advice in his own book about numbering systems. (Too bad he didn't write that advice in his own book...)
https://www.reddit.com/r/antinet/comments/193c6bu/comment/khcbe5n/
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boffosocko.com boffosocko.com
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The key questions at play here are where is the work of a keeping a zettelkasten done and how is represented?
The key question here is: what the Zettelkasten really is?
There is argument about something which is not provided: definition of ZK.
When it will be the definition, then it can be argued, but so there are only two one-sided heads talking to themselves about different things, but which have something in common, so they can talk endlessly.
And it has nothing to do with knowledge management, note-taking or learning, because it can be done in many ways, so then there is no need to discuss about it in terms of misunderstanding.
Misunderstanding and fallacies can be talked in terms of definitions or ideas, but it should be any will to compromise some limitations and not putting everything under umbrella-terms.
Will someone discuss that bloggers write texts like ancient philosophers so for example Plato was very first blogger? There are texts and written thoughts in both cases, aren't they!?
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https://www.etsy.com/shop/RelicWoodGifts
Etsy shop that does custom wooden boxes: Relic Wood Gifts<br /> Could be commissioned to do custom zettelkasten boxes.
I've seen an example of their work and it is stunningly nice.
via Librarian at Jefferson Branch of Pasadena Public library
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forum.zettelkasten.de forum.zettelkasten.de
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JasperMcFly 10:38AM Flag I guess we need to collectively decide what the default meaning of "Zettelkasten" is. Given that Luhmann's version, and its digital variants are popular now, I would vote that the use of Zettelkasten therefore means the Luhmann version- as that is what most people are referring to at this point. Which begs the question: What are the sine qua non features of a Luhmannian Zettelkasten and related workflow? What features from his analog workflow and systematic numbering and linking and indexing must be present in hybrid or digital instantiations to qualify as a "Luhmannian Zettelkasten"?
reply to https://forum.zettelkasten.de/discussion/comment/19278/#Comment_19278
@JasperMcFly I'll presume that given the time differential, you may have missed my post just before yours which touches on the frivolity of the proposition of creating a single definition?
Most on this forum are going to presume that zettelkasten is precisely a slipbox in a similar form to that of Luhmann, but in practice some here and many elsewhere aren't going to see the distinction (or care). Some will unpopularly insist that a zettelkasten cannot be digital in form, but they'll also do so while simultaneously (heterodoxically and confusingly?) suggesting that one should use Wikipedia's Academic Outline of Disciplines, an idea which didn't exist during Luhmann's life.
You can make an attempt to force a definition, but I guarantee that it's a losing proposition as in practice people are going to use the word in almost any way they want—whatever you do, don't trust Humpty Dumpty's definition. It's the difference between prescriptive and proscriptive definitions. It can be seen in your very question if you look closely at your own phrase "beg the question", which in classic rhetoric means something very specific going back centuries, but in common use it has a dramatically different meaning. As ever, context will always be the king on these questions of definition, though some of us are still converging on a happy commonality.
For a bit more history here, try The Two Definitions of Zettelkasten.
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github.com github.com
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CrossLine<br /> https://github.com/rochus-keller/CrossLine
ᔥSukhovskii in CrossLine who asks if anyone has used it for a ZK before
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zettelkasten.de zettelkasten.de
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reply to oxytonic on 2023-01-08 at https://hypothes.is/a/8QdgetQOEe2XG6u5i9iAHQ
In my experience, alternating alphanumeric codes give you the "gist" of the original context. Purely with reference to my rough outline, my notecard "3516/b" implies psychology (3XXX), cognition (35XX), and memory (351X). Even the single slash implies a level of abstraction and/or specificity.
But it's not enough because it runs the risk of locking you in. Forward links on the card (or forward links to the card!) offer comparable if not competitive recontextualization, which is most likely what Luhmann means by "multiple storage".
Caution: My note here has some significant missing context which results from significant additional research.
The primary issue with analog slip boxes, particularly in academic research of Luhmann's day, was one of multiple storage. No one else I'm aware of prior to his time used Luhmann's filing scheme (and very few after until about 2013). Instead most filed multiple copies of their notes under category headings like "psychology", "cognition", and "memory" (to use your example) so that those ideas would be readily available when they came to work on their ideas relating to cognition, for example. This involved a tremendous amount of copying work. (For reference, see Heyde, Johannes Erich. Technik des wissenschaftlichen Arbeitens: zeitgemässe Mittel und Verfahrungsweisen. Junker und Dünnhaupt, 1931. which is the handbook which Luhmann used to scaffold his method.) It was this copying and filing under multiple categories which was commonly referred to as multiple storage. Many academics got around it by hiring assistants or secretaries who would do this duplicative work and filing on their behalf; Luhmann didn't have this additional help and it may have been a portion of the pressure for the evolution of his method.
Instead Luhmann used branching and cross-indexing his ideas along with regular use and familiarity of the space within his boxes. While his zettelkasten may seem on the surface to be done by category, the way you suggest, it definitely is not. Some of this appearance is suggested by editorial decisions made by the curators of his digital archive and, in larger part, by Scott Scheper who (sadly in my opinion) recommends using the Academic Outline of Disciplines as top level categories a practice which heavily belies some of what Luhmann was doing. While Luhmann was inspired by the Dewey Decimal System, he wasn't using the parts of it that equated numbers with topics, in part because he didn't need to and it would have been counterproductive to his ultimate method—specifically causing him to deal with multiple storage. Modern (digital) database theory and practice allows some note takers an easier way around this problem.
For more on this see: - https://boffosocko.com/2022/10/27/thoughts-on-zettelkasten-numbering-systems/ - https://boffosocko.com/2023/01/19/on-the-interdisciplinarity-of-zettelkasten-card-numbering-topical-headings-and-indices/
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zettelkasten.de zettelkasten.de
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From Fleeting Notes to Project Notes – Concepts of "How to Take Smart Notes" by Sönke Ahrens찰나의 메모에서 프로젝트 메모로 - Sönke Ahrens의 "스마트한 메모를 하는 방법"의 컨셉
다시 확인하고 아이디어 고민
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forum.zettelkasten.de forum.zettelkasten.de
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Nori January 3 Flag I have two remarks: First, if you instead of an alphanumeric ID use a timestamp-based one, there is no need to “place” the note anywhere
@Nori said: First, if you instead of an alphanumeric ID use a timestamp-based one, there is no need to “place” the note anywhere.
Too often I see this generic advice to use a timestamp ID, but no one ever mentions what affordance that practice provides or any direct motivation for doing it. In this context it's suggested to remove the need to place the note anywhere, but if this is the only benefit, why bother having an ID at all? What other tangible benefits does a timestamp ID provide? (If the only benefit is having a record of creation, then why bother to put it into the title, which usually only causes confusion and problem in most digital systems? Digital systems have much better places to store date/time created, modified, etc. if you need them for search.)
In Luhmann's case the alphanumeric ID gave direct benefits in organically creating neighborhoods of ideas in which one could easily travel and which provided concrete, findable locations for search and linking. This appears to be part of the beneficial structure for what @IvanFerrero has, so why suggest such a change @Nori?
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www.reddit.com www.reddit.com
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It's not a Luhmann Zettelkasten if it's digital. 🗃️
reply to u/sscheper at https://www.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/18u39ca/comment/kfi3nl4/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=web2x&context=3
It's not a Luhmann Zettelkasten if ~~it's digital~~ Luhmann didn't make it. 🗃️
There, I've fixed it for ya...
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FireKing File Cabinet, 1-Hour Fire Protection, 6-Drawer, Small Document Size, 31" Deep<br /> https://www.filing.com/FireKing-Card-Check-Note-Cabinet-6-Drawer-p/6-2552-c.htm
A modern index card catalog filing solution with locks and fireproofing offered by FireKing for $6,218.00 with shipment in 2-4 weeks. 6 Drawers with three sections each. Weighs 860 lbs.
at 0.0072" per average card, with filing space of 25 15/16" per section with 18 sections, this should hold 64,843 index cards.
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www.reddit.com www.reddit.com
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It doens't take into account the mental labour of actually assigning each card a numeric alpha address.
I appreciate that he takes a moment to acknowledge that this step of assigning numbers and arranging is work. Many gloss over this.
The work put in up front ideally pays off later.
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- Dec 2023
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leanpub.com leanpub.com
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https://leanpub.com/analogbrain/c/I9hqZbLpOxa9
via https://www.reddit.com/r/antinet/comments/18ufpsr/booklet_about_analog_zk/ from u/Natural_Grocery4786 aka Juan M. Ferrera
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forum.zettelkasten.de forum.zettelkasten.de
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Andy 6:32AM Flag Shouldn't the title be "Chris Rock's Zettel output process" instead of "Chris Rock's Zettelkasten output process"? Wo ist der Kasten? (Where's the box?) I can see @Sascha shaking his head: "Das ist kein Zettelkasten."
reply to Andy at https://forum.zettelkasten.de/discussion/comment/19108/#Comment_19108
I've got no evidence for nor against the presence of a box for these or any idea what the earlier portion of his process looks like at present. The bulletin board slips pictured were held up with pins and those on the table appear to be taped down, ostensibly to prevent accidental movement. Given their temporary nature and placement in this context, and the fact that they were highly portable for at least the span of the five shows he was preparing for in the documentary, there was certainly some container (even if it was as simple as a binder clip or a simple rubber band). Having seen shows like this roll in and out of venues before, I'm reasonably sure it was in a box at some point, so only a pedant would worry about it.
Box aside, the point here is that it shows a version of how he manufactures his output and manages his arrangement—portions of an overall process which are less frequently discussed and incredibly rarely visualized or pictured within the general community, much less in mass popular culture.
Many have argued that Eminem didn't have a zettelkasten either, and he definitely had both slips and a box. There's obviously no winning here... I won't worry too much about it until the naysayers' own Zettelkasten can manage to help them sell out Jones Beach Theater, The Prudential Center, PNC Bank Arts Center, Barclays Center, and Madison Square Garden.
Caveat pedanticus: Anyone talking about "Chris Rock's box" in public, might be held up to ridicule in his next sold-out tour. After Headliners Only and the Will Smith incident, I'm not taking any chances. 😜🃏🗃️
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web.archive.org web.archive.org
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735: _Nen_Kumi Name______ : 2006/03/04 (Sat) 23:35:55 ID:??? >>732 5×3 was used as a book search card. (Almost all electronic now) It 's a little smaller than the popular version of the productivity notebook, making it ideal for portable notes. Other purposes include memorization cards and information retrieval. However, B7 and mini 6-hole system notebooks are almost the same size, so they are being pushed out and are not widely used in Japan. How to do it in a book called How to Write an American-style Essay. 1.Write a tentative table of contents. 2.Write out the required literature on 5x3 cards. a Classification code in the upper right corner b Author name and book title in the middle. c Assign a serial number to the top left. d Below is where you can get information.Finally, write down all the information necessary for the paper's citation list. (4-a) 3. Rewrite the literature cards into a list. (It's a pain twice, but he says to do it.) 4. Write the information on 5x3 cards. a Prepare literature cards and literature. Finish your bibliography cards. (2-e) bWrite an information card ① One memo per card, information is the golden rule ② Write it in your own words ③ When copying, enclose it in quotation marks. ⑤ Serial number of the literature card in the upper left ⑥ Tentative table of contents and card keyword in the upper right 5. Once all the literature cards are checked, rearrange them in the order of the table of contents. Elaboration. 6. The rest is drafting, footnotes, reviewing, citing, proofreading, and finishing.
Apparently there is a Japanese text with the title "How to Write and American-style Essay" which recommends using classification codes in the upper right and an assigned serial number in the top left.
How was this related (or not) to Luhmann's practice or to the practices of the Dewey Decimal System? [Update: not related at all, see: https://hypothes.is/a/bDEoiqT3Ee6lAeNajBBsjw]
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archive.org archive.org
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RE the numbering mention ed at https://hypothes.is/a/pp5DdqTpEe6FVQNRzkBV2w
Write Papers seems to be roughly the same book as アメリカ式論文の書き方 both of which are written by Ron White. Thus the numbering advice now seems more clear. (see: https://hypothes.is/a/bDEoiqT3Ee6lAeNajBBsjw)
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Ron White recommends taking notes on 3 x 5 inch index cards. One should place the Dewey Decimal or Library of Congress catalog number in the upper left of their bibliography card and in the upper right corner one should number their cards consecutively (1, 2, 3, etc.). White indicates the importance of these numbers is primarily that they are unique, presumably so one can refer to them or reorder them if they are put out of order. (p46-7)
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www.flickr.com www.flickr.com
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Discovery Card Icon : Electric Bulb (lightning)Tag : 3rd block Things from my brain, mind, spirit, anything emerge from inside me, are classified into this class. This is the most important and enjoyable cards among the Four Cards. You will see your discoveries emerges in your mind like a water from spring. In fact, the 80% of index cards in my dock is dominated by this Discovery Card.
These are more similar to zettelkasten and commonplacing traditions. They comprise the majority of the system.
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www.flickr.com www.flickr.com
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<small><cite class='h-cite via'>ᔥ <span class='p-author h-card'>Manfred Kuehn</span> in Taking note: Luhmann's Zettelkasten (<time class='dt-published'>08/06/2021 00:16:23</time>)</cite></small>
Note the use of the edge highlighted taxonomy system used on these cards:
Similar to the so called high five indexing system I ran across recently.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/hawkexpress/albums/72157594200490122/
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www.chess.com www.chess.com
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Spangenthal, Paige, and Christiane Amanpour. “Two Chess Grandmasters Weigh in on ‘The Queen’s Gambit.’” Amanpour & Company (blog), November 7, 2020. https://www.pbs.org/wnet/amanpour-and-company/video/two-chess-grandmasters-weigh-in-on-the-queens-gambit/.
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www.psychologytoday.com www.psychologytoday.com
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Flora, Carla. “The Grandmaster Experiment: How Did One Family Produce Three of the Most Successful Female Chess Champions Ever?” Psychology Today, July 1, 2005. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/articles/200507/the-grandmaster-experiment.
copy also at: https://chessdailynews.com/the-grandmaster-experiment/
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A file card system took up an entire wall. It included records of previous games for endless analytical pleasure and even an index of potential competitors' tournament histories.
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twitter.com twitter.com
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Brian Stephenson@bstephen2·Aug 4, 2020Interesting to see this database, which I had read about. In the UK a #chess study enthusiast called Richard Harman built up a collection of endgame studies on index cards, indexed by material and features. He was regularly consulted by judges for 'anticipations' of new studies.1Brian Stephenson@bstephen2·Aug 4, 2020Richard died in 1986 and his Harman Database is now in my house. I kept it up-to-date for a few years but it was superseded many years ago by Harold van der Heijden's electronic database.1Brian Stephenson@bstephen2·Aug 4, 2020Card indices of #ChessProblem s exist around the World. The White-Hume Collection was split up years ago but some of it still exists. The Albrecht Collection in Germany is now on computer database and kept by Udo Degener.
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Brian Stephenson@bstephen2·Aug 5, 2020As for the Pirnie collection, not counted it, but I am slowly going through it for my online #ChessProblem database: http://bstephen.me.uk/meson/meson.pl?opt=top… . Also going through several boxes of the White-Hume Collection which I have.
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Brian Stephenson@bstephen2·Aug 4, 2020The Pirnie Collection of #ChessProblem s is index cards in Clark's shoe boxes and is held in my house. The late JP Toft created a huge card database of #ChessProblem s in Scandinavia and is now held in a public library.
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Kasparyan's zettelkasten consists of 24 wooden boxes and at least two plastic trays of cards. The trays are numbered and the highest numbered tray has the number 34 on it.
In the picture are two plastic trays, but it's not obvious how big they are or how many cards they may contain.
Approximating that these would contain about 1,200 cards each, the collection is likely between 28,800 and 40,800 cards.
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>✅ https://t.co/5nGvHBm5Vo<br>Today I made a video about Henrik Kasparian's chess puzzle database which includes 30 thousand chess puzzles! In the precomputer era Kasparian used index cards to select everything in one place, and it took him decades to complete!#chess #chesspuzzle pic.twitter.com/V1H2PMKfjN
— Suren (@surenaghabek) August 3, 2020
Tags
- Genrikh Kasparyan
- shoeboxes
- J.P. Toft
- chess puzzles
- J.P. Toft's zettelkasten
- White-Hume's zettelkasten
- Richard Harman zettelkasten
- photos
- Genrikh Kasparyan's zettelkasten
- Pirnie Collection
- Alain C. White
- card index as database
- Albrecht zettelkasten
- open questions
- Duncan Pirnie
- George Hume
- chess
- Duncan Pirnie zettelkasten
- Brian Stephenson
- Harold van der Heijden
- digitized note collections
- Richard Harman
- Udo Degener
Annotators
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Kasparyan has left us a colossal legacy, not only as a composer, but also as an anthologist. Between 1963 and 1980, he published five thematically classified anthologies, which constitute an invaluable resource for students of the endgame study. But of all his books, perhaps the one to seek out first is his anthology Zamechatelnye etyudy (1982). It is the best, that is to say, the most useful and enjoyable, large-scale general anthology ever to have appeared."
via ARVES Chess Endgamestudy Association at https://arves.org/arves/index.php/en/endgamestudies/studies-by-composer/90-genrikh-kasparyan
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en.wikipedia.org en.wikipedia.org
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Presumably Genrikh Kasparyan used his card index of chess puzzles as material to write one of his many books including: - Domination in 2,545 Endgame Studies by Genrikh Kasparyan. ISBN 0-923891-87-0 - 888 Miniature Studies by Genrikh Moiseyevich Kasparian. ISBN 978-86-7686-147-7
As a chess champion, he surely used to to fuel his chess studies and chess career.
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www.youtube.com www.youtube.com
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It Took Decades To Create This Chess Puzzle Database (30 Thousand), 2020. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y9craX0M_2A.
A chess School named after Genrikh Kasparyan (alternately Henrik Kasparian) houses his card index of chess puzzles with over 30,000 cards.
The cards are stored in stacked wooden trays in a two door cabinet with 4 shelves.
There are at least 23 small wooden trays of cards pictured in the video, though there are possibly many more. (Possibly as many as about 35 based on the layout of the cabinet and those easily visible.)
Kasparyan's son Sergei donated the card index to the chess school.
Each index card in the collection, filed in portrait orientation, begins with the name of the puzzle composer, lists its first publication, has a chess board diagram with the pieces arranges, and beneath that the solution of the puzzle. The cards are arranged alphabetically by the name of the puzzle composer.
The individual puzzle diagrams appear to have been done with a stamp of the board done in light blue ink with darker blue (or purple?) and red inked stamped pieces arranged on top of it.
ᔥu/ManuelRodriguez331 in r/Zettelkasten - Chess players are memorizing games with index cards
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www.nybooks.com www.nybooks.com
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When he recorded his observations, he adhered to the Erasmian principle of distilling things down to their essence and entering them in notebooks, as if he were storing rare wine to be served for dégustation in future conversations.
This is quite similar to the advice by Sonke Ehrens and Nikolas Luhmann.
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With rough German to English translation here:
Zettelkasten as the second brain of Niklas Luhmann
<small><cite class='h-cite via'>ᔥ <span class='p-author h-card'>Roy Scholten</span> in "@ChrisAldrich For a somewhat in depth look at Luhmann's zettelkasten , I made a rough translation of this talk: https://t.co/ik7VTOGMV8 here: https://t.co/nAAb7aXXtC" / Twitter (<time class='dt-published'>11/01/2021 11:39:57</time>)</cite></small>
Watched 2021-11-01
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www.amazon.com www.amazon.com
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https://www.amazon.com/JUNDUN-Dividers-Collapsible-Fireproof-4x6-Inch/dp/B0BNHZ3JTR/?th=1
A card index box which is waterproof and fireproof for potential travel.
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www.reddit.com www.reddit.com
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Lots of analog vs digital angst here. Some of it stirred up by Scheper and his religion.
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www.reddit.com www.reddit.com
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The 3x5'' sized drawers are good, but the 4x6'' sized drawers are a tad too narrow. Not enough dividers too. A really good value for money though, if you want an actual drawer instead of a shoebox the other alternatives can get really pricey.
reply to u/Apprehensive_Net5630 at https://www.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/18kpv0y/comment/kdymaeq/
Some of the alternatives look pricey, but often can be negotiated down or found at more reasonable rates if you look around for a bit. I've got some advice and ideas at: https://boffosocko.com/research/zettelkasten-commonplace-books-and-note-taking-collection/#Boxes
As an example, I picked up a 20 drawer 3x5" oak card index this year for $250 making it cheaper per drawer (and with more linear space per drawer) than a brand new cardboard box version. Incidentally, even buying index cards in bulk to lower cost, it'll run me more than twice what I paid for the entire card catalog to fill it with index cards (\~$550).
Directly comparing the storage space, I'd need almost 13 Vaultz 2-drawer boxes at about $75 each or $980 to equal it. I could have bought my Gaylord card index and filled it with cards and still saved money over buying a set of just the Vaultz boxes.
Having the beautiful and useful piece of furniture in the mix definitely makes the process a lot more fun and enjoyable too.
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www.youtube.com www.youtube.com
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bmyVf_LhF50
Nothing new or interesting here. Watched at 2x.
Sad revelation is that Scott Scheper has indoctrinated Nico to the point that he's making videos for Scheper's channel rather than for himself. I hope Nico is getting something valuable (ie, monetary payment) for this.
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docs.google.com docs.google.com
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https://docs.google.com/document/d/15gI7LozljTOvo_7oUwfnOIwfzD8O0VHVgWGr0oK3RI0/edit
When comparing, one ought to take careful account of the variety of wikis and their uses (both public and private) and not fall into the availability heuristic of thinking that all wikis are used and managed like Wikipedia solely because it is one of the biggest and most popular ones.
Some individual users slowly build their personal wikis a note at a time, but instead of linking one note to another, they place it onto a page near related ideas, which may tend to create articles over time. (Sounds a bit like folgezettel, no?) See Ward Cunningham’s (the creator of the idea of wiki) wiki for this: https://wiki.c2.com/
Many public TiddlyWiki’s, in part because of design, are created as short note/card-based ideas which may slowly accumulate from notes to articles as well. See my own example: https://tw.boffosocko.com/
It may take some digging in to find public versions, but many FedWiki sites have a very note (or card-based) root design rather than an article-based design: http://fed.wiki.org/view/federated-wiki
Bill Seitz’s public wiki is broadly a melange of all these patterns as well: http://webseitz.fluxent.com/wiki/BillSeitz
For additional contrast and comparison, see also: - https://indieweb.org/Zettelk%C3%A4sten - https://indieweb.org/digital_garden - https://indieweb.org/commonplace_book
Looking at a variety of specific examples in practice will tend to be far more fruitful than considering a tiny handful of theoretical (and potentially non-existent) examples, particularly in light of the massive bias which is created by the existence of Wikipedia.
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www.reddit.com www.reddit.com
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New member here, is Zettelkasten the right method for my need? .t3_18fjaya._2FCtq-QzlfuN-SwVMUZMM3 { --postTitle-VisitedLinkColor: #edeeef; --postTitleLink-VisitedLinkColor: #6f7071; --postBodyLink-VisitedLinkColor: #6f7071; } questionI have difficulting remembering important facts and numbers at work. I work in a strategic role for a large logistics firm. There are so many KPIs, initiatives, savings, people plans, etc.My biggest opportunity is recall in meetings to answer questions and further conversations. I can feel it holding me back and I am desperate to address it. I stumbled upon Zettelkasten, is this the right tool for me?
reply to u/chiefkeif at https://www.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/18fjaya/new_member_here_is_zettelkasten_the_right_method/
Some of your root issues may be addressed directly by engaging with by spaced repetition systems (for improving memory recall: try Anki, Mnemosyne, et al.) as well as mnemonic systems (memory palaces, the major system, etc.). Given that a Zettelkasten can be an instantiation of both of these simultaneously, you may find benefits for using it in such a setting. This being said, you may be better off with either one or both of the more proximal solutions with a zettelkasten being somewhat more distal for your specific needs.
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www.theguardian.com www.theguardian.com
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The Notebook by Roland Allen review – notes on living by [[Sukhdev Sandhu]]
Not so much of a review as the dumping out of most of the reviewer's highlights from the book. I get the impression that he at least read it and paid attention, but what did he actually think of it?
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forum.zettelkasten.de forum.zettelkasten.de
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Cevolini, Alberto. “Die Erfindung des Zettelkastens als Vergessensmaschine: Eine historische und wissenssoziologische Einführung.” Polarisierte Welten. Verhandlungen des 41. Kongresses der Deutschen Gesellschaft für Soziologie in Bielefeld 2022 41 (September 29, 2023). https://publikationen.soziologie.de/index.php/kongressband_2022/article/view/1564.
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www.youtube.com www.youtube.com
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CAerQtNkGT0
Short video version
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www.reddit.com www.reddit.com
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It's not that tree structures don't have to be hierarchical, it's that what you're describing is not a tree structure.This..."If we visualized all links in Luhmann's ZK, we would have a forest with many links between branches and trees."...is not a tree structure.Tree structures are by design hierarchical. They are meant to show "hereditary" (so to speak) relationships in a linear trajectory. This is accepted in more or less every discipline where they are employed. To equate Luhmann's ZK as having anything to do with that is just false. It's a mistake, and is, unfortunately, one that is regularly perpetuated.Even Schmidt (and by proxy Kieserling), who visually depict Luhmann's "analog" "branches" very much as a tree structure (aka a hierarchy) go out of their way to state on the Archive's website that having done so was an editorial decision done out of convenience and should not be taken literally or be read as representative of the structure of Luhmann's zettelkasten:"The hierarchization of the organizational structure carried out by the Niklas Luhmann archive is an editorial decision, the order of [Luhmann's zettelkasten] does not follow a strict hierarchy logic." (Schmidt)But, what about trees....?"A tree structure, tree diagram, or tree model is a way of representing the hierarchical nature of a structure in a graphical form." (guru wikipedia)For those in the back...."The zettelkasten is in no way a hierarchy." (Kieserling)And, in case there's any doubt (as many think the alphanumeric numbering schema is itself representative of a hierarchy), Schmidt couldn't be more clear:"[T]he number structure does not represent a hierarchical structure."What you're describing (see above) is more along the lines of a rhizome:"We will enter, then, by any point whatsoever; none matters more than another.... We will be trying only to discover what other points our entrance connects to, what crossroads and galleries one passes through to link two points, what is the map of the rhizome and how the map is modified if one enters by another point." (Deleuze and Guattari 1986: 3)Rhizomes are the antithesis of tree structures.“We’re tired of trees.... They’ve made us suffer too much.” (.ibid)
Collection of Bob Doto's notes on tree structures with respect to N. Luhmann's zettelkasten
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www.atomicworkflows.com www.atomicworkflows.com
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StudentsTeachersContent CreatorsEntrepreneursProgrammersProfessionalsLife-long Learners
He's at least done enough research to know the general groups of people who are already broadly using the zettelkasten method (or some other area of PKM).
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https://www.atomicworkflows.com/atomic-note-taking/
A new zettelkasten book, though oddly no physical copy and no ebook version? The fact that this is bundled with a course and seems priced on the high side seems a major turn off.
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docs.zettlr.com docs.zettlr.com
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Also, our own experiences show that when one doesn't use easy-to-recognise IDs, one is less prone to assume stuff, making them better suited to cross-link files.
Zettlr's maintainer's experience suggests that using complex zettelkasten IDs makes one less likely to assume something about what they mean and thereby making them better suited for cross-linking notes.
Part of this can be read as a means of disassociating the idea of specific topics from the notes on the cards.
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The default ID is a good call, because it uses the date in the format YYYYMMDDHHMMSS, which is unique to the second.
Zettlr uses a date-time stamp as their zettelkasten default. It doesn't suggest any useful or worthwhile reason why.
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ckarchive.com ckarchive.com
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我不用卡片盒筆記的原因。
瓦基的相反立場 opposite stance to Waji's.
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andreasvongunten.com andreasvongunten.com
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www.schmatzberger.com www.schmatzberger.com
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probefahrer.github.io probefahrer.github.io
- Nov 2023
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www.reddit.com www.reddit.com
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Lovely. I guess what I'm trying to define is some methodology for practicing. Many times I simply resort to my exhaustive method, which has worked for me in the past simply due to brute force.Thank you for taking the time to respond and for what look like some very interesting references.
reply to u/ethanzanemiller at https://www.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/185xmuh/comment/kb778dy/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=web2x&context=3
Some of your methodology will certainly depend on what questions you're asking, how well you know your area already, and where you'd like to go. If you're taking notes as part of learning a new area, they'll be different and you'll treat them differently than notes you're collecting on ideas you're actively building on or intriguing facts you're slowly accumulating. Often you'll have specific questions in mind and you'll do a literature review to see what's happing around that area and then read and take notes as a means of moving yourself closer to answering your particular questions.
Take for example, the frequently asked questions (both here in this forum and by note takers across history): how big is an idea? what is an atomic note? or even something related to the question of how small can a fact be? If this is a topic you're interested in addressing, you'll make note of it as you encounter it in various settings and see that various authors use different words to describe these ideas. Over time, you'll be able to tag them with various phrases and terminologies like "atomic notes", "one idea per card", "note size", or "note lengths". I didn't originally set out to answer these questions specifically, but my interest in the related topics across intellectual history allowed such a question to emerge from my work and my notes.
Once you've got a reasonable collection, you can then begin analyzing what various authors say about the topic. Bring them all to "terms" to ensure that they're talking about the same things and then consider what arguments they're making about the topic and write up your own ideas about what is happening to answer those questions you had. Perhaps a new thesis emerges about the idea? Some have called this process having a conversation with the texts and their authors or as Robert Hutchins called it participating in "The Great Conversation".
Almost anyone in the forum here could expound on what an "atomic note" is for a few minutes, but they're likely to barely scratch the surface beyond their own definition. Based on the notes linked above, I've probably got enough of a collection on the idea of the length of a note that I can explore it better than any other ten people here could. My notes would allow me a lot of leverage and power to create some significant subtlety and nuance on this topic. (And it helps that they're all shared publicly so you can see what I mean a bit more clearly; most peoples' notes are private/hidden, so seeing examples are scant and difficult at best.)
Some of the overall process of having and maintaining a zettelkasten for creating material is hard to physically "see". This is some of the benefit of Victor Margolin's video example of how he wrote his book on the history of design. He includes just enough that one can picture what's happening despite his not showing the deep specifics. I wrote a short piece about how I used my notes about delving into S.D. Goitein's work to write a short article a while back and looking at the article, the footnotes, and links to my original notes may be illustrative for some: https://boffosocko.com/2023/01/14/a-note-about-my-article-on-goitein-with-respect-to-zettelkasten-output-processes/. The exercise is a tedious one (though not as tedious as it was to create and hyperlink everything), but spend some time to click on each link to see the original notes and compare them with the final text. Some of the additional benefit of reading it all is that Goitein also had a zettelkasten which he used in his research and in leaving copies of it behind other researchers still actively use his translations and notes to continue on the conversation he started about the contents of the Cairo Geniza. Seeing some of his example, comparing his own notes/cards and his writings may be additionally illustrative as well, though take care as many of his notes are in multiple languages.
Another potentially useful example is this video interview with Kathleen Coleman from the Thesaurus Linguae Latinae. It's in the realm of historical linguistics and lexicography, but she describes researchers collecting masses of data (from texts, inscriptions, coins, graffiti, etc.) on cards which they can then study and arrange to write their own articles about Latin words and their use across time/history. It's an incredibly simple looking example because they're creating a "dictionary", but the work involved was painstaking historical work to be sure.
Again, when you're done, remember to go back and practice for yourself. Read. Ask questions of the texts and sources you're working with. Write them down. Allow your zettelkasten to become a ratchet for your ideas. New ideas and questions will emerge. Write them down! Follow up on them. Hunt down the answers. Make notes on others' attempts to answer similar questions. Then analyze, compare, and contrast them all to see what you might have to say on the topics. Rinse and repeat.
As a further and final (meta) example, some of my answer to your questions has been based on my own experience, but the majority of it is easy to pull up, because I can pose your questions not to my experience, but to my own zettelkasten and then quickly search and pull up a variety of examples I've collected over time. Of course I have far more experience with my own zettelkasten, so it's easier and quicker for me to query it than for you, but you'll build this facility with your own over time.
Good luck. 🗃️
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Taking notes for historical writing .t3_185xmuh._2FCtq-QzlfuN-SwVMUZMM3 { --postTitle-VisitedLinkColor: #9b9b9b; --postTitleLink-VisitedLinkColor: #9b9b9b; --postBodyLink-VisitedLinkColor: #989898; } questionI'm trying to understand how to adopt parts of the Zettelkasten method for thinking about historical information. I wrote a PhD in history. My note-taking methodology was a complete mess the whole time. I used note-taking to digest a book, but it would take me two or three times longer than just reading. I would go back over each section and write down the pieces that seemed crucial. Sometimes, when I didn't know a subject well, that could take time. In the end, I would sometimes have many pages of notes in sequential order sectioned the way the book was sectioned, essentially an overlay of the book's structure. It was time-consuming, very hard, not useless at all, but inefficient.Now consider the Zettelkasten idea. I haven't read much of Luhmann. I recall he was a sociologist, a theorist in the grand style. So, in other words, they operate at a very abstract level. When I read about the Zettelkasten method, that's the way it reads to me. A system for combining thoughts and ideas. Now, you'll say that's an artificial distinction, perhaps...a fact is still rendered in thought, has atomicity to it etc. And I agree. However, the thing about facts is there are just A LOT of them. Before you write your narrative, you are drowning in facts. The writing of history is the thing that allows you to bring some order and selectivity to them, but you must drown first; otherwise, you have not considered all the possibilities and potentialities in the past that the facts reveal. To bring it back to Zettelkasten, the idea of Zettel is so appealing, but how does it work when dealing with an overwhelming number of facts? It's much easier to imagine creating a Zettelkasten from more rarefied thoughts provoked by reading.So, what can I learn from the Zettelkasten method? How can I apply some or all of its methodologies, practically speaking? What would change about my initial note-taking of a book if I were to apply Zettelkasten ideas and practice? Here is a discussion about using the method for "facts". The most concrete suggestions here suggest building Zettels around facts in some ways -- either a single fact, or groups of facts, etc. But in my experience, engaging with a historical text is a lot messier than that. There are facts, but also the author's rendering of the facts, and there are quotes (all the historical "gossip"), and it's all in there together as the author builds their narrative. You are trying to identify the key facts, the author's particular angle and interpretation, preserve your thoughts and reactions, and save these quotes, the richest part of history, the real evidence. In short, it is hard to imagine being able to isolate clear Zettel topics amid this reading experience.In Soenke Ahrens' book "How to Take Smart Notes," he describes three types of notes: fleeting notes (these are fleeting ideas), literature notes, and permanent notes. In that classification, I'm talking about "literature notes." Ahrens says these should be "extremely selective". But with the material I'm talking about it becomes a question. How can you be selective when you still don't know which facts you care about or want to maintain enough detail in your notes so you don't foreclose the possibilities in the historical narrative too early?Perhaps this is just an unsolvable problem. Perhaps there is no choice but to maintain a discipline of taking "selective" literature notes. But there's something about the Zettelkasten method that gives me the feeling that my literature notes could be more detailed and chaotic and open to refinement later.Does my dilemma explained here resonate with anyone who has tried this method for intense historical writing? If so, I'd like to hear you thoughts, or better yet, see some concrete examples of how you've worked.
reply to u/ethanzanemiller at https://www.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/185xmuh/taking_notes_for_historical_writing/
Rather than spending time theorizing on the subject, particularly since you sound like you're neck-deep already, I would heartily recommend spending some time practicing it heavily within the area you're looking at. Through a bit of time and experience, more of your questions will become imminently clear, especially if you're a practicing historian.
A frequently missing piece to some of this puzzle for practicing academics is upping the level of how you read and having the ability to consult short pieces of books and articles rather than reading them "cover-to-cover" which is often unnecessary for one's work. Of particular help here, try Adler and Van Doren, and specifically their sections on analytical and syntopical reading.
- Adler, Mortimer J., and Charles Van Doren. How to Read a Book: The Classical Guide to Intelligent Reading. Revised and Updated ed. edition. 1940. Reprint, Touchstone, 2011.
In addition to the list of practicing historians I'd provided elsewhere on the topic, you might also appreciate sociologist Beatrice Webb's short appendix C in My Apprenticeship or her longer related text. She spends some time talking about handling dates and the database nature of querying collected facts and ideas to do research and to tell a story.
- Webb, Beatrice Potter. My Apprenticeship. First Edition. New York: Longmans, Green & Co., 1926. https://archive.org/details/myapprenticeship0000beat/page/412/mode/2up.
- Webb, Sidney, and Beatrice Webb. Methods of Social Study. London; New York: Longmans, Green & Co., 1932. http://archive.org/details/b31357891.
Also helpful might be Mill's article which became a chapter in one of his later books:
- Mills, C. Wright. “On Intellectual Craftsmanship (1952).” Society 17, no. 2 (January 1, 1980): 63–70. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02700062.
Perhaps u/danallosso may have something illuminating to add, or you can skim through his responses on the subject on Reddit or via his previous related writing: https://danallosso.substack.com/.
Enough historians and various other humanists have been practicing these broad methods for centuries to bear out their usefulness in researching and organizing their work. Read a bit, but truly: practice, practice, and more practice is going to be your best friend here.
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Deutsch himself never theorized his index, treating it – like hiswhole focus on ‘facts’ – at face value.
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taking in sociological investigation
The simplest and most direct way of bringing home to the reader the truth of this dogmatic assertion of the scientific value of note-taking in sociological investigation...
Beatrice Webb indicates that it is an incontrovertible truth that sociologists should use a card index (zettelkasten) as a primary tool in their research.
We ought to closely notice that she wrote this truism about the field of sociology in a book published in 1926, the year prior to Niklas Luhmann's <s>death</s> birth.
How popular was her book with respect to the remainder of the field of sociology subsequently? What other sociology texts may have had similar ideas? Webb obviously quotes some of this technique in the late 1800s as being popular within the area of history. How evenly was it spread across the humanities in general?
Is Beatrice Webb's card index amongst her papers? Where might they be stored today?
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Can you provide any more information about how this method works in detail?
reply to u/ethanzanemiller at https://www.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/1843k2w/comment/kb4d882/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=web2x&context=3
Presuming you came into this from a search on "history" or a related topic rather than long time experience in this sub?
A card index, fichier boîte (French), or zettelkasten (German) is broadly the use of index cards (or digital versions) for research and writing. (I generally frame it as an extension of keeping a commonplace book.)
But some of it is best described within the area of "historical method" by practicing historians themselves, so also try these texts written by historians on the subject:
Allosso, Dan, and S. F. Allosso. How to Make Notes and Write. Minnesota State Pressbooks, 2022. https://minnstate.pressbooks.pub/write/.
Barzun, Jacques. The Modern Researcher. Boston : Houghton Mifflin Co., 1992. http://archive.org/details/modernresearcher00barz_1.
Dow, Earle Wilbur. Principles of a Note-System for Historical Studies. New York: Century Company, 1924.
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.
Gottschalk, Louis Reichenthal. Understanding History: A Primer of Historical Method. 1st ed. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1950. https://www.amazon.com/Understanding-History-Louis-Gottschalk/dp/B001OY27L6.
Goutor, Jacques. The Card-File System of Note-Taking. Approaching Ontario’s Past 3. Toronto: Ontario Historical Society, 1980. http://archive.org/details/cardfilesystemof0000gout.
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.
Margolin, Victor. The Process of Writing World History of Design, 2015. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kxyy0THLfuI.
Thomas, Keith. “Diary: Working Methods.” London Review of Books, June 10, 2010. https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v32/n11/keith-thomas/diary.
Maybe start with Keith Thomas and Margolin which are short and then jump to either Goutor or Allosso (first half of that text) which are slightly longer but still quick reads. Umberto Eco may be the dean of studies here, though Barzun has been fairly influential. If you prefer, you can practice Luhmann's method, which is very similar though with a twist, and laid out at https://zettelkasten.de/posts/overview/.
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documented evidence of oral transmission of index card use as a method
reply to u/atomicnotes at https://www.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/1843k2w/comment/kaypbk2/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=web2x&context=3
I'm reasonably certain that most of the transmission of the traditions was specifically from person to person rather than from text to person. Yours is an interesting and important (and rare oral) example of person to person zettelkasten transmission, of which I've been collecting some scant examples. (Other examples appreciated, inquire within.)
Interestingly a lot of this transmission is still happening every day (though now more "visibly" online) in fora like Reddit, zettelkasten.de, Discord, in social media, and even smaller group courses. As Annie Murphy Paul indicates in The Extended Mind, people like to imitate rather than innovate. Perhaps Luhmann, being on his own outside of the establishment, was more likely to innovate because he was on his own and took Heyde's advice, but evolved it to his needs rather than asking questions on Reddit?
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Who uses a card index? Top historians, that's who
reply to u/atomicnotes at https://www.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/1843k2w/who_uses_a_card_index_top_historians_thats_who/
Nice finds u/atomicnotes.
We can add them to the list of other known historians who used zettelkasten including: - Barbara Tuchman - Victor Margolin - S.D. Goitein - Gotthard Deutsch - Jacques Barzun - Henry F. Graff - Keith Thomas - Jacques Goutor - Umberto Eco - Frederic L. Paxson - Earle W. Dow - Aby Warburg - Frederick Jackson Turner - Theodor Mommsen - Charles Victor Langlois - Charles Seignobos - Ernst Bernheim*
Certainly there are several hundreds (thousands?) I've missed. Those marked with a (*) have written texts covering note taking or historical method.
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zibaldone.substack.com zibaldone.substack.com
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IMPORTANT EDIT: Amongst the important sources linked below, I forgot to include THIS one, which may be the most important for contributing to your understanding of the Zettelkasten concept
HA! Apparently my work has been influential for someone. I love that he put it up top like this. 😂
via https://zibaldone.substack.com/p/a-guide-to-zettelkasten-part-2-a
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https://zibaldone.substack.com/p/a-guide-to-zettelkasten-part-2-a
I showed up expecting a one pager on zettelkasten method and was surprised to find it was about reading. :)
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www.maxtonandcompany.com www.maxtonandcompany.com
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https://www.maxtonandcompany.com/alfion
Maxton & Company also carries Notsu cards.
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www.ebay.com www.ebay.com
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https://www.ebay.com/itm/305189692899
The Merchants Box Co. manufactured a variety of wooden index card boxes in the 1960s.
I've seen some marked 1960 and 1962. Dates of manufacture? Sizes? Definitely 4x6".
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thatsthenorm.com thatsthenorm.com
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Live-Roaming: Using Roam to teach students in college
I'd listened to this whole episode sometime since 2022-04-05, but didn't put it in my notes.
Mark Robertson delineates how he actively models the use of his note taking practice (using Roam Research) while teaching/lecturing in the classroom. This sort of modeling can be useful for showing students how academics read, gather, and actively use their knowledge. It does miss the portion about using the knowledge to create papers, articles, books, etc., but the use of this mode of reading and notes within a discussion setting isn't terribly different.
Use of the system for conversation/discussion with the authors of various texts as you read, with your (past) self as you consult your own notes, or your students in classroom lectures/discussion sections is close to creating your own discussion for new audiences (by way of the work your write yourself.)
https://www.buzzsprout.com/1194506/4875515-mark-robertson-history-socratic-dialogue-live-roaming.mp3
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www.youtube.com www.youtube.com
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Empire Podcast: Lenin and The Rise of the Bolsheviks
ᔥu/atomicnotes in Who uses a card index? Top historians, that's who at r/Zettelkasten
At the start of a recent episode of the Empire Podcast (the one on the Bolshevik Revolution), historian William Dalrymple reveals that when he began to write his first history book, The White Moghul, he had no idea how to do it, so he called the eminent historian Antony Bevor, who invited him round for a lesson in using his own method - a card index. Dalrymple says he's been using a card index ever since.
Then the podcast co-host, Anita Anand says she learned this approach from William and she too has been using it ever since.
By my rough calculation, the card index lesson would have taken place about 1998-2000, so Antony Bevor probably used index cards to write his great books on Crete in WW2 and on the Battle of Stalingrad, among many others.
So that's three highly successful popular historians using a card index to research and write significant and best-selling non-fiction books.
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As to the mechanics of research, I take notes on four-by-six indexcards, reminding myself about once an hour of a rule I read long agoin a research manual, “Never write on the back of anything.”
Barbara Tuchman took her notes on four-by-six inch index cards.
She repeated the oft-advised mantra to only write on one side of a sheet.
What manual did she read this in? She specifically puts quotes on "Never write on the back of anything." so perhaps it might be something that could be tracked down?
Who was the earliest version of this quote? And was it always towards the idea of cutting up slips or pages and not wanting to lose material on the back? or did it also (later? when?) include ease-of-use and user interface features even when not cutting things up?
At what point did double sided become a thing for personal printed materials? Certainly out of a duty to minimize materials, but it also needed the ability to duplex print pages or photocopy them that way.
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forum.zettelkasten.de forum.zettelkasten.de
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Your comment inspires me to pay more attention to citing and clarifying my claims.
replying to Will at https://forum.zettelkasten.de/discussion/comment/18885/#Comment_18885
I've generally found that this is much easier to do when it's an area you tend to specialize in and want to delve ever deeper (or on which you have larger areas within your zettelkasten) versus those subjects which you care less about or don't tend to have as much patience for.
Perhaps it's related to the System 1/System 2 thinking of Kahneman/Tversky? There are only some things that seem worth System 2 thinking/clarifying/citing and for all the rest one relies on System 1 heuristics. I find that the general ease of use of my zettelkasten (with lots of practice) allows me to do a lot more System 2 thinking than I had previously done, even for areas which I don't care as much about.
syndication link: https://forum.zettelkasten.de/discussion/comment/18888/#Comment_18888
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Not every note box with paper slips in it is a Zettelkasten.
Sascha Fast takes a hard line on what is and is not a zettelkasten.
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www.youtube.com www.youtube.com
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9fP4zFQMXSw
The fun things usually happen at the messy edges. This description of zettelkasten is a perfect encapsulation of this, though it's not necessarily on the surface.
This is a well done encapsulation of what a zettelkasten. Watch it once, then practice for a bit. Knowing the process is dramatically different from practicing it. Too many people want perfection (perfection for them and from their perspective) and they're unlikely to arrive at it by seeing examples of others. The examples may help a bit, but after you've seen a few, you're not going to find a lot of insight without practicing it to see what works for you.
This could be compared with epigenetic factors with respect to health. The broad Rx may help, but epigenetic factors need to be taken into account.
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www.loc.gov www.loc.gov
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Hannah Arendt Papers - Digital Collections - Library of Congress
Hannah Arendt apparently kept a zettelkasten. The Library of Congress has a digitized version of it in their archives from her nachlass.
ᔥMikjail in comment on The Two Definitions of Zettelkasten
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Addition III, 1945 (Box 95) Correspondence and notes by Arendt. Arranged alphabetically by type of material.
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Addition I, 1966-1977 (Boxes 88-94) Manuscripts, notes, and printed and near-print material relating to books and lectures by Arendt. Arranged alphabetically by format and title. Addition I supplements the Speeches and Writings series with extensive material pertaining to the publication of The Life of the Mind, including drafts annotated by the work’s editor, Mary McCarthy. A small group of lectures is also contained in this addition.
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There are also essays and lectures in the Speeches and Writings series in addition to the lectures and seminar notes in the Subject File folders designated “Courses” Research material arranged by topic is filed under “Extracts and Notes” in the Speeches and Writings series.
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and several files of notes and miscellaneous background information.
Were any of Arendt's Adolf Eichmann file notes done on index cards? Their arrangement, if any?
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Arendt studied with Karl Jaspers at Heidelberg University
Did Karl Jaspers have a zettelkasten practice? Did he specifically pass it along to students, like Arendt?
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robertbreen.com robertbreen.com
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When Jimmy Buffett has an idea for a song — sometimes just a phrase — he writes it down on any available scrap of paper and stuffs it into an old sea chest. When he’s ready to write some new music, he sits down and pulls out all those scribbles, which I imagine must be torn off bar napkins and beer coasters, and sorts through them, one by one. He says many of his most popular songs marinated in his sea chest before emerging as lyrics.
Source for this?
Sounds very similar to Eminem's "stacking ammo".
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www.coreycarvalho.com www.coreycarvalho.com
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forum.zettelkasten.de forum.zettelkasten.de
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So I take down notes, and then what? Jackhansonc November 8 in The Zettelkasten Method Flag Hi, A few years ago, I started to take daily note and take a lot, but at the end of a day, I have difficulty on how to deal with those notes. The major problem is, I can't decide the size of a note derived from my daily note. Say, I take a note like "5 students have sent me the language test invoice regarding applying for an academic reward. In my understanding, this could be directly put into "Academic Reward" or "Things related to Academic Reward for Language Test". But if I do so, I feel guilty because it looks not even a bit like a Zettel systems. I heard a lot of so-called atomic notes, but I never really see a real-world, down-to-earth workflow of authentic zettel.
reply to Jackhansonc at https://forum.zettelkasten.de/discussion/2726/so-i-take-down-notes-and-then-what#latest
I'm not sure I understand the full context of your note and it's purpose. If I had to guess, it's closer to what I might consider a productivity note to be followed up on as part of a potential project. Personally, I keep things like this in a separate drawer (or what I would call a "department") of my zettelkasten which acts more like a Memindex (more details on my specific practice). These project and to-do related items are valuable, but I don't treat them with the same level of rigor and indexing that I do for cards with buildable ideas.
Notes from my reading, for my writing, knowledge building, etc. are the ones I keep in my primary zettelkasten department. These are the ones which are better indexed and more highly interlinked.
I know that some here do keep everything more closely integrated and to some extent mine really are are as well. I find that keeping some sort of mental separation about what specific tranches of notes are for can be helpful, and even placing them in separate drawers (or digital areas/folders) may be useful to some. As long as you can search for and find it when you need it, you can't go far wrong. In my case having a specific section for to do items and projects means I'm regularly culling through them, something which I might not be as prone to do in other portions of my collection.
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www.reddit.com www.reddit.com
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SOME OTHER THOUGHTS on Antinet Evangelistic Starter Boxes: While watching Scott's 1 on 1 with Peter "The Antinet Prince" when they were discussing having the starting categories somewhere, a thought occurred to me. We should have a box created/manufactured and pre-populated with the main sections, basic outline cards, and some starting cards (a few of each type) with blanks to reformulate some pre-printed excerpt notes. This could have a bunch of foundational stuff from Luhmann's material. It could lead to a whole line of Antinet boxes (cool drawers that are stackable/expandable) and other helpful stuff. I worked for a plastics mold manufacturing company for over 10 years and have a lot of good friends there still. I'd be willing to help in the process if others think this might be a worthwhile endeavor. What do you think u/sscheper?
https://www.reddit.com/r/antinet/comments/17rbqaz/teaching_is_the_best_way_to_learn/
Example of someone using the phrase "Antinet Evangelistic Starter Boxes". It's a box of cards for god's sake! If you're going to productize it, then be a capitalist about it, but "evangelizing" it?!
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www.youtube.com www.youtube.com
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@DrMaddy101 @DrMaddy101 @DrMaddy101 1 month ago hey, thanks for your input - you sound like an advanced Zettelkasten-er. Any recommendations for those that want the full version? Show less Read more 0 Like 0 Dislike Reply @DrMaddy101 @DrMaddy101 0/ Cancel Reply Add a reply... @jsnyrty3917 1 month ago @DrMaddy101 not advanced simply used primary sources and secondary sources like Scott Scheper’s youtube channel which explains it accurately.
reply to @DrMaddy101 and jsnyrty3917 at #
I would recommend caution here as Scheper approaches the subject like a cult, which it patently is not. He also has the tendency to gatekeep, gaslight others, and create a toxic environment. He's selling you something, and he's being rude about it at the same time. Even though he attempts to maintain something closely akin to Luhmann's practice, his poorly edited book distinctly suggests some very non-Luhmann-esque practices. The zettelkasten tradition is much richer and deeper than the surface level discussion of Luhmann. Using him as your only model is perforce going to be tremendously limiting. You'll find additional excellent (and even some more productive) examplars hiding in the works of Aristotle, Cicero, Quintilian, Seneca, Boethius, Thomas Aquinas, Desiderius Erasmus, Rodolphus Agricola, Philip Melancthon, Konrad Gessner, John Locke, Carl Linnaeus, Thomas Harrison, Vincentius Placcius, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, S. D. Goitein, Gotthard Deutsch, Beatrice Webb, Sir James Murray, Marcel Mauss, Claude Lévi-Strauss, Mortimer J. Adler, Niklas Luhmann, Roland Barthes, Umberto Eco, Jacques Barzun, Vladimir Nabokov, George Carlin, Twyla Tharp, Gertrud Bauer, and even Eminem. We really need to put an end to the "Cult of Luhmann" philosophy which is going around.
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Want a Simplified Zettelkasten? For Beginners by Dr Maddy https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w15joVA4pIc
Very quick and to the point.
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It's a method that was first developed by Nicholas Luhmann. —Dr. Maddy 00:00:42
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Local file Local file
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In reality, the research experience mattersmore than the topic.”
Extending off of this, is the reality that the research experience is far easier if one has been taught a convenient method, not only for carrying it out, but space to practice the pieces along the way.
These methods can then later be applied to a vast array of topics, thus placing method above topic.
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www.reddit.com www.reddit.com
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I read the book and especially the chapter on numeric-alpha IDs, but I seem to be missing something. The explanation in the chapter seemed rather terse.
Perhaps the only terse part of the book then evidently.
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level 2Apprehensive_Net5630Op · 3 hr. agoI've come to think the thousands category is kind of superfluous. Instead of starting 2000, just start a card "2 management" and then create a card "25 leadership" and add below, e.g. "251 blah blah", "252 blah blah"2ReplyShareReportSaveFollowlevel 3marco89lcdm · 2 hr. agoMmm.. interesting .. Although I think is too late as I’m already well into the “2000” category and the problem presented once I’ve started to do some leadership cards. Those are 3 or 4 and I can still amend the ID number, but the management one are almost 30 already, I don’t feel like changing everything while so well advanced.. this could put me off from keeping doing it completely. Maybe worth knowing that I didn’t have an exhaustive index yet.. because of the fact that IDing the card is not clear for me
reply to u/Apprehensive_Net5630 and u/marco89lcdm at https://www.reddit.com/r/antinet/comments/17m7ggz/comment/k83bou9/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=web2x&context=3
Don't sweat the difference as there is a one-to-one and onto (or bijective) relationship between what you're doing and what u/Apprehensive_Net5630 suggests. Mathematicians would call the relationship homomorphic (ie: of the same shape), so other than the make-work exercise, you'd end up with the same exact thing with the same ordering in the end.
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Cannot get it either to be honest. I want to use the antinet method for 2 main topics: Management and Personal growthIn management, for sure needs to add notion of leadership for example: how to approach the coding identification? I’ve assigned 2000 to management: shall I assign 2500 to all cards related to leadership? This is just an example, it’s a bit unclear for me so far.
reply to u/marco89lcdm at https://www.reddit.com/r/antinet/comments/17m7ggz/comment/k839k22/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=web2x&context=3
The way you're currently thinking is a top down approach in which you already know everything and you're attempting to organize it to make it easier for others who know nothing about the ideas to find them. The Luhmann model supposes you know nothing about anything to begin with and you're attempting to create order from the bottom up, solely by putting related ideas you're building on close to each other and giving them numbers so that you might find them again when you need them.
If your only use is for those two topics and closely related subtopics and nothing else, then consider not using a Luhmann-artig model? Leave off the numbers and create two tabbed cards with those headings (and possibly related subheadings) and then sort your related cards behind them. (This is closer to the commonplace book tradition maintained on index cards and used by those like Mortimer J. Adler et al., Robert Greene, Ryan Holiday and Billy Oppenheimer. Example: https://billyoppenheimer.com/notecard-system/)
Otherwise the mistake you may be making is mentally associating the top level numbers with the topics. Break this habit! The numbers are only there so you can index ideas against them to be able to find them again! These numbers aren't like the Dewey Decimal system where 510.### will always mean something to do with math. You'll specifically want to intermingle disparate topics, so the only purpose the numbers provide is the ability to find what you're looking for by using the index which will give you a neighborhood in which you'll find the ideas you know are going to be hiding there or very near by.
Cards that are near to each other (using the numbers as an idea of ordering and re-finding) create a neighborhood of related ideas, even if they're disparate in topics. This might allow you to intermingle two related ideas, one which is in anthropology and another from mathematics for example, but which would otherwise potentially be thousands of cards away from each other if done in a Dewey-like system.
Or to take your example, what do you do with an idea that relates to both management AND personal growth? If it's closer to an idea on management you might place it near a related idea on that branch rather than in the personal growth section where it may be potentially less useful in the future. (You can always cross index them if need be, but place it where it creates the closest link and thus likely the greatest value for building on top of your previous ideas.)
For more on this, try: https://boffosocko.com/2022/10/27/thoughts-on-zettelkasten-numbering-systems/
I suspect that Scheper suggests using the Academic Outline of Disciplines as a numbering structure because it's an early choice he made for himself and it provides a perch to give people a concrete place to start. Sadly this does a disservice because it's closer to the older commonplace topical method rather than to the spirit of the ordering that Luhmann was doing. It's especially difficult for beginners who have a natural tendency to want to do this sort of top-down approach.
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www.flickr.com www.flickr.com
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Wörgötter, Michael. “Schriftenkartei [Typeface Index], 1958–1971.” Photo sharing social website. Flickr, 2023. https://www.flickr.com/photos/letterformarchive/albums/72177720310834741. License: Creative Commons BY-NC-SA 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/
Found via: Coles, Stephen. “This Just In: Schriftenkartei, a Typeface Index.” Letterform Archive, November 3, 2023. https://letterformarchive.org/news/schriftenkartei-german-font-index/.
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letterformarchive.org letterformarchive.org
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At the time of their printing, only the members of West Germany’s National Printing Association could buy the cards. The circulation is estimated at fewer than 400 copies. Of these, only four were known to exist in publicly accessible collections, all in Germany — until now.
All seven of West Germany's metal type foundries collaborated to create a card index catalog (Schriftenkartei) of their typefaces. These included Bauersche Gießerei, H. Berthold AG, Genzsch & Heyse, Ludwig & Mayer, D. Stempel AG, Johannes Wagner GmbH, and C. E. Weber.
Fewer than 400 copies of the card index were available for purchase by members of West German's National Printing association.
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A notice sent to recipients of the Schriftenkartei: “With the 5th delivery you receive today, you have index cards with 527 typefaces. The type index is now complete for the time being. From now on, you will only receive the corresponding type sample index cards from the office of your responsible regional association for the newly created typefaces that are included in the casting program of the German type foundries.” In the end there were a total of 638 typeface cards, adding up to about 200 families.
The initial version of the Schriftenkartei had 527 typefaces (and thus cards), but with the release of subsequent typefaces it eventually grew to 638 typeface cards accounting for up to about 200 families.
-via postcard from the Arbeitsgemeinschaft der graphischen Verbände des deutschen Bundesgebietes e.V., Bundesverband Buchdruck (Working Group of the German Graphic Associations, Federal Book-Printing Division)
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zettelkasten.sorenbjornstad.com zettelkasten.sorenbjornstad.com
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Example of a public Zettelkasten using TiddlyWiki by Soren Bjornstad. https://zettelkasten.sorenbjornstad.com/
He's open sourced portions of it for use by others who are interested.
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https://github.com/xylous/settle.vim
ᔥEmory L. (@emory@soc.kvet.ch) at Oct 10, 2023, 08:57 (accessed:: 2023-11-03 11:10:02)
i got totally derailed by learning about a rust package called
settel
that is essentially a #zettelkasten framework? #sqlite is involved as a datastore but tl;dr: here's a #repository forsettle.vim
which is a plugin that enables #settle in #neovim or #vim: https://github.com/xylous/settle.vimmore about settle: https://github.com/xylous/settle
i'll have to come back to this later, i overslept today! #readlater #futureEmory
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www.reddit.com www.reddit.com
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I'm in the same boat haha I enjoyed some parts of Obsidian but came back to Notion due to the user experience. I use a Zettelkasten system in the sense of a daily note but the big part that was missing for me was the ability to query all your todos into one view which I had to build an integration for. I talk about it more here if you're interested: https://www.reddit.com/r/Notion/comments/17kfm1k/aggregating_all_todos_into_one_view/
via u/mannyocean at https://www.reddit.com/r/Notion/comments/17mg82a/zettelkasten_in_notion/
He seems to define "zettelkasten" in a productivity sense and not in the currently broader Luhmannian sense.
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citeseerx.ist.psu.edu citeseerx.ist.psu.edu
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via Barycenter0 at https://www.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/17gmrj8/comment/k6rkguz/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=web2x&context=3 It's so interesting to look back - this fascinating paper by Sigel from 2001 mentions Luhmann and his Zettelkasten as means to knowledge organization and topic mapping:
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www.reddit.com www.reddit.com
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Analog zettelkasten for natural sciences .t3_17kui2u._2FCtq-QzlfuN-SwVMUZMM3 { --postTitle-VisitedLinkColor: #9b9b9b; --postTitleLink-VisitedLinkColor: #9b9b9b; --postBodyLink-VisitedLinkColor: #989898; }
Reply to u/Wooden-School-4091 at https://www.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/17kui2u/analog_zettelkasten_for_natural_sciences/
Given that Carl Linnaeus "invented" the standardized 3x5 inch index card and used it heavily in his scientific work (read Isabelle Charmantier and Staffan Müller-Wille's works for more on his practice), and a variety of others including me, use it for mathematics, physics, chemistry, biology, etc., Zettelkasten can certainly be used for STEM, STEAM, and any of the natural sciences.
See also, notes and links at: https://hypothes.is/users/chrisaldrich?q=tag%3A%22zettelkasten+for+studying%22
If I were using it for classes/university/general studying via lectures, I'd base my practice primarily on Cornell Notes in combination with creating questions/cards for spaced repetition and/or a variation on Leitner's System.
Some of the best material on spaced repetition these days can be found via:
- Soren Bjornstad: https://controlaltbackspace.org/repeat/
- Piotr Wozniak: https://super-memory.com/articles/20rules.htm
and other material on their sites.
Beyond this, I'd focus my direct zettelkasten practice less on the learning portion and more on the developing or generating ideas portion of the work. Some of my practice with respect to mathematics can be found here: https://www.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/17bqztm/applying_zettelkasten_for_math_heavy_subjects/
For those interested, it may bear mentioning that Bjornstad, an engineer at Remnote, has a TiddlyWiki-based zettelkasten at https://zettelkasten.sorenbjornstad.com/#PublicHomepage:PublicHomepage which he demonstrates with a walk through at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GjpjE5pMZMI
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medium.com medium.com
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Another friend and a contemporary of Darwin, The Swiss botanist Alphonse de Candolle, also wrote positively about Darwin’s note-taking method. In his book “La Phytographie: Or, The Art Of Describing Plants Considered From Different Points Of View”, de Candolle discussed the benefits of using slips of paper to record observations, a practice that he and his father had used in their own work. He noted that Darwin had independently developed the same method, and that he was “more impressed with it than ever”.Here is an excerpt from de Candolle’s book (translated from the French):“Mr. Darwin, whom I had the pleasure of seeing, used for his notes exactly the same method of loose slips that my father and I have followed, and which I have described in detail in my Phytographie. Eighty years of our experience have demonstrated to me its value. I am more impressed with it than ever, since Darwin devised it on his own. This method gives the work more accuracy, supplements memory, and saves years.”
Another example of similar methods.
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productivehappiness.substack.com productivehappiness.substack.com
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Zettlekasten is an index card method of storing notes for future use. Popularized by Ryan Holiday, author of The Obstacle is The Way, the Zettlekasten system has gained a lot of traction in recent years. YouTuber Greg Wheeler, in this short but very detailed video, shares how he integrates the Zettlekasten system with Tiago Forte’s second brain methodology in a complete walkthrough:
We have now reached peak zettelkasten-I-just-don't-know-what-the-definition-even-is-anymore. And this is a Substack focused on productivity.
The definition of zettelkasten here is the lowest possible version.
It's (falsely, I think) described as "popularized by Ryan Holiday" who has a form of practice, but doesn't describe it as zettelkasten. (Has he ever used the word on his blog? There's one throw away mention to it and Luhmann #, Google doesn't find any others.)
Then as a cherry on top, he presents a mélange of methods as a Hybrid PKM system.
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www.reddit.com www.reddit.com
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Yeah, I want back in search history and see Sascha started around 2014. There are hardly any references to ZK before 2012.
reply tu u/sscheper and u/Barycenter0 at https://www.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/17gmrj8/before_2021_who_here_was_using_a_luhmannian/
Before 2021, who here was using a Luhmannian analog Zettelkasten?
This blogpost by Manfred Kuehn dating from 2007-12-16 is one of the earliest posts about Luhmann's Zettelkasten I've seen referenced on the early web (at least in an English language setting). You'll notice that Christian Tietze, the creator of zettelkasten.de, pops up in the comments, though it wasn't until almost six years later.
Daniel Lüdecke was also obviously reading Kuehn by 2013 and making his digital version of ZKN3. His post has a reference to a 2001 web post in German, but sadly it's not archived. One might presume he tried physical index cards prior to implementing his digital solution.
German speakers may be better versed to indicate a greater number of potential users in the 80s through the 00s as Luhmann's paper and method were relatively well known, though physical index cards were obviously going out of fashion during that time period. It's most likely that it was academics using it. By the late 00s into 2015, there were probably several dozens of people doing this practice, but identifying/contacting them will require a lot of legwork.
The zettelkasten.de forum and blog posts may indicate quite a number of users prior to 2021, but I'll leave that work to others. Christian and Sasha may have better approximations for that time period.
Given the number of digital users who are probably all mostly Luhmann-adjacent in their practices (at best), there likely still aren't a lot of people (digital or analog) who are following his particular recipe or method. Most of what I see discussed in zettelkasten and zettelkasten adjacent spaces online these days could best be described as a mélange of commonplace book and wiki-esque methods with a focus toward smaller atomic level notes. Most practices vary across a pretty wide spectrum.
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www.thenewatlantis.com www.thenewatlantis.com
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Links are associative. This is a huge deal. Links are there not only as a quick way to get to source material. They aren’t a way to say, hey here’s the interesting thing of the day. They remind you of the questions you need to ask, of the connections that aren’t immediately evident.
links can be used for search
links remind you of questions you need to ask
links can suggest other future potential links of which one isn't yet aware or which haven't fully manifested, this is some of the "magic" of the zettelkasten—it creates easy potential for future links not yet manifest.
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Let’s look at some of the attributes of the memex. Your machine is a library not a publication device. You have copies of documents is there that you control directly, that you can annotate, change, add links to, summarize, and this is because the memex is a tool to think with, not a tool to publish with.
Alan Jacobs argues that the Memex is not a tool to publish with and is thus fundamentally different from the World Wide Web.
Did Vannevar Bush suggest the Memex for writing or potentially publishing? [Open question to check] Would it have been presumed to have been for publishing if he suggests that it was for annotating, changing, linking and summarizing? Aren't these actions tantamount to publishing, even if they're just for oneself?
Wouldn't academics have built the one functionality in as a precursor to the other?
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help.metaslip.com help.metaslip.com
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Multi-platform zettelkasten app with local data stored as markdown.
saw mention via https://www.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/17gvobz/metaslip_app/
Tags
Annotators
URL
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www.reddit.com www.reddit.com
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Posted byu/practicalSloth2 days agoAnyone use a FiloFax or similar for a commonplace book? .t3_17drtzn._2FCtq-QzlfuN-SwVMUZMM3 { --postTitle-VisitedLinkColor: #9b9b9b; --postTitleLink-VisitedLinkColor: #9b9b9b; --postBodyLink-VisitedLinkColor: #989898; } I really like the idea of being able to re-sort pages and was wondering if anyone has tried something like this? I've also considered an "Everbook", but was a bit concerned with all the loose pages of paper flying around everywhere
u/practicalSloth interested in implementing a commonplace book using a FiloFax!
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londonrealtv.libsyn.com londonrealtv.libsyn.com
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Is this the same/similar to the (now missing) interview on YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ueMHkGljK0)?
See notes at: https://hypothes.is/a/NhpRyjhEEe2Yu8s-XRsrrQ
compare with https://londonreal.tv/robert-greene-power-seduction-war/# which looks like the embedded video is also missing.
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www.lrb.co.uk www.lrb.co.uk
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Hay, Daisy. Review of Rare, Obsolete, New, Peculiar, by Sarah Ogilvie. London Review of Books, October 19, 2023. https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v45/n20/daisy-hay/rare-obsolete-new-peculiar.
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The numbers are giddying – millions of slips in the Scriptorium, thousands of contributors,
are there specific numbers?
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The famous OED slips – 4 x 6 inch pieces of paper, some pre-filled with title and publication details – were to be completed by readers, whose task was to write down instances and examples of words in need of definition.
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Gilliver suggests that the dictionary with the strongest claim to have influenced the OED is not Johnson’s but the fourth edition of Franz Passow’s Handwörterbuch der griechischen Sprache, published in 1831.
Presumably compiled by zettelkasten as well?
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Applying zettelkasten for math heavy subjects. .t3_17bqztm._2FCtq-QzlfuN-SwVMUZMM3 { --postTitle-VisitedLinkColor: #9b9b9b; --postTitleLink-VisitedLinkColor: #9b9b9b; --postBodyLink-VisitedLinkColor: #989898; }
reply to u/acosmicjoke at https://www.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/17bqztm/applying_zettelkasten_for_math_heavy_subjects/
Most of my math section in my ZK is primarily very basic definitions and theorems. I have very few proofs of basic things outside of my own personal work. There is an occasional useful example or two or lists of various lists of things that fit certain structures (lists of groups, rings, fields, categories, etc.)
Digital notes just don't work for me at all with respect to math, so I'm all-in on index cards and simply typeset all the necessary parts when I'm done with something if I intend to publish or share with others. Paper also makes it much easier to shuffle things around and reshape pieces as necessary to try out different structural approaches.
I also have a short stack of method cards (not dissimilar to Eno & Schmidt's "Oblique Strategies", but with a mathematical bent) to remind me of different approaches to try out when I get stuck which has been pretty beneficial.
I also take a fairly segmented approach between the writing I do for understanding a math text as I'm reading it and the permanent sort of notes I specifically make after-the-fact. My goal is never to recreate entire textbooks within the main section of my own zettelkasten, but create material for new works I might be writing for others to read.
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typeshare.co typeshare.co
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What is easier? Come up with good slogans out of nowhere, or come up with good slogans after getting a list of striking details?
Of course this is the basis of keeping a zettelkasten for writing as well. When you can pull up prior ideas as a bank of information to work from, you're never starting from scratch, which is difficult not only for ChatGPT, but for people in general.
Cross reference research on naming "white" things versus naming with a more specific prompt like "white" things in your refrigerator.
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Any recommendations on Analog way of doing it? Not the Antinet shit
reply to u/IamOkei at https://www.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/17beucn/comment/k5s6aek/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=web2x&context=3
u/IamOkei, I know you've got a significant enough practice that not much of what I might suggest may be helpful beyond your own extension of what you've got and how it is or isn't working for you. Perhaps chatting with a zettelkasten therapist may be helpful? Does anyone have "Zettelkasten Whisperer" on a business card yet?! More seriously, I occasionally dump some of my problems and issues into a notebook, unpublished on my blog, or even into a section of my own zettelkasten, which I never index or reconsult, as a helpful practice. Others like Henry David Thoreau have done something like this and there's a common related practice of writing "Morning Pages" that you can explore. My own version is somewhat similar to the idea of rubber duck debugging but focuses on my own work. You might try doing something like this in one of Bob Doto's cohorts or by way of private consulting sessions. Another free version of this could be found by participating in Will's regular weekly posts/threads "Share with us what is happening in your ZK this week" at https://forum.zettelkasten.de/. It's always a welcoming and constructive space. There are also some public and private (I won't out them) Discords where some of the practiced hands chat and commiserate with each other. Even the Obsidian PKM/Zettelkasten Discord channels aren't very Obsidian/digital-focused that you couldn't participate as an analog practitioner. I've even found that participating in book clubs related to some of my interests can be quite helpful in talking out ideas before writing them down. There are certainly options for working out and extending your own practice.
Beyond this, and without knowing more of your specific issues, I can only offer some broad thoughts which expand on some of the earlier discussion above.
I recommend stripping away Scheper's religious fervor, some of which he seems to have thrown over lately along with the idea of a permanent note or "main card" (something I think is a grave mistake), and trying something closer to Luhmann's idea of ZKII.
An alternate method, especially if you like a nice notebook or a particular fountain pen, might be to take all of your basic literature/fleeting notes along with the bibliographic data in a notebook and then just use your analog index cards/slips to make your permanent notes and your index.
Ultimately it's all a lot of the same process, though it may come down to what you want to call it and your broad philosophy. If you're anti-antinet, definitely quit using the verbiage for the framing there and lean toward the words used by Ahrens, Dan Allosso, Gerald Weinberg, Mark Bernstein, Umberto Eco, Beatrice Webb, Jacques Barzun & Henry Graff, or any of the dozens of others or even make up your own. Goodness knows we need a lot more names and categories for types of notes—just like we all need another one page blog post about how the Zettelkasten method works by someone who's been at it for a week. Maybe someone will bring all these authors to terms one day?
Generally once you know what sorts of ideas you're most interested in, you take fewer big notes on administrivia and focus more of your note taking towards your own personal goals and desires. (Taking notes to learn a subject are certainly game, but often they serve little purpose after-the-fact.) You can also focus less on note taking within your entertainment reading (usually a waste) and focusing more heavily on richer material (books and journal articles) that is "above you" in Adler's framing. You might make hundreds of highlights and annotations in a particular book, but only get two or three serious ideas and notes out of it ultimately. Focus on this and leave the rest. If you're aware of the Pareto principle or the 80/20 rule, then spend the majority of your time on the grander permanent notes (10-20%), and a lot less time worrying about the all the rest (the 80-90%).
In the example above relating to Marx, you can breeze through some low level introductory material for context, but nothing is going to beat reading Marx himself a few times. The notes you make on his text will have tremendously more value than the ones you took on the low level context. A corollary to this is that you're highly unlikely to earn a Ph.D. or discover massive insight by reading and taking note posts on Twitter, Medium, or Substack (except possibly unless your work is on the cultural anthropology of those platforms).
A lot of the zettelkasten spaces focus heavily on the note taking part of the process and not enough on the quality of what you're reading and how you're reading it. This portion is possibly more valuable than the note taking piece, but the two should be hand-in-glove and work toward something.
I suspect that most people who have 1000 notes know which five or ten are the most important to where they're going and how they're growing. Focus on those and your "conversations with texts" relating to those. The rest is either low level context for where you're headed or either pure noise/digital exhaust.
If you think of ideas as incunables, which notes will be worth of putting on your tombstone? In other words: What are your "tombstone notes"? (See what I did there? I came up with another name for a type of note, a sin for which I'm certainly going to spend a lot of time in zettelkasten purgatory.)
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Knowledge that is excluded from synthesis... .t3_17beucn._2FCtq-QzlfuN-SwVMUZMM3 { --postTitle-VisitedLinkColor: #9b9b9b; --postTitleLink-VisitedLinkColor: #9b9b9b; --postBodyLink-VisitedLinkColor: #989898; } questionOr... what do you all do with expansive lit notes that have been taken from a textbook for future reference and broad understanding of a methodology, rather than for its direct relevance to research and synthesis of new ideas?It's too unwieldly to keep in current form - six chapters of highlighted paras + notes on how I might apply certain approaches, but it resists atomisation/categorisation. Maybe just chapter summaries?Not suggesting there's 'A' way of doing this, but interested in others' approaches to directly applicable/foundational 'textbook' knowledge that is unlikely to evolve.(Someone really should do a PhD in the epistemology of Zettelkasten!)Cheers,Chris
reply to u/Admirable_Discount75 at https://www.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/17beucn/knowledge_that_is_excluded_from_synthesis/
What is your purpose/need/desire to turn all this material into individual zettels or atomic ideas? If you've read the material, taken some literature notes, and reviewed them a bit, don't you broadly now know and understand the methodology? If this is the point and you might only need your notes/outline to review occasionally, then there's nothing else you need to do. If you're comparing other similar methodologies and comparing and contrasting them, then perhaps it's worth breaking some of them out into their own zettels to connect to other things you're working on. Perhaps you're going to write your own book on the topic? Then having better notes on the subject is worthwhile. If you don't have a good reason or gut feeling for why you would want or need to do it, taking hundreds of notes from a book and splitting them all into interconnected atomic notes is solely busy work.
It's completely acceptable to just keep your jumble of literature notes next to your bibliographic entry for potential future reference or quick review if necessary. Perhaps you've gotten everything you need from this source without creating any permanent notes? Or maybe only one or two of the hundreds are actually valuable to your potential long term goals?<br /> It's really only the material you feel that is relevant to your longer term goals, research, and synthesis needs that's worthwhile breaking out into permanent notes/zettels.
syndication link: https://www.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/17beucn/comment/k5lr0mz/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=web2x&context=3
Just as Adler and Van Doren (1972) suggest that most books are only worth a quick inspectional read and fewer are worth a deeper, analytical read, most (fleeting) notes, highlights, and annotations you make are only worth their quick scribble while vanishingly few others are worthy of greater expansion and permanent note status. You might also find by extension that some of the most valuable work you'll do is syntopical reading and the creation of high value syntopical notes which you can weave into folgezettel (sequences of notes) that generate new knowledge.
Don't fall into the trap of thinking that everything needs to be a perfect, permanent note. If you're distilling and writing one or two good permanent notes a day, you're killing it; the rest is just sour mash.
As ever, practice to see what works best for your needs.
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www.youtube.com www.youtube.com
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Scott continues in his efforts not to make any main notes, but is pushing the indexing of ideas where they live directly in books using only a topic in his index and a page number.
He calls this practice, which he himself practices, sacrilegious. 00:00:27
What happened to pushing knowledge-building?!?
This is the second video I've seen him do this. (Previously: https://hypothes.is/a/28AkYFadEe6ZH_MjTZlnLQ). So his Antinet zettelkasten is now primarily an index and bibliographic cards with fleeting notes. He's specifically leaving out any of what he has previously called main notes.
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www.youtube.com www.youtube.com
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OrN0kaE6DkY<br /> Is The Zettelkasten Method Really The Best Personal Knowledge Management System? by Anthony Metivier
meh...
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www.reddit.com www.reddit.com
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Have you thought about citing the quote directly here, together with several summary points about why it provokes such questions, instead of creating just clickbait for your substack service? I believe that interested readers would click on your link in any case. Not interested will not be annoyed by having to click on the link to get to know that they are not interested. (It applies also for other areas of (self)marketing, by the way :-)
reply to u/daneb1 and u/qnnnp at https://www.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/17a0ze0/comment/k5pdgdf/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=web2x&context=3
Hans Blumemberg's zettelkasten click-bait is apparently a thing!?! 🤣🤪Thanks u/Idaneb1, I feel seen, but I'll bet I'm one of only two or three who would fall for it. I had already read all of the underlying linked source material, so the quote wouldn't have helped in my case.
u/qnnnp, you're going to have to go a lot deeper for those two clicks next time. Plow through https://www.zotero.org/groups/4676190/tools_for_thought/collections/EP7GRG2W (or better yet, sources that aren't on it) and get back to us with something exciting! We can't wait to see what pops out.
Only for fun, I'll raise your joker with my joker "flush". 🃏♦️♣️♥️♠️🗃️ #JokerZettelClickBaitWarningFTW #ShowUsAllYourCards
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www.youtube.com www.youtube.com
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Very confusing video on zettelkasten.
- reference note and literate note as separate; though I get the workflow of summarising highlights (just call it only literature or reference notes, call the highlights, highlights, or marginalia)
- fleeting notes seen as todo (which it shouldn't)
These add up to be a lot of "homework" for the user: fleeting notes tasks, going from reference notes to literature notes.
- Then goes on to say that keeping two different notes (reference and literature notes) "gives him permission to not be so selective for highlighting".
Being selective with a book (or anything you read), is actually very important. Making short annotations of what you read, be it marginalia, whatever, is a way we can subvert the homework process (because we already did the thinking as we read it).
04:23 he says that making the literature note forces him to think about the book, but we can be more active when reading, annotating and stuff, so that we don't need to do his process.
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blogs.loc.gov blogs.loc.gov
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Almost any collection becomes interesting once you get enough stuff in one place,
The flip side of the collector's fallacy....
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www.reddit.com www.reddit.com
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I've been struggling with duplicate notes within my Zettelkasten. .t3_17ajd34._2FCtq-QzlfuN-SwVMUZMM3 { --postTitle-VisitedLinkColor: #9b9b9b; --postTitleLink-VisitedLinkColor: #9b9b9b; --postBodyLink-VisitedLinkColor: #989898; }
reply to u/Flubber78769 at https://www.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/17ajd34/ive_been_struggling_with_duplicate_notes_within/
This is the value of actually indexing your content. You can do a quick search around the index entries which provides a natural check against duplication, but importantly it'll let you think about those ideas again and spend your time more profitably by expanding upon them instead.
Occasionally I'll find duplication from one source to the next which provides some support about an idea's value or spread over time, especially when I'm tracking usage of a thing, so it's not always the case that duplication is automatically a bad thing.
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qnnnp.substack.com qnnnp.substack.com
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Three Questions About Note-Taking Systems by ANDREI SUKHOVSKII<br /> OCT 11, 2023<br /> https://qnnnp.substack.com/p/three-questions-about-note-taking
very low level....
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www.youtube.com www.youtube.com
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Annotations at https://docdrop.org/video/qRSCKSPMuDc/
Zettelkasten section at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qRSCKSPMuDc&t=2246s
Tags
Annotators
URL
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qnnnp.substack.com qnnnp.substack.com
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Hans Blumenberg and his Zettelkasten by Andrei Shukhovskii https://qnnnp.substack.com/p/hans-blumenberg-and-his-zettelkasten
nothing new to me...
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joonhyeokahn.substack.com joonhyeokahn.substack.com
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https://joonhyeokahn.substack.com/p/demystify-zettelkasten
If you've not already spent some time with the idea, this short one pager is unlikely to "demystify" anything. Yet another zk one-pager, and not one of the better ones.
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Local file Local file
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Nein. Ich habe den Zettelkasten aus der simplen Überlegung her-aus angefangen, daß ich ein schlechtes Gedächtnis habe. Zunächsteinmal hatte ich Zettel in Bücher gelegt, auf die ich mir Notizenmachte, auf diese Weise gingen die Einbände der Bücher kaputt.Dann habe ich mir mit Mappen geholfen, als die jedoch dickerwurden, fand ich nichts mehr in ihnen. Ab 1952 oder 1953 begannich dann mit meinem Zettelkasten, weil mir klar wurde, daß ich fürein Leben planen müsse und nicht für ein Buch.
Machine translation:
No. I started the Zettelkasten out of the simple thought that I have a bad memory. First of all, I put pieces of paper in books on which I wrote notes, so the covers of the books got ruined. Then I helped myself with folders, but when they got thicker I couldn't find anything in them. In 1952 or 1953, I started my Zettelkasten because I realized that I had to plan for a life and not for a book.
There's some missing interstitial space here about how precisely he came to it outside of the general motivation for the thing in general.
52/53 would have been after law school and in his administrative days and before his trip to Harvard in 61.
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— Ich muß Ihnen sagen, daß ich nie etwas erzwinge, ich tueimmer nur das, was mir leichtfällt. Ich schreibe nur dann, wenn ich
sofort weiß, wie es geht. Wenn ich einen Moment stocke, lege ich die Sache beiseite und mache etwas anderes.
Was machen Sie dann'?
Na, andere Bücher schreiben. Ich arbeite immer gleichzeitig an mehreren verschiedenen Texten. Mit dieser Methode, immer an mehreren Dingen zu arbeiten, habe ich nie Blockierungen.
Rough translation:
— I have to tell you: I never force anything, I only do what comes easy to me. 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.
(Interviewer): What do you do then?
Well, write other books. I always work on several different texts at the same time. With this method of always working on multiple things, I never have any blockages.
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Wenn Sie nun einen Aufsatz zu schreiben beginnen, wie setzen Siedann Ihren Zettelkasten in Funktion?Da mache ich mir zunächst einen Plan für das, was ich schreibenwill, und hole dann aus dem Zettelkasten das heraus, was ich ge-brauchen kann.Im Gegensatz zu einem Baumeister, der ausschließlich vorgefer-tigte Teile zusammenmontiert, muß ein Wissenschaftler doch auchneue Ideen haben, die nicht bereits in den einzelnen Teilen enthal-ten sind. Solche Ideen kommen ja nicht aus einem Zettelkasten?Doch. Ich habe zum Beispiel eine große Menge von Zetteln zumBegriff "funktionale Differenzierung", ich habe ebenfalls eine Reihevon Notizen über "selbstreferentielle Systeme", und ich habe einengroßen Komplex von Notizen über "Binarität". Im Augenblick sitzeich an einem Vortrag über ökologische Probleme in modernenGesellschaften, und meine Arbeit besteht darin, Zettel aus den skiz-zierten drei begrifflichen Bereichen zu sichten und so zu kombinie-ren, daß ich etwas Substantielles zu diesem Thema sagen kann. Dieneuen Ideen ergeben sich dann aus den verschiedenen Kombina-tionsmöglichkeiten der Zettel zu den einzelnen Begriffen. Ohne dieZettel, also allein durch Nachdenken, würde ich auf solche Ideennicht kommen. Natürlich ist mein Kopf erforderlich, um die Einfällezu notieren, aber er kann nicht allein dafür verantwortlich gemachtwerden. Insofern arbeite ich wie ein Computer, der ja auch in demSinne kreativ sein kann, daß er durch die Kombination eingegebe-ner Daten neue Ergebnisse produziert, die so nicht voraussehbar
waren. Diese Technik, so glaube ich, erklärt auch, warum ich überhaupt nicht linear denke und beim Bücherschreiben Mühe habe, die richtige Kapitelfolge zu finden, weil eigentlich ja jedes Kapitel in jedem anderen Kapitel wieder vorkommen müßte
Niklas Luhmann's process for writing from his box
Machine translation:
Q: When you start writing an essay, how do you put your note box to work?
I first make a plan for what I want to write and then take out what I can use from the note box.
Q: In contrast to a builder who only assembles prefabricated parts, a scientist must also have new ideas that are not already contained in the individual parts. Ideas like these don't come from a note box?
But. For example, I have a large set of notes on the term "functional differentiation", I also have a set of notes on "self-referential systems", and I have a large set of notes on "binarity". At the moment I am giving a lecture on ecological problems in modern societies, and my work consists of sifting through pieces of paper from the three conceptual areas outlined and combining them so that I can say something substantive on this topic. The new ideas then arise from the different possible combinations of the pieces of paper for the individual terms. Without the notes, just by thinking about it, I wouldn't come up with ideas like that. Of course my mind is required to record the ideas, but it cannot be held solely responsible for them. In this respect, I work like a computer, which can also be creative in the sense that by combining input data it produces new results that could not have been predicted. I think this technique also explains why I don't think linearly at all and why I have trouble finding the right sequence of chapters when writing books, because every chapter should actually appear in every other chapter.
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Sie verschwenden, wenn wir das richtig verstanden haben, nie einenGedanken; alles was Ihnen durch den Kopf gegangen ist, geht so-fort in den Zettelkasten?Ja, wenngleich nicht alles, was ich in dem Zettelkasten gesammelthabe, später dann auch verwendet wird.
An interviewer asked Luhmann if every thought that went through his head was saved into his zettelkasten, and Luhmann replied yes. This is obviously a level of conversational hyperbole.
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Im wesentlichen eigene Gedanken, manchmal auch Zitate, aber dasgeschieht ganz selten
Luhmann indicates that most of his zettelkasten notes are his own thoughts, but some are quotes, which he uses rarely.
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das Jurastudium, in dem man eine Reihe von Organisations-Trickslernte und zugleich eine Art Augenmaß,
In this interview, Lumnann indicates that he learned a number of organizational tricks while studying law.
What specifically were these? Relation to his ZK?
Any relation to Bruno First's memory work which grew out of his legal studies in the early 1900s?
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Viel gelesen und vor allen Dingen begonnen, mit einem Zettelka-sten zu arbeiten, also Zettel vollgeschrieben. In den Zetteln habeich die Literatur, mit der ich mich vorwiegend beschäftigte, verar-beitet, also Soziologie und Philosophie. Damals habe ich vor allemDescartes und Husserl gelesen. In der soziologischen Theorie hatmich der frühe Funktionalismus beschäftigt, die Theorien von Mali-nowski und Radcliffe-Brown; dies schloß ein, daß ich mich auchsehr stark mit Kulturanthropologie und Ethnologie befaßte
With heavy early interest in anthropology, sociology and philosophy including Malinowski, it's more likely that Luhmann would have been trained in historical methods which included the traditions of note taking using card indices of that time.
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Zunächst war ich ein Jahr am Oberverwaltungsgericht Lüneburg zurOrganisation eines Referenz-Systems für Verwaltungsgerichtsent-scheidungen; das Gericht sollte sehen können, was an obergerichtli-chen Entscheidungen jeweils vorlag
In the early 1950s, Luhmann spent a year at the Lüneburg Higher Administrative Court organizing a reference system for the administrative court decisions to enable researchers to see what decisions had been made in the higher courts.
Though he had begun his zettelkasten during his studies, this referencing system may have influenced the structure of his own note taking system.
Can we pin the dates on these practices down more closely?
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"Biographie, Attitüden, Zettelkasten" ist unter dem Titel "Der Zettelkasten kostet michmehr Zeit als das Bücherschreiben" in der Frankfurter Rundschau am Samxtag, den27. April 1985, S. ZB 3 gekürzt erschienen.
"Biography, Attitudes, Zettelkasten" was published under the title "The Zettelkasten costs me more time than writing books" in the Frankfurter Rundschau on Saturday, April 27, 1985, p. ZB 3, abridged.
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Der Zeitaufwand besteht für mich im wesentlichen darin, ein Ma-nuskript zu tippen. Wenn ich es einmal geschrieben habe, dannnehme ich in der Regel keine Revision mehr vor, mit Ausnahmeübrigens an dem letzten Buch,
To some extent, Luhmann felt that his books wrote themselves. He spent an inordinate amount of time writing out notes and filing them into his zettelkasten. The writing portion consisted primarily of typing out the manuscript and after writing it, he usually didn't revise it.
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DerZettelkasten kostet mich mehr Zeit als das Bücherschreiben.
Luhmann felt that he spent more time working with his zettelkasten than the amount of time it took him to write his papers or books.
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Meine Produktivität ist im wesentlichen aus demZettelkasten-System zu erklären
Luhmann attributed his productivity to the use of his zettelkasten.
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Mit dem Zettelkastenhabe ich bereits während des Studiums, Anfang der fünfziger Jahre,
During his studies Niklas Luhmann began using his zettelkasten in the early 1950s.
Tags
- intellectual history
- writing process
- law school
- combinatorial creativity
- productivity
- 1950s
- Bruno Fürst
- Bronisław Malinowski
- Niklas Luhmann's zettelkasten
- interviews
- writing vs. editing
- quotes
- reference systems
- Aktenzeichen
- Niklas Luhmann
- historical method
- 1953
- folders
- revision
- zettelkasten numbering
- organization
- 1952
- Lüneburg Higher Administrative Court
- anthropology
Annotators
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www.reddit.com www.reddit.com
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Should I use zettelkasten? .t3_172ujnk._2FCtq-QzlfuN-SwVMUZMM3 { --postTitle-VisitedLinkColor: #9b9b9b; --postTitleLink-VisitedLinkColor: #9b9b9b; --postBodyLink-VisitedLinkColor: #989898; } questionI am a student in college in the UK studying A levels (Advanced levels), this includes mathematics, biology, chemistry and physics. I dont really take notes for mathematics so I wont be using any type of note taking system for that but for the sciences IDK what to do.
reply to u/Wooden-School-4091 at https://www.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/172ujnk/should_i_use_zettelkasten/
This comes up fairly frequently. See https://hypothes.is/users/chrisaldrich?q=tag%3A%27zettelkasten+for+studying%27 and related links for other variations and advice on this theme.
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zeti.space zeti.space
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https://zeti.space/
A zettelkasten tool with potential AI functionality for linking. Cloud and local storage available.
heard about via: https://www.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/173ryxu/we_built_a_novel_tool_just_for_zetelkasten_with/
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www.reddit.com www.reddit.com
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Are links still better than search in the age of semantic search? .t3_175a6tr._2FCtq-QzlfuN-SwVMUZMM3 { --postTitle-VisitedLinkColor: #9b9b9b; --postTitleLink-VisitedLinkColor: #9b9b9b; --postBodyLink-VisitedLinkColor: #989898; } questionHi, I am a beginner Zettelkasten practitioner and also a software engineer, and I just read "Why You Should Set Links Manually and Not Rely on Search Alone" https://zettelkasten.de/posts/search-alone-is-not-enough/.Search capabilities have improved drastically since 2015 though. We can use text embeddings to find the most relevant other Zettels for any particular Zettel (see https://www.deepset.ai/blog/the-beginners-guide-to-text-embeddings)For example, even if you don't use the same keywords in your writing today as you did a year ago, you'll still find the relevant notes with semantic search, because semantic search handles synonyms with a breeze.Does this mean that with modern search tools, we can spend less time building "infrastructure" links, and rely more on (improved) search?Or am I wrong in my analysis here, does the advance in technology not matter?
reply to u/dotinvoke at https://www.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/175a6tr/are_links_still_better_than_search_in_the_age_of/
The value in the process is making a ratchet of ideas which is highly customized to building your own lines of thought or "associative trails" if you prefer Vannevar Bush's framing.
If your idea worked, then one could "simply" rely on Google's database and a variety of associated tools to act as your zettelkasten—Bob's your uncle and you're done! In practice, you'll find that this doesn't work well. You can experiment, but I think you'll find that your own limited choices of links will work far better than the infinite number of adjacent possible links that a digital system may create on your behalf. If you're already fighting information overload, you don't want to add link overload to your list of problems.
Put in a different light, it can be interesting to randomly flip a coin and go left on heads and right on tails to see where you might end up, particularly if you're unsure. But if you actively make your own choices, you're more likely to be happier with what you see along the way and where you end up.
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Father emptied a card le for Margot and me and lled it withindex cards that are blank on one side. This is to become ourreading le, in which Margot and I are supposed to note down thebooks we’ve read, the author and the date.
Excerpt of the original Dutch:
Vader heeft voor Margot en mij een kartotheekdoos leeggemaakt en er kaarjtes in gedaan. Dit wort de boekenkartotheek, we schrijven namelikj alle twee op welke boeken we gelezen hebben, ...
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card le
In the original Dutch Anne Frank uses the word "kartotheekdoos" which the translator then uses "card file".
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Father emptied a card le for Margot and me and lled it withindex cards that are blank on one side. This is to become ourreading le, in which Margot and I are supposed to note down thebooks we’ve read, the author and the date. I’ve learned two newwords: “brothel” and “coquette.” I’ve bought a separate notebookfor new words.
—Anne Frank (1929-1945), diary entry dated Saturday, February 27, 1943 (age 13)
Anne Frank was given an empty card file by her father who filled it with index cards that were blank on one side. They were intended to use it as a "reading file" in which she and Margot were "supposed to note down the books we've read, the author and the date."
In the same entry she mentioned that she'd bought a separate notebook for writing down new words she encountered. Recent words she mentions encountering were "brothel" and "coquette".
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Father emptied a card le for Margot and me and lled it withindex cards that are blank on one side. This is to become ourreading le, in which Margot and I are supposed to note down thebooks we’ve read, the author and the date.
Anne Frank (June 12, 1929-1945)<br /> Niklas Luhmann (December 8, 1927-1998)
Niklas Luhmann was a year and a half older than Anne Frank who received her first card index file in February 1943 (likely between the 27th, the date of her diary entry mentioning it and the prior diary entry on February 5th), from her father at the age of 13. She was intended to use it as a "reading file" to note down the books she'd read along with the author and the date.
One can only wonder at how many entries she would have made over the span of her life had it not come to such an abrupt end.
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MONDAY, NOVEMBER 2, 1942Dear Kitty,Bep stayed with us Friday evening. It was fun, but she didn’t sleepvery well because she’d drunk some wine. For the rest, there’snothing special to report. I had an awful headache yesterday andwent to bed early. Margot’s being exasperating again.This morning I began sorting out an index card le from theo ce, because it’d fallen over and gotten all mixed up. Before long Iwas going nuts. I asked Margot and Peter to help, but they were toolazy, so I put it away. I’m not crazy enough to do it all by myself!Anne Frank
In a diary entry dated Monday, November 2, 1942, Anne Frank in an entry in which she includes a post script about the "important news that [she's] probably going to get [her] period soon." she mentions spending some time sorting out an index card file. Presumably it had been used for business purposes as she mentions that she got it from the office. Given that it had "fallen over and gotten all mixed up", it presumably didn't use a card rod to hold the cards in. It must have been a fairly big task as she asked for help from two people and not getting it, she abandoned the task because, as she wrote: "I'm not crazy enough to do it all by myself!"
Tags
- zettelkasten
- Anne Frank
- translations
- vocabulary notebooks
- library card catalog
- card index for reading
- card index for business
- Niklas Luhmann
- Anne Frank's zettelkasten
- reading lists
- write only on one side
- card index as database
- note collection loss and damage
- note taking applications
- 1943
- reading logs
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www.reddit.com www.reddit.com
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Posted byu/IamOkei8 hours agoWhy are people paying thousand of dollars on Zettelkasten courses? It’s freaking stupid! .t3_1728f1n._2FCtq-QzlfuN-SwVMUZMM3 { --postTitle-VisitedLinkColor: #9b9b9b; --postTitleLink-VisitedLinkColor: #9b9b9b; --postBodyLink-VisitedLinkColor: #989898; } questionThese course creators have no real life achievements other than being a sophist…..And you are paying them so that they can brag that they are super rich and don’t need to work
Someone complaining of Scott Scheper's teaching/pedagogy/"system".
One needs to read a bit between the lines with only the initial context, but they circled around later to say:
I am talking about that A**net guy
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Zettelkasten courses and teachers
Having someone who is experienced, cares, and knows the entirety of their space can be invaluable to speed you on your way to having at least an idea of the space in general and then give you pointers on your particular practice and needs. There is tremendous amount of ink spilled on the idea of zettelkasten, some of it good, some of it remarkably bad, and most of it painfully generic and useless.
Most of those I know who have serious practices have spent an inordinate amount of time reading and refining to come to where they are. They, and I, would all probably think that a good teacher and class on the subject could have saved them hundreds (thousands?) of hours of time and in exchange for a couple of hundred dollars. How much is your time worth in the balance? Can you read a cheap book or two on the topic? A few blog posts? Certainly, and many have, yet there are still lots of very basic questions which pop up here and elsewhere. Buying a book isn't the end-all either as you've still got to spend the time reading and distilling what's in it. A good instructor can boil down Ahrens' work into twenty minutes and get you up and working a lot more quickly, not to mention distilling down even a fraction of all the other potentially relevant sources.
Most of the questions in this sub-reddit are people asking for pointers either about where to start or examples of specific things they're having trouble with. Of course in the majority of the cases they could simply search this or one or two other sources to find almost exactly what they need, yet here they are posting one of the same 10 questions over and over. (I also generally get the impression that they're only thinking about the system in a theoretical fashion and aren't actually practicing it for themselves.) It's nice to have pointers like the one that u/WM2D2 provides, but how is someone new to the space supposed to find this or other specific sources without the prior knowledge? Simple search is unlikely to uncover the best sources. In my experience, a lot of the best material on zettelkasten practice doesn't even contain the word "zettelkasten" to allow one to find it via search. And what to do if or when it doesn't answer all their questions? Instructors are usually good at distilling down the particulars into a more coherent whole. This is what you're paying for.
Of those who are well-practiced, even fewer have expanded on their own individual practice to look at how others have practiced for a variety of very disparate use cases. Where is this experience to be found? Having looked at and read many sources over the years, it's definitely hard won knowledge. And what about taking the theory and turning it into actual practice? This is where a good teacher will come in handy to help you actually do the work to become better much more rapidly than any book ever could. The rules are easy, it's the practice to turn those rules into a practicable art that is the tougher road.
This being said, there is definitely a spectrum of experience and teaching ability. There are certainly only one or two people I can imagine recommending as a teacher in this specific area. Because this may be some of the most hard won knowledge to come across, I'll mention that u/taurusnoises is one of those I would recommend if you're looking to save your time and come to a useful practice for yourself without spending lots of time floundering around.
written in response to u/IamOkei at https://www.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/1728f1n/why_are_people_paying_thousand_of_dollars_on/
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github.com github.com
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https://github.com/flengyel/Zettel
An interesting looking and complete template example.
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Lynch, David. Catching the Big Fish: Meditation, Consciousness, and Creativity. New York, NY: Tarcher Perigee, 2006.
annotation URL: urn:x-pdf:7d3165882b27dc69918cc2de97baab96
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But you’re also expandingthe container of that knowledge.
David Lynch uses meditation to expand his container of knowledge.
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You become familiar with the process of catching an idea andtranslating that idea. You understand the tools and the lighting. Youunderstand the whole process—you’ve been through it before.
He's talking about movie making, but it applies to almost anything.
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It’s interesting to seehow these unrelated things live together. And it gets your mindworking. How do these things relate when they seem so far apart? Itconjures up a third thing that almost unifies those first two. It’s astruggle to see how this unity in the midst of diversity could go towork.The ocean is the unity and these things float on it.
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If you don’t have a setup, there are many times when you get theinspiration, the idea, but you have no tools, no place to put ittogether. And the idea just sits there and festers. Over time, it will goaway. You didn’t fulfill it—and that’s just a heartache.
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It’s crucial to have a setup, so that, at any givenmoment, when you get an idea, you have the place and the tools tomake it happen.
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THE BOX AND THE KEYI don’t have a clue what those are.
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Now, you don’t use meditation to catch ideas. You’re expandingthe container, and you come out very refreshed, filled with energy,and raring to go out and catch ideas afterward.
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You’ve got to be able to catch ideas.
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New ideas can come along during the process, too. And a film isn’tfinished until it’s finished, so you’re always on guard. Sometimesthose happy accidents occur. They may even be the last pieces ofthe puzzle that allow it all to come together. And you feel so thankful:How in the world did this happen?
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When we were shooting the pilot for Twin Peaks, we had a setdresser named Frank Silva. Frank was never destined to be in TwinPeaks, never in a million years.
Because Frank Silva was a proverbial slip in David Lynch's living zettelkasten process, he ended up appearing in Twin Peaks by way of the serendipity of Lynch's method of combinatorial creativity.
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David Lynch's films are a personally structured output of his zettelkasten of ideas comprised of words, sounds, images, music, sound, people, and moods.
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But it wasn’t always that way. When I made Dune, I didn’t havefinal cut. It was a huge, huge sadness, because I felt I had sold out,and on top of that, the film was a failure at the box office. If you dowhat you believe in and have a failure, that’s one thing: you can stilllive with yourself. But if you don’t, it’s like dying twice. It’s very, verypainful.
Being an author is having the final cut on a string of ideas placed in a particular order.
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The entirety of David Lynch's book Catching the Big Fish (2006) is a series of topically arranged chapters each with just a handful of either simple sentences or very short paragraphs very loosely strung together.
It's almost as if Lynch has taken his zettelkasten of ideas, potentially written on napkins from Bob's Big Boy, and dumped them out into the loose form of a book.
Tags
- tools
- losing ideas
- heartache
- environments
- ideas
- statistical mechanics
- final cut
- workshops
- casting
- keys
- Frank Silva
- writing advice
- work spaces
- expandability
- quotes
- Twin Peaks
- success
- David Lynch's zettelkasten
- idea links
- David Lynch
- happy accidents
- set decorators
- examples
- Dune
- meditation
- zettelkasten
- writing process
- inspiration
- combinatorial creativity
- working environments
- practice
- card index for casting
- catching ideas
- actors
- boxes
- preparation
- orderings
- read
- human resources
- creativity
- references
- integrated thinking environments
- serendipity
- tools for thought
- zettelkasten ratchet
- media studies
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I'll write more in depth about it later, but I just read David Lynch's book Catching the Big Fish: Meditation, Consciousness, and Creativity https://bookshop.org/a/17195/9781585425402. He definitely has a zettelkasten-like creative process which revolves around "catching ideas". He talks about the philosophy and shape of his practice, but doesn't get into the direct physical form or substrate. He doesn't mention it in the book, but in the late 70s and early 80s his process definitely involved using napkins from Bob's Big Boy restaurant. He was influenced by his teacher Frank Daniel who had a practice of using 3x5 inch index cards for his screenwriting process. The book itself has a very zettelkasten-like flavor, almost as if he wrote ideas on index cards (or napkins), gave them some light arrangement by topic and then tipped the whole into book form without heavy editing. (It would be incredibly easy to cut it back up into individual index cards.) If you're into using zettelkasten for creativity (writing/creating), you'll appreciate some of his philosophy which he also wraps in a very light meditation wrapper.
This short video encapsulates some of the ideas and flavor of his book: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S2RFMCmfRmc.
Syndication link: https://discord.com/channels/992400632390615070/992428117467615333/1158852901192605828
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www.openculture.com www.openculture.com
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https://www.openculture.com/2018/08/how-david-lynch-got-creative-inspiration.html
Lynch has spoken about the use of 3x5" index cards for screenwriting (via Frank Daniel).
Here he mentions writing down ideas for movies on the napkins provided by Bob's Big Boy restaurant. (zettelkasten made of napkins?)
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www.reddit.com www.reddit.com
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@chrisaldrich thank you for this detailed response about your use of Obsidian and organization for digital Zettelkasten. I am not sure if this is the current forum or discussion to ask this but I would be curious to see how you have integrated or coordinated your analog Zettelkasten and notetaking with what you describe here. I've followed your posts about the use of index cards for a long time. I'd love to see how you use the very different affordances of these environments together.
reply to u/wtagg at https://www.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/16wgq4l/comment/k356507/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=web2x&context=3
Perhaps the easiest way to frame things is that I use my digital note taking as scaffolding in the learning and research process and the zettels in the digital space are the best filtered outcomes from some of that. If you compare my practice to that of Luhmann's one might consider most of my digital practice to be equivalent to his ZKI. Most of my analog practice is more highly focused and deliberate and is more closely limited to a small handful of topics related to my specific areas of research on memory, orality, intellectual history, Indigenous studies, education, anthropology, and mathematics (and is potentially more like Luhmann's ZK II). As a result, in hindsight—thanks for asking—, I'm simultaneously building my ZK I and ZK II instead of switching mid-career the way Luhmann did. But to be clear, a lot of my ZKII material filters (or digests, if you prefer that analogy) its way through the ZKI process along the way.
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How to get started with ZK and Obsidian .t3_16wgq4l._2FCtq-QzlfuN-SwVMUZMM3 { --postTitle-VisitedLinkColor: #9b9b9b; --postTitleLink-VisitedLinkColor: #9b9b9b; --postBodyLink-VisitedLinkColor: #989898; }
reply to u/Rampage_user at https://www.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/16wgq4l/how_to_get_started_with_zk_and_obsidian/
Perhaps what I've done in Obsidian may help: I've created several folders for individual pieces:
- Zettels folder - contains permanent/atomic/evergreen notes which broadly stand on their own; I give them decimal numbers so that alphabetical sorting within the folder provides me with neighborhoods of ideas without needing to provide direct links from one idea to another on each and every note.
- Bibliography folder - contains individual notes for details about sources (books, articles, videos, etc.) which also contains the fleeting notes related to them (each can have from one to sometimes hundreds of short, not fully formed notes and excerpts);
- Index folder - contains 26 notes, one for each letter of the alphabet each of which has index entries that lead to notes in the zettels folder; Like Luhmann's my index is sparse and I rely on the neighborhoods around the notes that link from the index.
While I do have a few tags, I broadly eschew them as they don't scale well with time in my experience.
Some literature is unspecific about it, but you should know that NOT EVERY FLEETING NOTE NEEDS TO BECOME A PERMANENT NOTE. Only split out the most interesting and potentially future useful ones. Some of my book notes have hundreds of fleeting notes, highlights, etc. and I've only pulled out 3 or 4 permanent notes from them. (The side benefit is that if you need them, you've got links to those fleeting notes for later if you need to review over, use, or convert them.)
Really the best advice is to practice. A Lot. Experience will help you know when your fleeting notes should become permanent ones and how much work they need to become permanent notes. You can always adjust things in the future if your experience helps you simplify things further for you. If you make three permanent notes a week, you're doing better than most. I add 1-5 bibliographic sources a day and average about 50 fleeting notes with only one, or maybe two permanent notes on a good day.
Good luck. Now go practice...
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The author made visible efforts to put everything down on one page,leaving a generous left- hand margin, presumably to facilitate surveyingand expanding the content. He equipped the page with a circledheading in the upper left corner and hence in an easily identifiable spotthat allowed for efficient retrieval. In this way, he turned his notes intomobile textual units—an excerpt from a historical source, a newspaperclipping, the sketch of a literary character, a part of a dialogue, etc.—that could then be pulled out like slips from a slip box.The archival evidence suggests that Fontane’s most important methodsfor storing his massive amounts of material were the paper sleeves, boxes,and folders, with their slip-box effect
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These storage media further increasedthe flexible use of Fontane’s archival items, because they allowed allkinds of differently sized material to be kept on loose sheets in unboundform. Receptacles filled with discrete textual objects, such as note closets( Zettelschrä nke ) and slip boxes (Zettelkasten), are advantageous storagemedia for compilers, for they invite the generative process of reshufflingsources and creating textual patchwork from new combinations. 56 Infact, Fontane used his paper sleeves like a large- format slip box. Inthem, he stored material for the Wanderungen, but also for novels,novellas, and autobiographical writings on individual sheets. 57 Theexample “Figur in einer Berliner Novelle” (“Character in a BerlinNovella”), a folio sheet from Fontane’s Nachlass, provides a glimpse ofhow he formatted his material and indicates how important he found itto keep it in slip-like form (Figure 3.2).
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other “paper tools,” 3 such as cardboard boxes, file folders, andenvelopes—the book demonstrates that Fontane produced his prosefi ction, feuilleton essays, and other contributions to the press in acreative process that was the exact opposite of his self- staging as theinspired mouthpiece of the muses. Deliberate at every step, heassembled his texts from pre- mediated sources with scissors and glue,in an extraordinarily inorganic, radically intertextual, and completelyconscious manner.
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www.reddit.com www.reddit.com
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https://www.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/16wj9uz/a_luhmannesque_zettelkasten_in_7_easy_steps/
One of the more compact, yet dense overviews of Luhmann's method.
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- Sep 2023
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github.com github.com
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kairos.technorhetoric.net kairos.technorhetoric.net
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https://kairos.technorhetoric.net/2.1/features/brent/index.htm
An interesting commonplace book-like old school website with an actual "index" and fascinatingly about "Rhetorics of the Web"!
Example of a collected quote: https://kairos.technorhetoric.net/2.1/features/brent/burke.htm
Note also the linked ideas at the bottom of this example.
It also has a references section: https://kairos.technorhetoric.net/2.1/features/brent/referenc.htm
The separations of the pieces and their form is very reminiscent of a zettelkasten and the building up of pieces in places almost admits to a hand-built wiki.
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www.youtube.com www.youtube.com
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H6Ty-9pHd2o via morganeua
An analog ZK user who prefers that format because "out of sight is out of mind". (mentioned in beginning of the video)
Overview: Brief conversation about ZK followed by taking some notes and turning them into a Luhmann-artig system.
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Annotators
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pdf-objects.com pdf-objects.com
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found via:
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>Niklas Luhmann rejected out of town teaching positions for fear that his hard copy / analog zettelkasten might get destroyed in the moving process 🧵
— Bob Doto (@thehighpony) August 19, 2022
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>"He rejected a number of other universities' interests in hiring him...at an early stage, arguing that he couldn't risk taking his Zettelkasten with him in the event of an accident to lose by car, ship, train or plane." https://t.co/SmK2gLJpQ0
— Bob Doto (@thehighpony) August 19, 2022
reference ostensibly in this text, but may need to hunt it down.
Bob confirmed that it was Luhmann Handbuch: Leben, Werk, Wirkung, 2012
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www.reddit.com www.reddit.com
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ID's or Common names for Notes? .t3_16vgxy7._2FCtq-QzlfuN-SwVMUZMM3 { --postTitle-VisitedLinkColor: #9b9b9b; --postTitleLink-VisitedLinkColor: #9b9b9b; --postBodyLink-VisitedLinkColor: #989898; }
reply to u/pakizh at https://www.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/16vgxy7/ids_or_common_names_for_notes/
Keyword search was definitely available in Luhmann's lifetime. Here's the link to the digitized version of Luhmann's keyword index: https://niklas-luhmann-archiv.de/bestand/zettelkasten/zettel/ZK_2_SW1_001_V. Versions of this sort of indexing go back at least to John Locke's method for indexing commonplace books in 1685 (in French) and 1706 (in English). See: https://archive.org/details/13925922180LockeCommonplaceBook/mode/2up for the 1706 version. In a zettelkasten context, instead of indexing page numbers, one simply numbers their index cards and the method works exactly the same. (One could also think of it as creating a library card catalog for one's ideas instead of their books—again, using a personalized numbering system instead of the standardized Dewey Decimal System which is used for books.)
In paper versions, the numbers serve two purposes:
- Allowing the ideas to be indexed and searched for and found again. Full text search in digital contexts may be easier in some instances, but these sorts of searches may not scale well over thousands of notes and may return hundreds of results which need to be looked through to find the correct one. As a result, even good indexing in digital can pay off well in the long run.
- Placing similar ideas next to each other (when filed using numbers) allows areas of interest to build up in one's note collection. This also creates what one might call "soft links" between ideas (versus more direct, hard links using [[WikiLinks]] or explicit links to specific numbered cards). These neighborhoods of ideas eventually build up to something interesting in aggregation. Without these sorts of (decimal or alpha-numeric) numbers, it's more difficult to create this affordance in digital applications (and one has to be more vigilant for orphaned notes). One can use tags or category names in Obsidian along with the graph view to approximate some of this affordance, but it requires more work on the part of the user. Prepending sortable numbers onto the titles of notes can allow these neighborhoods to be more visible in the sidebar folder view found in many digital tools.
Some will suggest or use some sort of date/timestamp number as a unique identifier, but doing this generally has little or no value and most digital systems will automatically add date/time creation and modification timestamps to notes anyway if those are of interest or value.
More details: https://boffosocko.com/2022/10/27/thoughts-on-zettelkasten-numbering-systems/
Knowing these potential affordances, try things out for a while to see how they work for you and then decide to continue or change your practice to suit your own needs.
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www.reddit.com www.reddit.com
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Custom Zettelkasten Stationery?
For those who have a significant paper-based practice, have you considered commissioning custom made cards? There are a variety of stationers who do custom work and one could also purchase directly from Chinese manufacturers to get costs down by buying in bulk.
Ryan Holliday is one of the few I've seen in the wild who has mentioned custom making cards, usually done on a per-project (book) basis where he'll put a header title at the top of his note cards. Example: https://www.instagram.com/p/CeWV6xBuZUN/?hl=en
Other options could include doing custom/personalized stamps. (I have a date stamp handy for quickly stamping the dates of creation/updating in the corner of cards.)
I'm curious what suppliers/manufacturers folks have researched/used? What were your experiences? What sort of templates or printing did you use on them? Paper weight? Did you go Grid, blank, dot, lined, or all of the above? If you were looking to purchase something for yourself, what would you want?
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www.reddit.com www.reddit.com
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https://www.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/10jx7gg/wooden_antinet_zettelkasten/
Scott Scheper commissioned a two drawer solid wood (cedar) zettelkasten box similar to those from the early 20th century. He had it listed on his website initially for $995 and then later for a reduced $495.
He created a waitlist sign up for it, ostensibly to test the interest in manufacturing/selling them as a product. To my knowledge he never made any beyond the initial prototype.
The high cost likely dampened interest compared to the much cheaper primary and secondary markets for these sorts of storage containers.
See also:<br /> - $995 https://web.archive.org/web/20230124062200/https://www.antinet.org/wooden-antinet-waitlist - $495 reduction https://web.archive.org/web/20230306195625/https://www.antinet.org/wooden-antinet-waitlist
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wiki.openglobalmind.com wiki.openglobalmind.com
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https://wiki.openglobalmind.com/what%E2%80%99s_a_neobook_
Conference calls at 10:30 AM on Mondays. Search YouTube for past occurrences.
Relationship to wikis and zettelkasten for accumulating knowledge as a ratchet.
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www.jerrysbrain.com www.jerrysbrain.com
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Jerry Michalski says that The Brain provides him with a "neighborhood perspective" of ideas when he reduces the external link number for his graph down to 1.
This is similar to Nicholas Luhmann's zettelkasten which provided neighborhoods of related notes based on distance from any particular note.
Also similar to oral cultures who relied on movement through their environment for encoding memories and later remembering them. [I'll use the tag "environmental memory" to track this until a better name comes along.]
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www.reddit.com www.reddit.com
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Is the idea that you force yourself to find the link between a new idea and the existing cards? I didn't understand it that way.Example of the 4 cards I have nowone how there's a continuum between music that's easy digestable for the listener, where the creator does a lot of effort, and music that asks a lot from the listener, because the creator makes idiosyncratic music.the concept of "false consensus" in psychologylinked with that: "naive realism"one about (marching band) parades, how in some cultures/for some people it's more about choosing to enjoy and dance then about the musicians who are responsible for that. (I see a link with the first, but that's not what interests me in this one)
reply to u/JonasanOniem at https://www.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/16ss0yu/comment/k2buxsc/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=web2x&context=3
In digital contexts it is much easier and very common to create orphaned notes that aren't connected to anything. In a paper zettelkasten, you are forced to file your note somewhere and give it a number (only to be able to find it again—it's difficult, but try not to make the mistake of conflating your number with the idea of category). The physical act of placing it in your slipbox creates an implicit link to the things around it. As a result, your four notes would all initially seem to be directly related because they're nearby, but over time, they will naturally drift apart as you intersperse new notes between and among them. Though if they're truly directly interrelated, you can write down explicit links from notes at one end of your thought space to notes which seem distant.
In your example, you may see some sort of loose link between your first and fourth notes relating to music. While it may be a distant one, given what you have, putting marching band "next to" digestible music is really the only place to put it. Over time, you'll certainly find other notes that come between them which will tend to split them apart and separate them by physical distance, but for now, if it's what you've got, then place them into the same neighborhood by giving them addresses (numbers) to suggest they live nearby. (Some note applications like Obsidian make this much harder to do, and as a result orphaned notes will eventually become a problem.)
This physical process is part of the ultimate value of building knowledge from the bottom up. Like most people, you've probably been heavily trained to want to create a hierarchy from the top down (folder-based systems on computers of the late 20th century are a big factor here) which is exactly why you're going to have problems like this at the start. You'll want to place that music note somewhere else, or worse, orphan it. For some people who may not be able to immediately trust the process, it can be easier to create a few dozen or a hundred notes and then come back to them later to file and arrange them. This will allow you to seed some ground from which to continually build and help to bridge the gap between the desire to move top-down in a system designed to move from bottom-up.
Depending on one's zettelkasten application (Obsidian, Zettlr, Logseq, The Archive, et al.) some do a better job of allowing the creation of "soft links" versus the more explicit hard or direct links (usually using [[WikiLinks]]). The soft links are usually best done by providing a number that places one note into proximity with another, but not all systems work this way. As a result, it's much easier to build a traditional commonplace book with Obsidian than it is to build a Luhmann-artig zettelkasten (see: https://boffosocko.com/2022/10/22/the-two-definitions-of-zettelkasten/). The concept of tags/categories in many systems is another form of soft link that can hold ideas together, so use this affordance if your application offers it as well. But also keep in mind that if sociology is your life's work, you'll eventually amass such a huge number of digital notes tagged with "sociology" that this affordance will become useless as it won't scale well for discovery and creating links.
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Hi, I just started to use Zettlr for my thoughts, in stead of just individual txt-files. I find it easy to add tags to notes. But if you read manuals how to use ZettelKasten, most seem to advice to link your notes in a meaningful way (and describe the link). Maybe it's because I just really started, but I don't find immediate links when I have a sudden thought. Sometimes I have 2 ideas in the same line, but they're more like siblings, so tagging with the same keyword is more evident. How do most people do this?
reply to u/JonasanOniem at https://www.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/16ss0yu/linking_new_notes/
This sort of practice is harder when you start out in most digital apps because there is usually no sense of "closeness" of ideas in digital the way that is implied by physical proximity (or "neighborhood") found in physical cards sitting right next to or around each other. As a result, you have to create more explicit links or rely on using tags (or indexing) when you start. I've not gotten deep into the UI of Zettlr, but some applications allow the numbering (and the way numbered ideas are sorted in the user interface) to allow this affordance by creating a visual sense of proximity for you. As you accumulate more notes, it becomes easier and you can rely less on tags and more on direct links. Eventually you may come to dislike broad categories/tags and prefer direct links from one idea to another as the most explicit tag you could give a note . If you're following a more strict Luhmann-artig practice, you'll find yourself indexing a lot at the beginning, but as you link new ideas to old, you don't need to index (tag) things as heavily because the index points to a card which is directly linked to something in the neighborhood of where you're looking. Over time and through use, you'll come to recognize your neighborhoods and the individual "houses" where the ideas you're working with all live. As an example, Luhmann spent his life working in sociology, but you'll only find a few links from his keyword register/subject index to "sociology" (and this is a good thing, otherwise he'd have had 90,000+ listings there and the index entry for sociology would have been utterly useless.)
Still, given all this, perhaps as taurusnoises suggests, concrete examples may help more, particularly if you're having any issues with the terminology/concepts or how the specific application affordances are being presented.
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The simple Zettelkasten Method:<br /> 1. Buy index cards 2. Buy a box 3. ??? 4. Profit
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forum.zettelkasten.de forum.zettelkasten.de
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Pulling this back on topic by querying my own zettelkasten...
I've got versions of most of @Will's excellent list in my notes as well, but here are a few other metaphors (and analogies) which I don't think have been mentioned:
- child rearing; perhaps @Sascha will have an experienced perspective on this now?
- Digestion / Diffusion / Filtering / Distillation
- Niklas Luhmann compared his zettelkasten to a septic tank. On Zettel 9/8a2 Luhmann called the Zettelkasten "eine Klärgrube" or a "septic tank;" (perhaps even "cesspool"). Waste goes in, and gets separated from the clearer stuff. You put in a lot of material, a lot of seeming waste, and it allows a process of settling and filtering to allow the waste to be separated and distill into something useful.
- Ruminant machines
- Barbara Tuchman used the ideas of chewing and distillation
- Grist mills and crucibles
- @Will has previously suggested relationships with flywheels before
- Statistical mechanics
- a "wooden life partner"
- woodworking has been mentioned before, but here's an extended one on wood chips in a workshop.
- Paths through forests
- Thought clouds
- avalanches/whirlpools
- Manfred Kuehn analogizes a Zettelkasten to a library
- idea/index card:zettelkasten :: person:society (see: https://hypothes.is/a/nTNZRGb2EeyZys9wX_gNTQ)
- @Sascha has previously analogized the writing process using a zettelkasten to Henry Ford's assembly line for building cars.
- Humanity is a zettelkasten in biological form.
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Local file Local file
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t may be that in using his system hedeveloped his mind and his knowledge of history to the point wherehe expected his readers to draw more inferences from the facts heselected than most modern readers are accustomed to doing, in thisday of the predigested book.
It's possible that the process of note taking and excerpting may impose levels of analysis and synthesis on their users such that when writing and synthesizing their works that they more subtly expect their readers to do the same thing when their audiences may require more handholding and explanation.
Here, both the authors' experiences and that of the cultures in which they're writing will determine the relationship.
There's lots of analogies between thinking and digesting (rumination, consumption, etc), in reading and understanding contexts.
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jhiblog.org jhiblog.org
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Helbig, Daniela K. “Ruminant Machines: A Twentieth-Century Episode in the Material History of Ideas.” JHI Blog (blog), April 17, 2019. https://jhiblog.org/2019/04/17/ruminant-machines-a-twentieth-century-episode-in-the-material-history-of-ideas/.
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writing.bobdoto.computer writing.bobdoto.computer
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Doto, Bob. “Inspired Destruction: How a Zettelkasten Explodes Thoughts (So You Can Have New Ones).” Personal blog. Writing by Bob Doto (blog), September 13, 2023. https://writing.bobdoto.computer/inspired-destruction-how-a-zettelkasten-explodes-thoughts-so-you-can-have-newish-ones/.
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www.reddit.com www.reddit.com
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https://www.reddit.com/r/antinet/comments/16ilfgj/my_antinet_zettelkasten_setup/
A great walkthrough of the physical pieces that a zettelkasten user is using.
It almost borders on some of the productivity porn that is seen in the planner/productivity space.
Not seen before: some pre-made templates for placing data on physical cards.
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