Example of a Scheper cultist telling someone else they're doing it wrong and (in the follow up comment) telling them how to do it "right" (the Scheper way).

follow up comment

@subem81 thank you so much for your feedback. I did not mean to come off as any kind of a troll. And I appreciate you taking the time to adjust my perspective. I was going kind of fast when I replied. You're 100% correct that if I took the time to comment, then I should have not done it half-assed. The reason I commented was because I have experienced the frustration that many have in implementing a zettelkasten. I tried Roam (using Beau Haan's methodology) and Notion. The main text everyone likes to reference is "How to Write Smart Notes" but after I learned how to do an analog zettelkasten, it really became a valuable tool. I was a little reticent to recommend someone else's channel when commenting inside another person's channel. But, given your feedback, I think my choice was not ideal. So, for what it's worth, my zettelkasten journey was helped dramatically by @scottscheper and his ANTINET methodology. His youtube channel, his reddit group, his book, and his paid course are incredibly insightful. I have no affiliation other than as a customer. Again, thanks so much for your very kind feedback. I will be more careful going forward. -dan

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.

—Scott Scheper at 2023-11-06 10:05:12PM Pacific https://www.reddit.com/r/antinet/comments/17m7ggz/comment/k86izlu/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=web2x&context=3

This is really the pot calling the kettle black. Read your own book lately Scott?!?

I'd love to see his receipts with respect to a million times. Even a handful would be good, but in comparison to what he's printed in his book, saying it a million times elsewhere isn't going to carry as much weight in any case.

My criticism of his book must have been eating him up for a full day as he came back a full day to within a minute at 2023-11-07 10:06:14PM Pacific and banned me from r/antinet.

My apologies for trying to help out confused people who read your book there Scott.

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.

I'm reasonably certain that Scott added these rules in the last day. I hypothesize that he's using his religious zeal to actively block people out of this community.

I think he retroactively added the brevity one as an excuse to kick me out. When I looked over the weekend as it happened, the only rule was sense of humor.

The funny part is that a version of it was all written by hand in my own ZK and transcribed to help the guy who had issues with his numbering.

My comment was made at 2023-11-06 11:37:52 AM Pacific. I was banned on Tuesday 2023-11-07 06:06:14 UTC

See also: - https://hypothes.is/a/PhIcLn5WEe686PujMaaDAg (Rule 5) - https://hypothes.is/a/sljWEH5UEe6QvdOn5I4qBQ (ban)

Archive.org indicates that the only rule was sense of humor on 2023-03-18 https://web.archive.org/web/20230318062730/https://www.reddit.com/r/antinet/ Similarly for 2023-09-17: https://web.archive.org/web/20230917011101/https://www.reddit.com/r/antinet/?rdt=41579

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RYmLhurh_a4

Scott Scheper shows an outline of his spaced repetition practice for vocabulary words. He also shows his random "chaos" boxes with random notes that he keeps unfiled and unorganized.

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.)

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.

And of course hello to you too my freaking-youtuber-zettelkasten-freeblie-seeking-shit-weasels.<br /> —Scott Scheper 00:00:16

What a way to encourage people...

Connecting a Zettelkasten to a Commonplace Book

Interesting to see Scott trying this... I'm sure I've seen it before in a setting like this, but its obviously been done in the commonplace space by itself.

reply to u/drogers8 at https://www.reddit.com/r/antinet/comments/13eyg8p/extended_numbering_and_why_use_outline_of/

Based on my research, Scott Scheper was the one of the original source for people adopting the Academic Outline of Disciplines. I've heard him say before that he recommends it only as a potential starting place for people who are new to the space and need it as a crutch to get going. It's an odd suggestion as almost all of the rest of his system is so Luhmann-based. I suspect it's a quirk of how he personally started and once moving it was easier than starting over. He also used his own ZK for showing others, and it's hard to say one thing in a teaching video when showing people something else. Ultimately it's hard to mess up on numbering choices unless you're insistent on using only whole numbers or natural numbers. I generally wouldn't suggest complex numbers either, but you might find some interesting things within your system if you did. More detail: https://boffosocko.com/2022/10/27/thoughts-on-zettelkasten-numbering-systems/ The only reason to have any standardized base or standardized numbers would be if you were attempting to have a large shared ZK with others. If this is your intent, then perhaps look at the Universal Decimal Classification, though a variety of things might also work including Dewey Decimal.

Scott Scheper returns to r/zettelkasten...

Hans-Georg Moeller on Reading, Writing, Niklas Luhmann, Jordan Peterson, Carefree Wandering, 2023. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i3Pkp5YUdHc.

It's not just me who's noticed this.

Interesting that for someone propounding Luhmann's zettelkasten system that Scheper has done this. Was it because he did it himself and then didn't want to change (likely) or because he spent time seeing others' problems with Luhmann's numbering system and designed a better way (less likely)?

Scheper, Scott. Antinet Zettelkasten: A Knowledge System That Will Turn You Into a Prolific Reader, Researcher and Writer. Greenlamp, LLC, 2022.

annotation target: url: urn:x-pdf:614d5b6d353f410da4a46e5eddde997e

Should You Read Antinet Zettelkasten by Scott P Scheper<br /> by Curtis McHale

Generally mirrors most of my opinion.

Odd that there haven't been many reviews of this...

amen

https://www.antinet.org/wooden-antinet-waitlist

$995 for a single wooden, two drawer card index is a lot on the ridiculous side. Once can get rare vintage ones in excellent condition online for nearly a tenth the price!

Restored fine furniture versions with several dozen drawers go in this range.

Possibly the worst is that these don't even have following blocks to hold partial drawers of cards upright.

link to: https://boffosocko.com/2022/12/26/the-ultimate-guide-to-zettelkasten-index-card-storage/

https://members.scottscheper.com

Despite doing the lion's share of the work of linking cards along the way, Scheper shows that there's still some work of laying out an outline and moving cards around to achieve a final written result.

compare this with Victor Margolin's process: https://hypothes.is/a/oQFqvm3IEe2_Fivwvx596w

also compare with the similar processes of Ryan Holiday and Robert Greene

https://pkm.social/@bobdoto/109558009858082429

quote by Bob Doto. :)

https://www.reddit.com/r/antinet/comments/zs9z0f/if_this_is_the_result_of_a_book_written_with/

https://www.mightynetworks.com/

This is the platform Scott Scheper is using for his online teaching/memberships.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LUTPfTP28TI

2.0x

Nothing new to me here, but interesting to see how he's marketing the book.

reply to: https://www.reddit.com/r/antinet/comments/zgvcqh/happy_publication_day/

I already have an advanced digital copy, but honestly can't wait for the analog (and therefore "true copy") to be available for order and on my doorstep.

When are we going to see the link to order it?!? Don't think I'm just sitting around here holding my breath waiting to order this... sometimes I turn blue and fall off my chair 😰

Seriously though. Congratulations Scott!

Hopefully I'll see everyone at the start of the book club tomorrow: https://www.reddit.com/r/antinet/comments/zbibue/book_club_reading_scotts_book/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S8FSENslHF0

https://www.vaultz.com/vaultz-vz01395-black-locking-4x6-index-card-cabinet-double-drawer

These are the type used by various people including Scott P. Scheper.

https://youtu.be/ILuSxUYYjMs

Luhmann zettelkasten origin myth at 165 second mark

A short outline of several numbering schemes (essentially all decimal in nature) for zettelkasten including: - Luhmann's numbering - Bob Doto - Scott Scheper - Dan Allosso - Forrest Perry

A little light on the "why", though it does get location as a primary focus. Misses the idea of density and branching. Touches on but broadly misses the arbitrariness of using the comma, period, or slash which functions primarily for readability.

I get the gist of what you're saying and I prefer putting things into my own collection in my own words as well. However, there is a history of folks putting other materials into their systems like this. Johannes Heyde, in particular, mentioned that German publishers used to mail promo details for forthcoming books on A6 size postcards that one might place directly into their bibliographic index without needing to recopy.

I know I've suggested to u/sscheper before that he ought to release his forthcoming book in index card format, if only as an interesting means of showing an example of what a zettelkasten looks like and how it might work.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wRssjvU2d-s

Starts out with some of the personal histories of how both got into the note making space.

This got more interesting for me around the 1:30 hour mark, but I was waiting for the material that would have shown up at the 3 hour mark (which doesn't exist...).

Scott spoke about the myths of zettelkasten. See https://www.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/urawkd/the_myths_of_zettelkasten/

He also mentions maintenance rehearsal versus elaborative rehearsal. These are both part of spaced repetition. The creation of one's own cards helps play into both forms.

Artykuł jest właściwie skrótem, czy transkrypcją, materiału wideo na temat adresowania, numerowania notatek Zettelkasen.

Autor przedstawia 5 konwencjI numerowania notatek: samego Niklasa Luhmanna, Boba Doto, Scotta Schepera, Dana Alloso oraz własną.

Przedstawia różne sposoby tworzenia adresu notagraficznego.

As many people used slip boxes in 1930s Germany, publishers sold texts, not as typical books, but as file card collections!

Link to: Suggestion that Scott Scheper publish his book on zettelkasten as a zettelkasten.

According to Scott Scheper's conversation with Clemens Luhmann, Niklas' son, Niklas Luhmann read Heyde (1931) in 1951. He would have been 24 years old and just out of law school at the University of Freiburg (1946-1949) and starting into a career in public administration in Lüneburg. (It would have been before he went to Harvard in 1961 and before he left the civil service in 1962. (Wikipedia entry for dates here)

It's tough to do your own marketing and naming is hard. If you have an obscure short title, be sure to have a sharply defined subtitle, both for definition but to hit the keywords you'll want for discovery and search (SEO) purposes. Though be careful with keyword stuffing, if for no other reason than that Luhmann had a particularly sparse index.

Zettelkasten doesn't have much value for for native search (yet). Who besides a student that doesn't really want to buy it searches for a book on note taking?! Creativity, Productivity, and Writing are probably most of your potential market, so look at books in those areas for words to borrow (aka steal flagrantly). Other less common keywords to consider or throw into your description of the book, though not the title: research, research methods, literature review, thesis writing, Ph.D., etc.

Perhaps you've limited the question Scott. Instead ask everyone: What title would you want to see on such a book that would make you want to buy and read it? Everyone should brainstorm for 3 minutes and write down a few potential titles.

I'll start:

Antinet Method: Thought Development for Creativity and Productive Writing

Antinet Zettelkasten: A Modern Approach to Thought Development

Antinet: The Technique of Unreasonably Productive Intellectual Work (and Fun) [h/t F. Kuntze]

Mix and match away...

But isn't Scheper's Method explicitly that of Niklas Luhmann?!?

Scheper, Scott P. Antinet Zettelkasten: The Secret Knowledge Development System Evolved By History’s Greatest Minds. Advanced Reader Copy. Greenlamp, 2022.

I've not looked directly at Wittgenstein's note collection before, but it could be an interesting historical example.

Might be worth collecting examples of what has happened to note collections after author's lives. Some obviously have been influential in scholarship, but generally they're subsumed by the broader category of a person's "papers" which are often archived at libraries, museums, and other institutions.

Examples: - Vincentius Placcius' collection used by his students - Niklas Luhmann's zettelkasten which is being heavily studied by Johannes F.K. Schmidt - Mortimer J. Adler - was his kept? where is it stored?

Posthumously published note card collections - Ludwig Wittgenstein - Walter Benjamin's Arcades Project - Ronald Reagan's collection at his presidential library, though it is more of an commonplace book collection of quotes which was later published - Roland Barthes' Mourning Diary - Vladimir Nabokov's The Original of Laura - others...

Just as note collections serve an autobiographical function, perhaps they may also serve as an intellectual autobiographical function? Wittgenstein never managed to complete his 'big book', but in some sense, doesn't his collection of note cards serve this function for those willing to explore it all?

I'd previously suggested that Scott P. Scheper publish not only his book on note taking, but to actually publish his note cards as a stand-alone zettelkasten example to go with them. What if this sort of publishing practice were more commonplace? The modern day equivalent is more likely a person's blog or their wiki. Not enough people are publicly publishing their notes to see what this practice might look like for future generations.

I wonder if Scott P. Scheper has done any videos on his writing/composing process for getting material out of his card file for creating his book for which I've seen portions of a few chapters floating around. I've loosely followed his YouTube channel and his r/antinet community on Reddit, but I haven't seen this portion of his process in any detail.

This (export) part also seems like one of the more intense, manual, and heaving lifting pieces of the process. I've yet to see any digital tools which automate or make this portion of the work easier.

Perhaps a graph view of connected nodes with titles in which one can highlight nodes as a selection method and then export them in some process to a space where they might be potentially reordered or shuffled into a linear order for further editing and ultimately publishing, might be useful? Even saying this takes forever much less doing it easily with an inspiring user interface..

Link to: https://hyp.is/9PV1jP5OEeyPumNKyckR1A/danallosso.substack.com/p/zettelkasten-on-paper

Syndication links: - https://danallosso.substack.com/p/zettelkasten-on-paper/comment/7610486

https://danallosso.substack.com/p/zettelkasten-on-paper

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bP7AXjA4O6U

meh... nothing new here for me

u/sscheper in writing your book, have you thought about the following alternative publishing idea which I'm transcribing from a random though I put on a card this morning?

I find myself thinking about people publishing books in index card/zettelkasten formats. Perhaps Scott Scheper could do this with his antinet book presented in a traditional linear format, but done in index cards with his numbers, links, etc. as well as his actual cards for his index at the end so that readers could also see the power of the system by holding it in their hands and playing with it?

It could be done roughly like Edward Powys Mathers' Cain's Jawbone or Henry Korn's Pontoon Manifesto? Perhaps numbered consecutively to make it easier to bring back into that format, but also done with your zk numbering so that people could order it and use it that way too? This way you get the book as well as a meta artifact of what the book is about as an example of how to do such a thing for yourself. Maybe even make a contest for a better ordering for the book than the one you published it in ?

Link to: - https://hyp.is/6IBzkPfeEeyo9Suq-ZmCKg/www.scientificamerican.com/article/reading-paper-screens/

https://scottscheper.com/letter/2/

Brief outline of how Scheper came to note taking and his journey to zettelkasten.

Scheper seems to indicate that it is the addressing system alone which provides the "personality" of a zettelkasten, whereby he's actively providing personification of a paper and pencil system by way of literacy. We need to look more closely, however at the idea of what communication truly is to discern this. A person might be able to read an individual card and have a conversation with just it, but this conversation will be wholly one sided, and stops at the level of that single card. We also need the links between that individual card and multiple others to fill in the rest of the resulting potential conversation. Or we will rely on the reader of the card extending the idea or linking it to others of their ideas (and that of the zettelkasten), to grow the system and thereby its "personality".

Thus the personality is part that of the collection of cards using their addresses and the links between them. This personality, however, isn't immediate. It might grow over time reaching some upper limit at the length of time of the user's life, but much of its personality is contingent upon the knowledge of the missing context of the system that is contained in or by its creator. Few zettelkasten will be so well composed as to provide full context. (cross reference: https://hyp.is/5gWedOs7Eeyrg2cTFW4iCg/niklas-luhmann-archiv.de/bestand/Zettelkasten/zettel/ZK_2_NB_9-8_V).

The question we might want to look at: Is there a limiting upper bound (a la a Shannon Limit) to the amount of information that a zettelkasten might contain or transmit, even beyond the life of an initial creator? Could it converse with itself without the assistance of an outside actor of some sort? What pieces are missing that might help us to define communication or even life itself?

The four principles Niklas Luhmann used to build his notebox system are:

1. Analog
2. Numeric-alpha
3. Tree
4. Index

The first letters of those four principles (A, N, T, I) are what comprise an Antinet. An Antinet Zettelkasten is a network of these four principles.

Where has Scott gotten the phrase "memory castle" which he repeats many times here?

Scott P. Scheper left off of notebooks and started using note cards in 2006.