Your story is familiar to many and I was in the same position as you until recently. It’s an example of people believing in the Collector’s Fallacy: https://zettelkasten.de/posts/collectors-fallacy/I’d recommend that article as a good reason for others to adopt the active approach of ZK, rather than the passive approach of collecting articles and mostly not reading them.

Apart from a higher probability to retrieve particular note sheets, that advantage lies in thecircumstance that notes having a similar keyword will, as the box grows, find themselves atthe same location because of the alphabetical structure. That means not only an automaticcollection of content, but also a comparative review of those related note sheets, which inturn leads to new thoughts basd on the relation between the note sheets with identicalkeywords

The box is not a substitute for creating. The box doesn’t compose or write apoem or create a dance step. The box is the raw index of your preparation. It is therepository of your creative potential, but it is not that potential realized.