Mid-November Update by [[Dan Allosso]]

actual posted reply to https://old.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/1gpx62s/is_a_zettelkasten_a_largely_unknown_form_of/

Taking too narrow a definition of zettelkasten is antithetical to the combinatorial creativity inherent in one of the zettelkasten's most important affordances.

OP was right on track, perhaps without knowing why... I appreciate that you scratch some of the historical surface, but an apple/tomato analogy is flimsy and the family tree is a lot closer. Too often we're ignoring the history of ars excerpendi, commonplacing, waste books, summas, early encyclopedias, etc. from the broad swath of intellectual history. What we now call a zettelkasten evolved very closely out of all these traditions. It's definitely not something that Luhmann suddenly invented one morning while lounging in the bath.

Stroll back a bit into the history to see what folks like Pliny the Elder, Konrad Gessner, Theodor Zwinger, Laurentius Beyerlink, or even the Brothers Grimm were doing centuries back and you'll realize it's all closer to a wide variety of heirloom apples and a modern Gala or Fuji. They were all broadly using zettelkasten methods in their work. Encyclopedias and dictionaries are more like sons and daughters, or viewed in other ways, maybe even parents to the zettelkasten. Almost everyone using them has different means and methods because their needs and goals are all different.

If you dig a bit you'll find fascinating tidbits like Samuel Hartlib describing early versions of "cut and paste" in 1641: “Zwinger made his excerpta by being using [sic] of old books and tearing whole leaves out of them, otherwise it had beene impossible to have written so much if every thing should have beene written or copied out.” (Talk about the collector's fallacy turned on its head!) As nice as Obsidian's new Web Clipper is this month, it's just another tool in a long line of tools that all do the same thing for much the same reasons.

Ignoring these contributions and their closeness means that you won't be able to take advantage of the various affordances all these methods in your own slip box, whichever form it takes. How will you ever evolve it into the paper machine that students a century hence are copying and mimicking and pontificating about in their generation's version of Reddit? Why couldn't a person's slip box have some flavor of an evolving encyclopedia? Maybe it's closer to Adler's Syntopicon? Maybe something different altogether for their particular use?

Those interested in expanding their practice might try some of the following for more details:

• Blair, Ann M. Too Much to Know: Managing Scholarly Information before the Modern Age. Yale University Press, 2010. https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300165395/too-much-know.
• Krajewski, Markus. Paper Machines: About Cards & Catalogs, 1548-1929. Translated by Peter Krapp. History and Foundations of Information Science. MIT Press, 2011. https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/paper-machines.
• Wright, Alex. Cataloging the World: Paul Otlet and the Birth of the Information Age. 1st ed. Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press, 2014.

For deeper dives on methods, try: https://www.zotero.org/groups/4676190/tools_for_thought/tags/note%20taking%20manuals/items/F8WSEABT/item-list

cc: u/JasperMcGee u/dasduvish u/Quack_quack_22

https://www.zotero.org/groups/4676190/tools_for_thought/tags/note%20taking%20manuals/items/F8WSEABT/item-list

https://old.reddit.com/r/PKMS/comments/1gkdw4m/hidden_flaws_i_found_with_the_zettelkasten_system/

Peerdraft

Collaboration for Obsidian – Sync, Share, and Edit anywhere

https://obsidian.md/clipper

How to Spot Emerging Note Clusters Without Alphanumeric Note Numbering? by [[Ton Zijlstra]] in Interdependent Thoughts

I recall Bob Doto had a video at some point in which he used the local graph to show relationships to find bunches of notes for potentially writing pieces or articles as indicated in Tons' article.

One of the biggest issues with digital note taking tools is that they don't make it easy to see and identify chains of notes which might make for articles, chapters, or books.

Surely there must be some way to calculate neighborhoods of notes from a topological perspective? Perhaps if one imposed a measure on the space to create relative distances of notes?

https://www.getoutline.com/

Mentioned by PK

https://omnivore.app

https://tana.inc/docs/supertags

Meet Capacities, the do-it-all productivity app taking on Notion by [[JR Raphael]]

Reporter John Dickerson talking about his notebook.

While he doesn't mention it, he's capturing the spirit of the commonplace book and the zettelkasten.

[...] I see my job as basically helping people see and to grab ahold of what's going on.

You can decide to do that the minute you sit down to start writing or you can just do it all the time. And by the time you get to writing you have a notebook full of stuff that can be used.

And it's not just about the thing you're writing about at that moment or the question you're going to ask that has to do with that week's event on Face the Nation on Sunday.

If you've been collecting all week long and wondering why a thing happens or making an observation about something and using that as a piece of color to explain the political process to somebody, then you've been doing your work before you ever sat down to do your work.

<div style="padding:56.25% 0 0 0;position:relative;"><iframe src="https://player.vimeo.com/video/169725470?h=778a09c06f&title=0&byline=0&portrait=0" style="position:absolute;top:0;left:0;width:100%;height:100%;" frameborder="0" allow="autoplay; fullscreen; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe></div> <script src="https://player.vimeo.com/api/player.js"></script>

Field Notes: Reporter's Notebook from Coudal Partners on Vimeo.

Doto, Bob. A System for Writing: How an Unconventional Approach to Note-Making Can Help You Capture Ideas, Think Wildly, and Write Constantly - A Zettelkasten Primer. 1st ed. New Old Traditions, 2024. https://amzn.to/3ztjrfb.

Annotation url: urn:x-pdf:231323658d79d9bdf946e1cfbe01e500

Alternate annotation view

What work exactly does Miles include in his description of preparation of a 30,000 word book in two hours?

He specifically excludes dictation. He does include selection of ideas and arrangement. He also says it includes "collection", but I'm supposing that he's taking a larger tranche of cards from a possibly massive collection and collecting only those he needs right now? Certainly the reading, thinking, and collecting work can't be included in this two hours of work.

Does he have a better definition of what he means by collection?

Unsurprising given that card systems were used for accounting in the early 1900s, but not many manuals cover the use of a card index for addresses (aka Rolodex) of for bills or memoranda.

Using a card-system over writing on a single sheet of paper or in a notebook allows one to separate the thinking work. Instead of both capturing the idea and arranging them simultaneously, one is splitting these tasks into smaller parts for simpler handling.

Miles goes against the grain of using "cards of equal size", but does so to emphasize the affordance of using them for "Arrangement and Clearness".

One of the major affordances of using a zettelkasten or card index for writing is that it forces the writer to break things down into their constituent parts, thereby making the entire process of writing far easier and less complex. One can separately focus their attention on the smaller steps of collecting, selecting, and arranging the material before beginning to actually write.

Miles, Eustace Hamilton. How to Prepare Essays, Lectures, Articles, Books, Speeches and Letters, with Hints on Writing for the Press. London: Rivingtons, 1905. http://archive.org/details/howtoprepareessa00mileuoft.

Asking my own zettelkasten this question: (responses in no particular order as individual affordances are sure to vary in usefulness by user; some framed as problems while others are framed as affordances, the difference should hopefully be clear to most):

• information overload
• mitigating time loss and context collapse in regularly interrupted work
  • Acts as a ratchet and pawl for thinking work
• tool for thought, and a particularly inexpensive one
• a catalytic surface for thought - see creativity
• removal of cognitive bias by allowing direct juxtaposition of ideas
• "a plan for life and not just a book"
• creativity acceleration
• artificial memory storage/improved memory
  • spaced repetition tool
• improved search by indexing ideas over time
• Clarity/specificity: it's a reminder to be specific about what you're thinking
• a system for marshalling resources (collecting)
• new context creation through context shifting and/or erasure
• "slow burn" productivity
• focusing attention
• fun
• serendipity generation
• attempting to look cool by doing what the cool kids are doing (this usually results in failure modes however)
  • related: fear of missing out (FOMO)

Julius Reizen in reviewing over Umberto Eco's index card system in How to Write a Thesis, defines his own "insurance card" as one which contains "hard-to-classify thoughts, questions, and areas for further inquiry". These he would keep together so that they don't otherwise get lost in the variety of other locations one might keep them

These might be akin to Ahrens' "fleeting notes" but are ones which may not easily or even immediately be converted in to "permanent notes" for one's zettelkasten. However, given their mission critical importance, they may be some of the most important cards in one's repository.

link this to - idea of centralizing one's note taking practice to a single location

Is this idea in Eco's book and Reizen is the one that gives it a name since some of the other categories have names? (examples: bibliographic index cards, reading index cards (aka literature notes), cards for themes, author index cards, quote index cards, idea index cards, connection cards). Were these "officially" named and categorized by Eco?

May be worthwhile to create a grid of these naming systems and uses amongst some of the broader note taking methods. Where are they similar, where do they differ?

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Multi-search tools that have full access to multiple trusted data stores (ostensibly personal ones across notebooks, hard drives, social media services, etc.) could potentially solve the problem of needing to remember where you noted something.

Currently, in the social media space especially, this is not a realized service.

https://x.com/david_perell/status/1838425252772077636 via David Perell's podcast.

Sam Altman's note taking process. Pocket notebook, spiral bound so he can tear out pages. No real mention of what he does with them after though a suggestion of typing them out somewhere.

Why note-taking apps don't make us smarter by [[Casey Newton]]

Newton takes a thin view of the eternal question of information overload and whether or not AI might improve the situation. No serious results...

“Real business is done on paper. Okay? Write that down.” —Michael Scott<br /> (class full of students types the quote into their computer keyboards)

The Office S3 E16 "Business School"<br /> Episode aired Feb 15, 2007<br /> https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0964922/ <br /> See also clip at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ol-wwJBVncQ

via Season 2 Episode 8: “Performance Review” - The Office<br /> https://genius.com/The-office-usa-season-2-episode-8-performance-review-annotated

Here we see in Michael Scott's incompetence the potential value of writing down our ideas as we go. Had he written down his ideas, his upcoming meeting with his boss would have gone better.

Isn't it telling that he hits on the idea of leveraging a commonly used communal zettelkasten structure (the suggestion box) to dig himself out?

The atomic nature of notes within a zettelkasten provides a thinking advantage in that it: - systematically remembers the ideas you've had before so that you can free up cognitive space for the future, never worrying about that great idea you "once had" but now can't get back - encourages you to get down enough context that your future self will understand what you were writing and what you meant and not much more - it encourages the "just good enough" which helps suppress the need to get something perfect. For those who are perfectionists, it helps them lock in something and then move onto the next thing more efficiently without getting bogged down into the mud. - give you something as a future base from which to add additional material and ideas or alternately a base from which you can edit, rewrite, or hone the idea further

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OTR: suggested by mrtnj at https://discord.com/channels/992400632390615070/992400632776507447/1274393371984662691

Doto wastes no time getting into the most important aspects of note taking. Even before the book has begun, the copyright page in the front matter is getting you ready for what is about to come:

Please cite the author and book when quoting.

https://thesiswhisperer.com/podcasts/<br /> On The Reg (OTR) is a podcast about Work, with an academic slant.

https://www.edvo.com/

Beta app for note taking/productivity.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/kazukinakayashiki/

9/8g The card index technique is based on the experience that one cannot think without writing – at least not in demanding, selectively accessing memory-based contexts.

This also means that one cannot think without making allowances for differences.

I like this slightly more differentiated instantiation for thinking better than Ahren's assertion that one can't think without writing. Luhmann qualifies it over and above Ahrens who elides meaning if this was the source he may have been tangentially referencing. (Was it an explicit reference? check...)

makes me think of tools that extend parts of ourselves. terms like "second brain" or "pkms"

"History Workshop movement" here (https://hypothes.is/a/pzSbkDSWEe-GVmsfDdhvrg) is another good example of the serendipity of autocomplete functionality in Hypothes.is helping to link together disparate examples of ideas which I'd long since forgotten. In this case to a tangential idea I'd read about a year prior (https://hypothes.is/a/bxMX5MKJEe2Wkq_zinG3iw) and been interested in, but completely forgotten about.

Now I've got a link from that to the founder of the movement in 1967.

brief outline of Raphael Samuel's note taking tools and some scant description of the method.

I love the phrase "scholarly prestiditation" to describe the "magic of note taking" along with the idea of combinatorial creativity.

Presumably the quote comes from the Samuel piece quoted in the article.

The 1975's Matty Healy uses his phone to take notes. They're more important to him privacy-wise than all the text messages he's ever sent.

He also uses an A5 sized notebook as one of his 10 most important things. He's placed reward notices in his notebooks ranging from $500 to $5000.

How to Write Mini Essays (in Obsidian) by [[Nick Milo]]

meh... a nearly complete retread of [[Odysseas]]' Mini Essays: The Ultimate Learning Tool

Mini Essays: The Ultimate Learning Tool by [[Odysseas]]

Reasonable advice to beginners in the note taking/creation space. Very old hat for me; nothing new. Watched at 2x.

reply to u/judugrovee at https://www.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/1cb1s8j/so_how_do_you_actually_transfer_a_book_with_a/

Others here have written some good advice about the note taking portions, but perhaps some of your issue is with your reading method. To reframe this, I recommend you take a look at How to Read a Book: The Classical Guide to Intelligent Reading (Touchstone, 2011) by Mortimer J. Adler and Charles Van Doren and Adler's earlier article “How to Mark a Book" (Saturday Review of Literature, July 6, 1940. https://www.unz.com/print/SaturdayRev-1940jul06-00011/)

The careful reader will notice that they recommend a lot of the same sorts of note making and annotation practices as Ahrens does (and by extension Luhmann), though their notes are being written in the margins and in the front and back pages of the book. On the reading front, you may be conflating some of the reading/understanding/learning work with the note taking and sense making portions. If instead, you do a quick inspectional read followed by a read through prior to doing a more analytical read you'll find that you have a stronger understanding of the material conceptually. Some of the material you took expansive notes on before will likely seem basic and not require the sorts of permanent notes you've been making. Your cognitive load will have been lessened and you'll instead spend more productive time making fewer, but more useful permanent notes in the end.

On the first reads through, reframe your work as coming to a general understanding of what is going on while you're creating a quick-and-dirty personal index of what is interesting in the work. On subsequent focus, you can hone in on the most important pieces of what the author is saying with respect to your own interests and work. It's here that the dovetailing of good reading method and good note making method will shine for you, and importantly help cut down on what may seem like busywork.

It's not often discussed in some of the ZK space, but reading method can be even more important than note taking method. And at the end of the day, your particular needs and regular practice (practice, and more practice) will eventually help hone your work into something more valuable to you over time. Eventually you'll more quickly rise to the level of what C. Wright Mills called "intellectual craftsmanship" (1952).

Why not this?: Idea -> Note-taking -> (Filter) -> Anki

How to optimise for: * Time * Memory

And what are the opportunity costs?

The same happens when you make atomic notes in Roam or Obsidian, where you can link things. Non-linear note-taking

in ¶90-96 he provides some advice about selection and discrimination of reading sources and materials for indexing as a means of cutting down on the information overload problem

Some of his factors include: - relying on experience in a field/area to narrow down - limiting one's scope of activity - staying away from reference books (dictionaries, encyclopedias - discriminate in favor of the specific versus the general - don't admit duplicative literature (unless one is working syntopically—though he doesn't admit this caveat), and prefer the most authoritative sources - prefer authoritative authors, when given, but make space for new writers who may be more careful in their writing and argumentation - discriminate by style and composition and in particular stay away from pernicious advertising-related material (today he might advocate away from listicles, content farms, etc.)

While Kaiser's definition of literature presumes letters and writing, his use of it doesn't narrow it down to require literacy, it speaks only of observations and language.

Similarly his use of "records" doesn't need to only to require writing.

As such, the description here of recording information, while applicable to literate cultures, leaves plenty of room for oral cultures who use similar systems to do the same thing.

Songlines and related mnemonics are certainly means of indexing information.

Kaiser's idea of classification work bears close similarity to Mortimer Adler/Charles Van Doren's concept of coming to terms. There are subtle shades between ideas which must be differentiated so as to better situate them with respect to others.

Kaiser's argument for why building a personal index of notes is more valuable than relying on the indexes of others.

Note that this is answer still stands firmly even after the advent of both the Mundaneum, Google, and other digital search methods (not to mention his statement about ignoring advertising, which obviously had irksome aspects even in 1911.) Our needs and desires are idiosyncratic, so our personal indexes are going to be imminently more valuable to us over time because of these idiosyncrasies. Sure, you could just Google it, but Google answers stand alone and don't build you toward insight without the added work of creating your own index.

Some of this is bound up in the idea that your own personal notes are far more valuable than the notes someone else may have taken and passed along to you.

Only personal experience in your note taking practice will guide you on what is most valuable for excerpting. After time you will come to know and understand what is worth spending your time on and what isn't. You will not learn this from others experience, only your own, and this is why we call it practice.

When were bookmark-like "flags" introduced in America? (Certainly prior to 1908, based on this reference.)

anecdotal evidence from Ironmonger (1908) that this is the first card index book and prior versions are only of shorter booklet-like forms.

(Naturally, I don't trust this in the fullest sense.)

Kaiser, J. Systematic Indexing. The Card System Series 2. London: Sir Isaac Pitman & Sons, Ltd., 1911. http://archive.org/details/systematicindexi00kaisuoft.

Annotation URL: urn:x-pdf:2acc267d4cbe455af640e4a707a84692

Alternate: https://jonudell.info/h/facet/?user=chrisaldrich&max=100&exactTagSearch=true&expanded=true&url=urn%3Ax-pdf%3A2acc267d4cbe455af640e4a707a84692

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See alternate version at: # or https://www.google.com/books/edition/Systematic_Indexing/iwFDAAAAIAAJ?hl=en Google-Books-ID: iwFDAAAAIAAJ

(Switched for better OCR)

read Tupac's Revolutionary Notes by [[Jillian Hess]]

Brief overview of some of Shakur's notebooks and lyrics with a mini-biography.

While Kaiser recommends against the need to re-arrange physical cards from one drawer to another, which creates the need to refamiliarize oneself with their new locations, the same idea applies to switching from one digital note taking application to another as a similar switch of user interface functionality may cause additional overhead and stress thereby preventing quick use of the system itself.

Placing call numbers or location numbers on items to be filed allows them to be separated from other items while placing cross-references or links allows them to be brought back together again. These two affordances allow for divergence as well as convergence of items or ideas.

Kaiser might be surprised at the overuse and confusing nature of terminology in the modern note taking space now. Somehow the terminology still suffers from lack of consistent and fixed terminology.

Devising Card Systems

Many modern-day note takers and knowledge workers might take solace in the broad advice provided by J. Kaiser in 1908. In describing some of the broad categories of uses of card index filing systems for business use he says that each entity "has its individual character and individual requirements, and its individual character" (ie, everyone is different and has different needs), therefore everyone "must devise [their] system in accordance with [their] own requirements" and should "be the best judge as to what these requirements are." He continues on in the rest of the book to outline a variety of suggestions and methods which one might use or adopt, but he doesn't dictate specific methods and leaves those decisions up to the end user.

When devising their own systems, one certainly ought to heed this advice when looking at a variety of alternative methods like Forte's P.A.R.A., Milo's LYT, or even in mimicking Luhmann's idiosyncratic Zettelkasten set up. Are these methods best for your particular use cases? Are they simple enough for what you want to do, or are they overly structured and complicated? The key is to be able to classify and file things quickly so that they can be easily accessed in the future, all the rest becomes additional details and overhead to support on an ongoing basis.

(¶76)

02:18Timothée Chalamet read and annotated Dune heavily before first interview with Denis Villeneuve

reply to u/oursong at https://www.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/1bideq7/literature_notes_question/

My bibliographic/literature notes are my personal (brief) index of what I found interesting in the book. I can always revisit most of what the book contained by reviewing over it. When done I excerpt the most important and actionable items on their own cards with a reference back to the book and page/loc number. Depending on my needs I may revisit at later dates and excerpt other pieces from my indexed items if it turns out I need them.

From an efficiency perspective, I find that it seems like a waste of time to split out hundreds of lower-level ideas when I may only need the best for my work.

Hookmark https://hookproductivity.com/

suggested by u/japdlsd at https://www.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/1b9wqza/comment/ku8fuv2/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=web2x&context=3

https://chat.openai.com/g/g-z5XcnT7cQ-zettel-critique-assistant

Zettel Critique Assistant<br /> By Florian Lengyel<br /> Critique Zettels following three rules: Zettels should have a single focus, WikiLinks indicate a shift in focus, Zettels should be written for your future self. The GPT will suggest how to split multi-focused notes into separate notes. Create structure note from a list of note titles and abstracts.

ᔥ[[ZettelDistraction]] in Share with us what is happening in your ZK this week. February 20, 2024

https://www.reddit.com/r/ObsidianMD/comments/1avz21q/what_to_teach_in_an_obsidian_workshop_at/

by u/osservazione at https://www.reddit.com/r/antinet/comments/1anwrez/zauberkasten_work_in_progress/

Adrian was the son of Edward Peacock.

Top slip contributors to OED: 1. Thomas Austin Jnr. 165,061 slips over 10 years (45.22 notes per day) 2. William Douglas 151,982 over 22 years (18.92 notes per day) 3. Thomas Nadauld Brushfield 70,277 over 28 years (1.98 notes per day) 4. William Chester Minor 62,720 slips over 23 years (to 1906) (7.5 notes per day)

James Murray kept an address book with the names, addresses, and notations about the thousands of people who had volunteered contributions for the Oxford English Dictionary. Also included were the lists of material they read, the level of their contributions in number of slips and dates sent, as well as various personal details including relationships, marriages, and deaths.

https://capacities.io/

or as Vannevar Bush might have said, everyone will have their own idiosyncratic associative trails...

Not mentioned here is that with a top-down approach, if a card had related topics on it, then it would have to either be copied to those areas separately, or would need to be carefully cross-indexed to those areas to be able to be found again when needed.

When the number of topics, n, begins to exceed 2 the amount of additional work and cards can grow quite a bit, though generally only linearly with respect to n. (Don't discount the work on the back side of searching for and finding these easily at later dates.)

Watched [[Dan Allosso]] on teaching Note-taking at https://vimeo.com/905323967/90544a580f

Solid overview!

physically writing, memory "geospatial" tactile

Reply to Couscous at https://discord.com/channels/686053708261228577/722584061087842365/1197392837952684052

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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.

https://lu.ma/toolsforthought

original source?

it's Benjamin Franklin letter to Miss Stevenson, Wanstead. Craven-street, May 16, 1760.<br /> see: https://hyp.is/HZeDKI3YEeyj9GcNWKX4iA/www.gutenberg.org/files/40236/40236-h/40236-h.htm

https://peculiargenres.commons.msu.edu/schedule/

reply to JasperMcFly at https://forum.zettelkasten.de/discussion/comment/19282/#Comment_19282

I've been working towards this goal for some time. The idea isn't simply delineating the characteristics of Luhmann's system and its comparison to others, but to discern what the broadest characteristics of all of these systems are and what sorts of affordances those pieces and forms provide as tools for organizing and thinking. This will allow a broader range of people with different needs and different abilities to pick and choose which characteristics and methods might work best for them to reach those particular goals. Too many are approaching zettelkasten with a surface level understanding and somehow hoping that it will magically solve all their problems. When it doesn't, "consequently," as Luhmann would say, "just like in porn movies, they leave disappointed." [ZK II note 9/8.3]

A wonderful book has even been written about the index card technique: Index Cardology, The Handbook of Index Card Technique by Dr. Walter Porstmann.

Looks like there's three editions from 1928 to the 1950s: Porstmann, Walter. Kartei - Kunde: das Handbuch der Karteitechnik. Stuttgart: Verlag für Wirtschaft und Verkehr, 1928. https://search.worldcat.org/formats-editions/58666432?limit=50&offset=1&orderBy=publicationDateAsc

Sounds similar to Umberto Eco's admonition about photocopying: https://hypothes.is/a/U3Sg_r0ZEe25T2tD3U-nmw

White highlights the ability to easily shuffle and reshuffle cards in a variety of orders (alphabetical, by source type) and this is one of the benefits of using note cards. (p51)

Fry, Ron. Write Papers. 2nd ed. Ron Fry’s How to Study Program. Hawthorne, NJ: Career Pr Inc, 1994. https://archive.org/details/writepapers00fryr/page/46/mode/2up

https://web.archive.org/web/20060422014759/http://that4.2ch.net/test/read.cgi/stationery/1021438965/l50

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]

Hawk Sugano's Pile of Index Cards method is laid out visually in his Flickr account using photos of several of his cards along with descriptions of what each is for and how they work.

These include: 0. PoIC Format/Template 1. Record Card 2. Discovery Card 3. GTD Card 4. Cite Card 5. How to link between cards

https://www.flickr.com/photos/hawkexpress/192480328/in/album-72157594200490122/

The PoIC system allows linking of cards using date/timestamps for indexing/finding. Interestingly they were all kept in chronological order rather than in idea order as in Luhmann's zettelkasten.

What are the pros/cons of this?<br /> - more searching and hunting through cards certainly is a drawback for lack of "threaded" ideas - others...

hawkexpress apparently learned this technique on the 2-channel.

(Edited 2022-10-13, 2023-12-27)

https://www.flickr.com/photos/hawkexpress/189972899/in/album-72157594200490122/

Despite being used primarily as a productivity tool the PoIC system also included some features of personal knowledge management with "discovery cards" and "citation cards". Discovery cards were things which contained one's own ideas while the citation cards were the ideas of others and included bibliographic information. Citation cards were tagged on the 5th block as an indicator within the system.

Question: How was the information material managed? Was it separate from the date-based system? On first blush it would appear not, nor was there a subject index which would have made it more difficult for one to find data within the system.

Summary

1. 📚 Second Edition Overview: This is the second, revised and expanded edition of the book. The first edition was titled "Como Fazer Anotações Inteligentes. Uma Técnica Simples para Impulsionar a Escrita, Aprendizado e Pensamento - para Estudantes, Acadêmicos e Escritores de Livros de Não Ficção".

2. 🖋️ Key Focus: The book emphasizes the importance of organizing ideas and notes for effective writing. It's a guide for students, academics, and knowledge professionals to enhance their writing, learning, and long-term knowledge retention.

3. 🧠 Smart Notes Methodology: It introduces the concept of Smart Notes, based on psychological insights and the proven Zettelkasten note-taking technique, offering a comprehensive guide in English for the first time.

4. 🎯 Target Audience: The book is particularly useful for students and academics in social sciences and humanities, non-fiction writers, and anyone engaged in reading, thinking, and writing.

5. ⏳ Time Efficiency: Focuses on saving time spent searching for notes, quotes, or references, allowing more time for thinking, understanding, and developing new ideas in writing.

6. 👤 Author's Background: Written by Dr. Sönke Ahrens, a writer and researcher in education and social sciences, known for the award-winning book "Experimento e Exploração: Formas de Revelação do Mundo" (Springer).

7. 🌍 Global Reach: Since its initial release, "Como Fazer Anotações Inteligentes" has sold over 10,000 copies and has been translated into seven languages.

https://ideaflow.app/

Audio transcription notes with AI

2023-12-12 Released on PruductHunt https://www.producthunt.com/posts/ideaflow

reply to ctietze at https://forum.zettelkasten.de/discussion/comment/15201/#Comment_15201

I can be stupid in my [private] Zettelkasten without anyone noticing.

I too have a private space exactly for this purpose. On the other hand, writing and publishing in public spaces forces me to do some additional thinking/polishing work that I might not otherwise, and that often provides some spectacular results as well as useful feedback for improvement over time.

https://help.obsidian.md/import/evernote

Given the recent state of Evernote and their beginning to charge larger amounts and close off their free tiers, I've moved copies of my data over to Obsidian just in case.

https://forum.zettelkasten.de/discussion/1894/the-official-luhmann-certified-100-note-categories

A note taking tool discussed by [[Bastien Guerry]] at I Annotate 2021.

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

I'm a bit surprised at the conclusion: Evernote still the best and can't be supplanted easily. Seriously?

But there are some naked truths about Tana and Mem (and Mem X). The Second Brain guy didn't mince words.

I think he is too harsh on Obsidian. You can't have your cake and eat it. If local-first philosophy is of utmost importance to you, you've got to learn where the vaults are stored locally. Duh!

suggestion of recombination of individual notes using cards to create something new

(have I remarked on this in krajewski?) ᔥ Johann Jacob Moser commented on the ability to breakdown bodies of information into smaller pieces that might be reshuffled into new configurations as one might in a 'game of cards'.

https://hedgedoc.org/

Reclaim Hosting / Reclaim Cloud has a one button installer for HedgeDoc

Friends of the Link uses this for collaborative note taking into the anagora.org.

https://etherpad.org/

A collaborative online editor

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

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.

Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay, PC, FRS, FRSE 25 October 1800 – 28 December 1859) was a British historian and Whig politician, who served as the Secretary at War between 1839 and 1841, and as the Paymaster General between 1846 and 1848. Macaulay's The History of England, which expressed his contention of the superiority of the Western European culture and of the inevitability of its sociopolitical progress, is a seminal example of Whig history that remains commended for its prose style.

I Wish Bear Hadn’t Wasted Years<br /> by Yury Molodtsov

Some generic state-of-the-app in the note taking space.

https://github.com/koreader/koreader/wiki/Highlight-export

Grabe, Mark. “Student and Professional Note-Taking.” Substack newsletter. Mark’s Substack (blog), November 10, 2023. https://markgrabe.substack.com/p/student-and-professional-note-taking?publication_id=1857743&utm_campaign=email-post-title&r=77i35.

Educator Mark Grabe looks at some different forms of note taking with respect to learning compared lightly with note taking for productivity or knowledge management purposes.

Note taking for: - learning / sensemaking - personal knowledge management - productivity / projects - thesis creation/writing/other creative output (music, dance, etc.)

Not taken into account here is the diversity of cognitive abilities, extent of practice (those who've practiced at note taking for longer are likely to be better at it), or even neurodiversity, which becomes an additional layer (potentially noise) on top of the research methodologies.

Yes, this by itself, but note that it also requires that one put in additional work—something many don't want to do in the first place.

This is one of the primary keys.

When taking college-like courses now later in life, I can do so with a much broader perspective. I can focus on the broader shape of the course and the information that intrigues me and place less focus on the nitty-gritty details that a high school or college student might be expected to memorize.

Of course, some of this would depend on the professor and the evaluations they planned on giving. If it was a humanities course where creating a paper or two was primary over memorizing details, then students might be able to get away with something closer to "professional" notes versus "student" notes. Depending on a syllabus, there could definitely be some overlap between the two.

http://sea.nathanstrait.com/journaling/

A lot of this looks surprisingly familiar... (even down to the ordering that it seems to have been discovered).

:)

Did Karl Jaspers have a zettelkasten practice? Did he specifically pass it along to students, like Arendt?

via https://www.reddit.com/r/books/comments/17pitv9/comment/k86tusz/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=web2x&context=3

One of the primary problems with note taking in most of the mid-twentieth century (and potentially well before, particularly as framed in most educational settings) was that students would take notes, potentially review them once or twice for a test, but then not have easy access to them for later review or reuse.

People collected piles of notes without any ability to reuse or review them. Perhaps we should reframe the collector's fallacy as this: collection without reuse has dramatically decreasing returns. Certainly there may be some small initial benefit in writing it down as a means of sense making, but not reviewing it past a short period of two weeks or even several months and not being able to reuse it in the long term is a travesty, especially in a world of information overload.

Protolyst (collaborative note taking tool) is a product that Dr. Maddy is developing and showcasing in her YouTube Channel playlists.