two small flaws in the Dictionary’s compilation process
It is incredibly difficult to plan in advance what to collect for any zettelkasten, even when its scope is tightly defined, like it would have been for the Oxford English Dictionary.
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- Feb 2024
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- Apr 2023
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zettelkasten.de zettelkasten.de
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A content-based system (like a book’s table of contents) would mean that you would have to adhere to a single structure forever (decades in advance!).
Starting a zettelkasten practice with a table of contents as the primary organization is difficult due to planning in advance.
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- Dec 2022
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“I started my Zettelkasten,because I realized that I had to plan for a life and not for a book.”5
from Niklas Luhmann, Niklas Luhmann Short Cuts (English Translation), 2002, 22.
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- Feb 2022
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Unfortunately, the most common way people organise their writingis by making plans. Although planning is almost universallyrecommended by study guides, it’s the equivalent of putting oneselfon rails.Don’t make plans. Become an expert.
Planning and especially overplanning your writing work can be counter-intuitively non-productive. A smarter reading and note taking approach can allow one to be playful and creative in a way that more focused, goal-oriented writing would never allow. It's also an incredibly valuable tool for when one becomes "stuck" and working on something else seems easier or more profitable.
An example of this is the Ahren's extended use of the shipping container metaphor with respect to the zettelkasten. By having a variety of ideas stewing in his zettelkasten, a simple search or link using the word box allowed him to create a fantastic metaphor for reshaping one's note taking practice. It's a bit sad that he didn't take a moment to point this out explicitly (though perhaps this isn't the way things came about?)
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