Zettelkasten — How One German Scholar Was So Freakishly Productive by [[David B. Clear]]

George Carlin Gets Dark - Charlie Rose Interview 1996 by [[Charlie Rose]]

ᔥ @lazybear on Mastodon

"This idea goes with that one, and I never suspected it, and then to make something out of it that's bigger than the two of them"

Did #GeorgeCarlin used or knew #zettelkasten ?

19:10 -> 19:15<br /> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N9OhMZYTS4E

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

reply to u/Hugglebuns at https://old.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/1gpx62s/is_a_zettelkasten_a_largely_unknown_form_of/lwtoopw/:

I appreciate that you scratch some of the historical surface, but your 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, and early encyclopedias 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.” 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 presented 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 version of Reddit? Why couldn't a person's slip box have some flavor of an encyclopedia? Maybe it's closer to Adler's Syntopicon? Maybe something different all together for their particular use?

Try some of the following for more details: <br /> - 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.<br /> - 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.<br /> - 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://old.reddit.com/r/PKMS/comments/1gkdw4m/hidden_flaws_i_found_with_the_zettelkasten_system/

The value spoken of here is that of slowly building up (evolving) directed knowledge over time. The community evolves links using work and coherence into actionable information/knowledge whereas AI currently don't have an idea of leadership or direction into which to take that knowledge, so they're just creating more related information which is interpreted as "adjacent noise". Choosing a path and building off of it to create direction is where the promise lies. Of course some paths may wither and die, but the community will manage that whereas the AI would indiscriminately keep building in all directions without the value of demise within the system.

Zettelkasten Numbering is so Damn Confusing (I Think I Can Help) by [[Zettelkasten Blah Blah Blah]]

He doesn't say it explicitly, but the Luhmann-artig zettelkasten numbers are only addresses. They don't represent hierarchies. Doing this allows a bottom up organization to emerge.

You can later create hub notes or outlines that create a "correct" or hierarchical order. This is where things become top down.

He points out that Scheper's recommendations for using the numbering for academic disciplines and putting cards in specific orders (giving them negative numbers, etc.) is a counter-productive habit with respect to Luhmann-artig practice.

Essay Idea: Moving beyond collecting: how to begin turning your bookmarks into something useful

Class 2, Does Memory Matter? Why Are Universities Studying Slavery and Their Pasts? by David Blight for [[YaleCourses]]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KR__C-HqOjs

Meh. Generic. Was halfway through. I know him from the Reddit. Though he is interesting in some parts.

Value of knowledge in a zettelkasten as a function of reference(use/look up) frequency; links to other ideas; ease of recall without needing to look up (also a measure of usefulness); others?

Define terms and create a mathematical equation of stocks and flows around this system of information. Maybe "knowledge complexity" or "information optimization"? see: https://hypothes.is/a/zejn0oscEe-zsjMPhgjL_Q

takes into account the value of information from the perspective of a particular observer<br /> relative information value

cross-reference: Umberto Eco on no piece of information is superior: https://hypothes.is/a/jqug2tNlEeyg2JfEczmepw

Inspired by idea in https://hypothes.is/a/CdoMUJCYEe-VlxtqIFX4qA

inspired by, but definitely not take from as not in evidence

Many people have "daily notes" and "project notes" in what they consider to be their zettelkasten workflow. These can be thought of as subcategories of reference notes (aka literature notes, bibliographic notes). The references in these cases are simply different sorts of material than one would traditionally include in this category. Instead of indexing the ideas within a book or journal article, you're indexing what happened to you on a particular day (daily notes) or indexing ideas or progress on a particular project (project notes). Because they're different enough in type and form, you might keep them in their own "departments" (aka folders) within your system just the same way that with enough material one might break out their reference notes to separate books from newspapers, journal articles, or lectures.

In general form and function they're all broadly serving the same functionality and acting as a ratchet and pawl on the information that is being collected. They capture context; they serve as reminder. The fact that some may be used less or referred to less frequently doesn't make them necessarily less important

Sounds like you're doing what Mortimer J. Adler and Charles van Doren would call "inspectional reading" and outlining the space of your topic. This is both fine and expected. You have to start somewhere. You're scaffolding some basic information in a new space and that's worthwhile. You're learning the basics.

Eventually you may come back and do a more analytical read and/or cross reference your first sources with other sources in a syntopical read. It's at these later two levels of reading where doing zettelkasten work is much more profitable, particularly for discerning differences, creating new insights, and expanding knowledge.

If you want to think of it this way, what would a kindergartner's zettelkasten contain? a high school senior? a Ph.D. researcher? 30 year seasoned academic researcher? Are the levels of knowledge all the same? Is the kindergartner material really useful to the high school senior? Probably not at all, it's very basic. As a result, putting in hundreds of atomic notes as you're scaffolding your early learning can be counter-productive. Read some things, highlight them, annotate them. You'll have lots of fleeting notes, but most of them will seem stupidly basic after a month or two. What you really want as main notes are the truly interesting advanced stuff. When you're entering a new area, certainly index ideas, but don't stress about capturing absolutely everything until you have a better understanding of what's going on. Then bring your zettelkasten in to leverage yourself up to the next level.

• Adler, Mortimer J. “How to Mark a Book.” Saturday Review of Literature, July 6, 1940. https://www.unz.com/print/SaturdayRev-1940jul06-00011/
• Adler, Mortimer J., and Charles Van Doren. How to Read a Book: The Classical Guide to Intelligent Reading. Revised and Updated edition. 1940. Reprint, Touchstone, 2011.

reply to u/jack_hanson_c at https://old.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/1g9dv9b/is_scoping_the_subject_a_counterzettelkasten/

reply to u/cosmic-magistra at https://old.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/1g8diq4/any_books_about_how_someone_used_zettelkasten_to/lt4en6f/

Dude, you're taking too narrow a view at what's going on as each person uses the stored work in their particular set of "cards". Everyone is going to be different based on their particular needs. I've sketched an outline of a fairly broad spectrum of users from Eminem (low organization) to Luhmann (high organization). If putting in the level of work Luhmann did upfront isn't working for you, why follow his exact recipe?

Nabokov is an outlier in the larger group. Does he really need a heavily linked system to write what is linear fiction? Did he even need to index his cards at all? Separate boxes per book worked well enough for him, much the way they do for both Robert Greene and Ryan Halliday who follow some of this pattern as well. Nabokov generally did both research on characters and laid out the outline of his plot. Following this he'd dictate drafts to his wife Vera from the cards and edit from there. In '58 Carl Mydans got photos of some of this process. (See: https://www.thoughtco.com/thmb/tlFRyEZcBnGmBDStKWdpR1cXt0Q=/750x0/filters:no_upscale():max_bytes(150000):strip_icc():format(webp)/the-nabakovs-at-work-96793854-468f6ab40e914e45abdd1542fa370872.jpg ) In The Original of Laura, you're seeing the rawest, earliest outline of Nabokov's process. He hasn't gotten to the dictation/typescript level yet. As a result, it's surely not going to make much sense, and assuredly the reason he didn't want it published. Again, you have to either discover or imagine the broader process each person used. If I gave you a similar tranch of Luhmann's cards without any additional context, would they mean much to you? Could you turn them into something concrete without a lot of additional work? Why would you expect the same from these excerpts from Nabokov? This doesn't mean that they don't provide the interested party a window into his work and methods.

Others broadly indexed their ideas as they filed them, a fact which creates the exact links you seem to indicate didn't exist. John Locke's method of indexing was incredibly widespread to the point that at the end of the 18th century, John Bell (1745–1831), an English publisher, mass produced books with the title Bell’s Common-Place Book, Formed generally upon the Principles Recommended and Practised by Mr Locke. The notebooks commonly included 550 pages, of which eight pages included instructions on John Locke's indexing method. There are many extant copies of these including one used by Erasmus Darwin, which was bequeathed to Charles Darwin.

OP certainly posed a fair question (and incidentally very similar to one I posed a few years back), but the answer was broadly sketched, so anyone interested in a full answer is going to need to delve a lot further into these examples to be able to get the full picture. I was providing a list of some additional evidence to show there's a lot more depth out there than is generally being talked about. There are hundreds of one page blog posts about Luhmann's method in the last five plus years, but do any of them really encompass what he was doing? Ahrens wrote a whole book about it, but obviously people are still full of questions about the process. I gave less than a few sentences about a couple dozen well-known people as examples, so your expectations may be a little on the high side. It's pretty easy to find my own digital notes for those who want to skip some of the work, but if you want more, you're going to need to do some of your own reading and research. My response was generally to say that, yes, there's some there, there, but as almost everyone here for the last several years can tell you, it's going to require some work and lots of practice on your part to get somewhere with it. There isn't a royal road, but the peasant's path will assuredly get you where you want to go.

Pierre Anton Grillet, in the preface to Abstract Algebra, 2nd Edition (Springer, 2007) said, "Algebra is like French Pastry: wonderful, but cannot be learned without putting one’s hands to the dough." Zettelkasten methods are much the same. 🗃️🥐

reply to u/ArousedByApostasy at https://old.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/1g8diq4/any_books_about_how_someone_used_zettelkasten_to/

If you're suffering from the delusion (and many do) that Zettelkasten is only about Luhmann and his own writing and 4-5 recent books on the topic, you're only lacking creativity and some research skills. Seemingly Luhmann has lots of good PR, particularly since 2013, but this doesn't mitigate the fact that huge swaths of the late 1800s to the late 1900s are chock-a-block full of books produced by these methods. Loads of examples exist under other names prior to that including florilegia, commonplace books, the card system, card indexes, etc.

Your proximal issue is that the scaffolding used to write all these books is generally invisible because authors rarely, if ever, talk about their methods and as a result, they're hard to "see". This doesn't mean that they don't exist.

I've got a list of about 50+ books about the topic of zettelkasten or incredibly closely related methods dating back to 1548 if you want to peruse some: https://www.zotero.org/groups/4676190/tools_for_thought/collections/V9RPUCXJ/tags/note%20taking%20manuals/items/F8WSEABT/item-list

There are a variety of examples of people's note collections that you can see in various media and compare to their published output. I've collected several dozens of examples, many of which you can find here: https://boffosocko.com/research/zettelkasten-commonplace-books-and-note-taking-collection/

Interesting examples to get you started:

• Vladimir Nabokov's estate published copies of his index cards for the novel The Original of Laura which you can purchase and read in its index card format. You can find a copy of his index card diary as Insomniac Dreams from Princeton University Press: https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9780691196909/insomniac-dreams
• S.D. Goitein - researchers on the Cairo Geniza still use his note collection to produce new scholarship; though he had 1/3 the number of note cards compared to Luhmann, his academic writing output was 3 times larger. If you dig around you can find a .pdf copy of his collection of almost 30,000 notes and compare it to his written work.
• There's a digitized collection of W. Ross Ashby's notes (in notebook and index card format) which you can use to cross reference his written books and articles. https://ashby.info/
• Wittgenstein had a well-known note collection which underpinned his works (as well as posthumous works). See: Wittgenstein, Ludwig. Zettel. Edited by Gertrude Elizabeth Margaret Anscombe and Georg Henrik von Wright. Translated by Gertrude Elizabeth Margaret Anscombe. Second California Paperback Printing. 1967. Reprint, Berkeley and Los Angeles, California: University of California Press, 2007.
• Roland Barthes had a significant collection from which he both taught and wrote; His notes following his mother's death can be read in the book Morning Diary which were published as index card-based notes.
• The Marbach exhibition in 2013 explored six well-known zettelkasten (including Luhmann's): Gfrereis, Heike, and Ellen Strittmatter. Zettelkästen: Maschinen der Phantasie. 1st edition. Marbach am Neckar: Deutsche Schillerges, 2013. https://www.amazon.de/-/en/Heike-Gfrereis/dp/3937384855/.
• Philosopher John Locke wrote a famous treatise on indexing commonplace books which underlay his own commonplacing and writing work: Locke, John, 1632-1704. A New Method of Making Common-Place-Books. 1685. Reprint, London, 1706. https://archive.org/details/gu_newmethodmaki00lock/mode/2up.
• Historian Jacques Barzun, a professor, dean and later provost at Columbia, not only wrote dozens of scholarly books, articles, and essays out of his own note collection, but also wrote a book about some of the process in a book which has over half a dozen editions: Barzun, Jacques, and Henry F. Graff. The Modern Researcher. New York, Harcourt, Brace, 1957. http://archive.org/details/modernreseracher0000unse. In his private life, he also kept a separate shared zettelkasten documenting the detective fiction which he read and was a fan. From this he produced A Catalogue of Crime: Being a Reader's Guide to the Literature of Mystery, Detection, and Related Genres (with Wendell Hertig Taylor). 1971. Revised edition, Harper & Row, 1989: ISBN 0-06-015796-8.
• Erasmus, Agricola, and Melanchthon all wrote treatises which included a variation of the note taking methods which were widely taught in the late 1500s at universities and other schools.
• The Jonathan Edwards Center at Yale has a digitized version of his note collection called the Miscellanies that you can use to cross reference his written works.
• A recent example I've come across but haven't mentioned to others until now is that of Barrett Wendell, a professor at Harvard in the late 1800s, taught composition using a zettelkasten or card system method.
• Director David Lynch used a card index method for writing and directing his movies based on the method taught to him by Frank Daniel, a dean at the American Film Institute.
• Mortimer J. Adler et al. created a massive group zettelkasten of western literature from which they wrote volumes 2 and 3 (aka The Syntopicon) of the Great Books of the Western World. See: https://forum.zettelkasten.de/discussion/2623/mortimer-j-adlers-syntopicon-a-topically-arranged-collaborative-slipbox
• Before he died, historian Victor Margolin made a YouTube video of how he wrote the massive two volume World History of Design which included a zettelkasten workflow: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kxyy0THLfuI
• Martin Luther King, Jr. kept a zettelkasten which is still extant and might allow you to reference his notes to his written words.
• The Brothers Grimm used a zettelkasten method (though theirs was slips nailed to a wall) to create The Deutsches Wörterbuch (The German Dictionary that preceeded the Oxford Dictionary). The DWB was begun in 1838 by Jacob Grimm and Wilhelm Grimm who worked on it through the letter F prior to their deaths. The dictionary project was ended in 1961 after 123 years of work which resulted in 16 volumes. A further 17th source volume was released in 1971.
• Here's an interesting video of Ryan Holliday's method condensed over time: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dU7efgGEOgk
• Because Halloween is around the corner, I'll even give you a published example of death by zettelkasten described by Nobel Prize winner Anatole France in one of his books: https://boffosocko.com/2022/10/24/death-by-zettelkasten/

If you dig in a bit you can find and see the processes of others like Anne Lamott, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, Bob Hope, Michael Ende, Twyla Tharp, Kate Grenville, Marcel Mauss, Claude Lévi-Strauss, Phyllis Diller, Carl Linnaeus, Beatrice Webb, Isaac Newton, Harold Innis, Joan Rivers, Umberto Eco, Georg Christoph Lichtenberg, Raymond, Llull, George Carlin, and Eminem who all did variations of this for themselves for a variety of output types.

These barely scratch the surface of even Western intellectual history much less other cultures which have broadly similar methods (including oral cultures). If you do a bit of research into any major intellectual, you're likely to uncover a similar underlying method of work.

While there are some who lionize Luhmann, he didn't invent or even perfect these methods, but is just a drop of water in a vast sea of intellectual history.

And how did I write this short essay response? How do I have all these examples to hand? I had your same question years ago and read and researched my way into an answer. I have both paper and digital zettelkasten from which to query and write. I don't count my individual paper slips of which there are over 15,000 now, but my digital repository is easily over 20,000 (though only 19K+ are public).

I hope you manage to figure out some version of the system for yourself and manage to create something interesting and unique out of it. It's not a fluke and it's not "just a method for writing material about zettelkasten itself".

Quite sad that his handwriting is so bad... I would love to see what stuff he wrote to get inspired for my own process...

His writing is even harder to read than Niklas Luhmann's in some instances.

Books are about large blocks of uninterrupted time...

( ~13:00)

Perhaps. I don't think so. With a Zettelkasten I believe you can write without 4-hour deep work blocks... However, maybe he is right... I haven't really written yet so I can't be certain.

"The Stoic Practice is a Dialogue With The Self" -- Ryan Holiday (~7:58)

I think this is also true for Zettelkasten. You write for yourself. Only you need to understand your notes, nobody else.

"You get surprised even by your own notes."

Yes, that's exactly what Niklas Luhmann mentioned as the prerequisite for effective communication (with a Zettelkasten).

"You can see I have quite a lot notes I have to make."

This is a difference in mentality between Ryan Holiday and me (as well as Muhammed Ali Kilic)

@M.AKilic50

Our mentality (inspired by GTD and other standard productivity stuff, mostly Flow) is to avoid creating homework.

You don't HAVE to make notes on something. You select what you deem valuable and are interested in working with at the moment.

Because of the marginal gains effect I wrote about earlier, it doesn't matter if you don't make a lot of notes. Besides, you can always return later--especially with a proper bib card and potentially a custom index/ToC for a book.

A Zettelkasten is the lazy man's path to excellence.

(this is an ironic statement of mine because a Zettelkasten asks a lot of work over time. However, it doesn't have to be on a day to day basis. Plus you work only on what you want, hence it doesn't require that much discipline.)

"If you do one or two positive contributions a day, it adds up." - Ryan Holiday

Perhaps this is the essence of both Zettelkasten and Commonplace books; Marginal Gains.

Exponentional Increase over time. Upon first glance, it seems linear (1+1 = 2)... However, the formula is different because, at least in Zettelkasten, a new note means N new possible connections as this new note can virtually be connected to all other notes. In a Zettelkasten this is explicit, in a commonplace book connections are implicit.

Engaging in a Zettelkasten/Commonplace book in this way is equal to inherent spaced repetition and recall perhaps?

Especially if you allow some time of rumination... Read book, wait a few days to a few weeks before processing it. The book's contents remain in the back of your mind.

Then when processing you get engaged with the substance again and therefore interrupt the ebbinghaus curve.

Perhaps I need to argue more with the authors and the content, as Adler & van Doren also recommend.

This might be a limitation in (the way I do) Zettelkasten. Because I am not writing in the margins and not engage in "tearing up" the book, I am less inclined to argue against/with the work.

Maybe I need to do this more using bib-card. Further thought on implementation necessary...

Perhaps a different reason is that I like to get through most books quickly rather than slowly. Sometimes I do the arguing afterward, within my ZK.

I need to reflect on this at some point (in the near future) and optimize my processes.

Watching this now, I am reminded that I really want to read more. To become erudite.

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.

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

An alternate stating of the process: 1. capture<br /> 2. refine<br /> 3. connect<br /> 4. search

cross-reference earlier process: https://hypothes.is/a/HgcILIvyEe-OfdOArKZxGg

Overview of Bob Doto's suggested process:<br /> 1. having and capturing thoughts<br /> 2. refining thoughts into clear ideas that can be repurposed<br /> 3. connecting ideas across topics<br /> 4. developing connections and making them accessible<br /> 5. transforming notes into writing for readers 6. re-integrating writing back into the system (he lumped this in with 5, but I've broken it out)

How do these steps relate to those of others?

Eg: Miles1905: collect, select, arrange, dictate/write (and broadly composition)

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

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 suggests using a Card-Tray (in 1899) with various compartments and potentially an open top rather than some of the individual trays or card index boxes which may have been more ubiquitous

This shows a slight difference at the time in how an individual would use one of these in writing versus how a business might use them in drawers of 1, 2, 3 or cabinets with many more.

The image he shows seems more reminiscent of a 5x3" library charging tray than of some of the business filing appliances of the day and the decade following.

very similar to the self-made version at https://hypothes.is/a/DHU_-If6Ee-mGieKOjg8ZQ

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.

An example of a self-made zettelkasten box using (1/2"?) wooden planks to create 4 rows of card storage and a smaller 3/4" slot for accessories.

via post by u/fer_mese at https://reddit.com/r/antinet/comments/t541j2/been_working_on_this_zettlekasten_for_my_thesis/

https://ashby.info/journal/index.html

Note that the URL http://www.rossashby.info/index.html has moved.

https://forum.zettelkasten.de/discussion/1516/zettelkasten-method-and-math-related-sciences

https://www.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/17bqztm/applying_zettelkasten_for_math_heavy_subjects/

https://reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/qir1j6/zettelkasten_examples_from_mathcomputer_science/

https://forum.zettelkasten.de/discussion/2415/zettelkaesten-in-the-fields-of-science-and-history

reply to Signynt at https://discord.com/channels/686053708261228577/979886299785863178/1293207926013427733

Does Carl Linnaeus' incarnation work? Isabelle Charmantier and Staffan Müller-Wille have a number of journal articles on his "invention" and use of index cards in his research and writing work. If you dig around you'll find references to Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz' use of index cards and the Arca Studiorum (Krajewski, MIT, 2011); Computer scientist Gerald Weinberg wrote Gerald M. Weinberg on Writing: The Fieldstone Method. New York, N.Y: Dorset House, 2005, which might appeal; you'll also find examples in physicist Mario Bunge, and, although he had a mixed practice of notebooks and index cards, W. Ross Ashby's collection of notes on complexity can be found at https://ashby.info/. Hundreds of other scientists and mathematicians had practices, though theirs typically fall under the heading of commonplace books (Erasmus Darwin, Charles Darwin, et al.) or as in the case of Isaac Newton and others the heading of "waste books". While looking at others' examples or reading about it may feel like it's going to get you somewhere (better?), having some blind faith and proceeding with your own practice is really the better way to go. Others have certainly done it. Generally it's far rarer for mathematicians, engineers, or scientists to write about their note making/methods so you're unlikely to find direct treatises the way you would for historians, sociologists, anthropologists, humanists, etc.

syndication link: https://discord.com/channels/686053708261228577/979886299785863178/1293663556197417082

Learning and Intellectualism can both be found in the act of comparison, or more broadly, analysis. One must do this perpetually when reading to dissect and gain most (long-term) (syntopical) value out of it.

Elaborative Encoding/Rehearsal; highly useful. Networked thought. See Bloom's and Solo's

Is this a criticism by Luhmann on the conventional notion of syntopical reading in Adlerian terms? Probably without knowing Adler's work.

Because science/truth work (knowledge) is constantly in revision, conventional syntopical reading on a topic of science is without necessary value?

Perhaps unless stored and expanded upon in a ZK?

Further thought is required to disseminate this paragraph.

One must read analytically (cf Adler & van Doren) in order to grasp the meaning behind text. Or perhaps syntopically by default if one performs the Zettelkasten method.

Conventional Syntopical Reading is "immediate" and project-based, at least in Adlerian terms, that is.

However, when doing Zettelkasten work, one is perpetually reading syntopically and therefore I would call it Delayed Syntopical Reading

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?

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.

This is reminiscent of the idea that indigenous peoples regularly met at annual feasts to not only celebrate, but to review over their memory palaces and perform their rituals as a means of reviewing and strengthening their memories and ideas.

Appropriate context for this: https://www.jeremycherfas.net/blog/a-garden-with-a-water-feature

iylock mentions using a PVC Junction Box (Door Latch type) for their card index box. A solid benefit here is that it ought to be waterproof.

via https://forum.zettelkasten.de/discussion/comment/21420/#Comment_21420

A more solid definition of the form and structure of such a system is required here. I'm not sure what of these first two sentences they're referencing Helbig for here?

I'm already highly suspicious of this paper now.

Malashenko, Gevorg T., Mikhail E. Kosov, Svetlana V. Frumina, Olga A. Grishina, Roman A. Alandarov, Vadim V. Ponkratov, Tatyana A. Bloshenko, Lola D. Sanginova, Svetlana S. Dzusova, and Munther F. Hasan. “A Digital Model of Full-Cycle Training Based on the Zettelkasten and Interval Repetition System.” Emerging Science Journal 7, no. 0 (March 18, 2023): 1–15. https://doi.org/10.28991/ESJ-2023-SIED2-01.

https://www.ebay.com/b/barnett-jaffe-slide-case/bn_7024798534

Barnett & Jaffe made tweed cases in the mid-century for carrying around several drawers of 35mm slides.

These could potentially be repurposed as portable zettelkasten.

The additional "hidden context" is that the rachet/gear seen in many of these diagrams is usually attached to a radial spring (or some other device) which, as it is wound, stores energy which is later used by the bigger device in which the rachet and pawl are encased. Examples include the stem of watches, which when wound, store energy which the watch later uses to run as it counts the seconds. Another example is the mainspring of a typewriter which is attached to a ratchet/pawl set up; when you push the carriage to the right, the spring gets wound up and stores energy which is slowly expended by the escapement a space or a letter at a time as you type. In the zettelkasten analogy, the box and numbered cards placed in it act as the pawl (the wedge that prevents backward movement), as you add more and more information, you're storing/building up "potential energy" in small bits. This "stored energy" can be spent at a later time by allowing you to more easily write an article, paper, book, etc. In some sense, the zettelkasten (as most tools do) allows you a "mechanical advantage" in the writing process over trying to remember everything you've ever read and then relying on your ability to spit it all back out in a well-ordered manner.

reply to Muhammed Ali at https://discord.com/channels/992400632390615070/992400632776507447/1286577013439594497

continuation of https://hypothes.is/a/GTPIPnYiEe-GTUu4YcdeAQ

Zettelkasten is a method for creating "slow productivity" against a sea of information overload

Some of the framing goes back to using the card index as a means of overcoming the eternal problem of "information overload" [see A. Blair, Yale University Press, 2010]. I ran into an example the other day in David Blight's DeVane Lectures at Yale in which he simultaneously shrugged at the problem while talking about (perhaps unknown to him) the actual remedy: https://boffosocko.com/2024/09/16/paul-conkins-zettelkasten-advice/

It's also seen in Luhmann claiming he only worked on things he found easy/fun. The secret is that while you're doing this, your zettelkasten is functioning as a pawl against the ratchet of ideas so that as you proceed, you don't lose your place in your train of thought (folgezettel) even if it's months since you thought of something last. This allows you to always be building something of interest to you even (especially) if the pace is slow and you don't know where you're going as you proceed. It's definitely a form of advanced productivity, but not in the sort of "give-me-results-right-now" way that most have come to expect in a post-Industrial Revolution world. This distinction is what is usually lost on those coming from a productivity first perspective and causes friction because it's not the sort of productivity they've come to expect.

In reply to writingslowly and Bob Doto at https://discord.com/channels/992400632390615070/992400632776507447/1285175583877103749<br /> Conversation/context not for direct attribution

Zettelkasten - Death by Category by [[Al Persohn]]

bridging cards?!? Do we really need more verbiage like this in this space? Relationship to hub notes or "Maps of Content".

Perhaps both learning and research can often be used in the same process... Learning first to inform what is the most vital to include in the Zettelkasten for research synthesis.

Maybe what to use when, in my personal case, should not be objective but rather subjective based on what I like and prefer? This requires further thought. Complex matter.

Paul Conkin taught at University of Wisconsin-Madison from 1967-1979 after which he moved to Vanderbilt.

David Blight received his Master of Arts degree in American history from Michigan State in 1976 and a Doctor of Philosophy degree in the discipline from the University of Wisconsin–Madison in 1985.

Presuming a '76-'85 range for his Ph.D., the two would have overlapped at Wisconsin-Madison from '76-'79.

crossreference: https://youtu.be/A-8NnmWPNJk?si=xwHLBxLOR9-WBXdK&t=1079 and Conkin's notes

So apparently German writer Michael Ende kept a zettelkasten for his writing output. It seems to be a bit more on the unpublished anthology side, but indicates that it has observations and aphorisms as well.

Why have I not seen/heard about this example before?

Three apps that made me more productive this year by [[Casey Newton]]

Casey Newton is using a Zettelkasten note taking approach based on zettelkasten.de to cover his beat

https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/side-profile-of-traditional-wooden-library-card-royalty-free-image/1374216041?searchscope=image%2Cfilm

Another fun photo of "linked" strings wrapped around a library card catalog representing the links between ideas within a paper database.

https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/traditional-wooden-library-card-catalog-cabinet-royalty-free-image/1379469553?searchscope=image%2Cfilm

fun photo of "linked" strings wrapped around a library card catalog representing the links between ideas within a paper database.

reply to u/atomicnotes at https://old.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/1fa0240/early_1900s_3_x_5_inch_card_index_filing_cabinet/

This is an excellent question. I strongly suspect you won't find a booklet or book from Macey after 1906 that does this, though there may have been something before that.

You'll notice that on page 9, the 1906 Macy Catalog takes what I consider to be a pot shot at their Shaw-Walker competition in the section "Not a kindergarten". Shaw-Walker was selling not just furniture, but a more specific system, as well as a magazine. Since there's something to be learned for current knowledge managers and zettel-casters in the historical experience of these companies and the systems and methods they were selling, I'll quote that section here (substitute references to enterprise and business for yourself):

Not a Kindergarten

Every successful enterprise knows its own requirements best, and develops the best system for its own purpose. We manufacture business machinery. Our appliances and supplies are boiled down to a few parts, and simple forms, and will accommodate any system in any business. The office boy can understand and use them. If we undertook to teach the whole world how to run its business, we would have to saddle the cost on those who buy for what we tried to teach those who do not.

System in business is desirable, but no system can make a business successful, where the management is deficient. So called ‘Systems’ often result in useless expense and disappointment. We retain what experience proves useful and practical; so far as possible, eliminating all complicated and useless features. This explains how we can employ the best workmanship and material, combined with pleasing designs, and sell our goods with profit at lower prices than the inferior articles offered by others.

There may have been some booklets at some point, but I've not run across them for any of the major manufacturers of the time. (I've only loosely searched this area.) Some of the general principles were covered in various articles in System Magazine which was published by Shaw-Walker, a filing cabinet manufacturer, in the early century. System Magazine was sold to McGraw-Hill which renamed it Business Week, but it is now better known as Bloomberg Business Week. In the December 1906 issue of System, W. K. Kellogg, the President of the Toasted Corn Flake Company, is quoted touting the invaluable nature of the Shaw-Walker filing system at a time when his company was using 640 drawers of their system.

To some extent the smaller discrete "system" was really a part of a broader range of information and knowledge of business and competition. This can be seen in the fact that System Magazine still exists, just under an alternate name, along with a much broader area of business schools and business systems. We've just "forgotten" (or take for granted) the art of the smaller systems and processes which seemed new in the late 1800s and early 1900s.

Other companies had "systems" they sold or taught, much like Tiago Forte teaches his "Second Brain" method or Nick Milo teaches "Linking Your Thinking". However, most of them were really in the business of selling goods: furniture, filing cabinets, desks, index cards, card dividers, etc. and this was where the real money was to be found at the time.

A similar example in the space is the Memindex System booklet that came with their box and index cards. The broad principles of the system can be described in a few paragraphs so that the average person can read it and modify it to their particular needs or use case. The company never felt the need to write an entire book along the lines of David Allen's Getting Things Done or Ryder Carroll's Bullet Journal Method. Allen and Carroll are selling systems by way of books or classes. Admittedly, Carroll does have custom printed notebooks for using his methods, but I suspect these are a tiny fraction of the overall notebook sales for those who use his method.

Here's evidence of a correspondence course from the Library Bureau some time after 1927, which was when they'd been purchased by Remington Rand: https://www.ebay.com/itm/335534180049 . Library Bureau had an easier time as their system was standardized for libraries, though they did have efforts to cater to business concerns the way Shaw-Walker, The Macey Company, Globe-Wernicke and others certainly did.

I think the best examples in broader book form from that time period are Kaiser's two books which still stand up pretty well today for those creating knowledge management systems, zettelkasten, commonplace books, getting things done/productivity systems, second brains, etc.

Kaiser, J. Card System at the Office. The Card System Series 1. London: Vacher and Sons, 1908. http://archive.org/details/cardsystematoffi00kaisrich.

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

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

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

https://www.literatureandlatte.com/scapple/overview

The daily cards and journal entries are obviously indexed by chronological date and then within tabbed sections by month and year.

The rest of the other cards with notes are given individual (decimal) numbers and and then are put into numerical order. These numbered cards are then indexed by putting related subject/topic/category words from them onto a separate index card which cross references either a dated card or the numbered card to which it corresponds. These index cards with topical words/phrases are then filed alphabetically into a tabbed alphabetical section (A-Z).

As an example with the card in this post, if I wanted to remember all the books I buy from Octavia's Bookshelf, then I'd create a card titled "Octavia's Bookshelf" and list the title along with the date 2024-08-13 and file it alphabetically within the "O" tab section of the index. Obviously this might be more useful if I had more extensive notes about the book or its purchase on the 2024-08-13 card. I did create a short journal card entry about the bookstore on 08-13 because it was the first time I visited the bookstore in it's new location and decor, so there are some scant notes about my impressions of that which are cross-indexed to that Octavia's Bookshelf card. Thus my Octavia's Bookshelf card has an entry with "The Book Title, 2024-08-13 (J)(R)" where the '(J)' indicates there's a separate journal entry for that day and the '(R)' indicates there's also a receipt filed next to that day's card.

I also created an "Author Card" with the author of the book's name, the title, publication date, etc. I included the purchase date and the reason why I was interested in the book. I'll use that same card to write notes on that particular book as I read it. These author cards are filed in a separate A-Z tabbed 'Bibliography' section for easily finding them as well. (I suppose I could just put them into the primary A-Z index, but I prefer having all the authors/books (I have thousands) in the same section.)

I also have a rolodex section of people filed alphabetically, so I can easily look up Steve and Sonia separately and see what I might have gotten them on prior birthdays as well as notes about potential future gift ideas. I had tickler cards with their names on them filed in early August and now that they're in my to do list, I've moved those cards to August 2025, ready for next year's reminder. Compared to a typical Future Log I don't do nearly as much writing and rewriting when migrating. I just migrate a card forward until it's done or I don't need it anymore.

If you've used a library card index before, the general idea is roughly the same, you're just cross-indexing more than books by title, author and subject. You can index by day, idea, project, or any other thing you like. My card index cabinet is really just a large personal database made out of paper and metal.

The secret isn't to index everything—just the things you either want to remember or know you'll want to look up later and use/re-use.

For true deep processing and learning, intellectualism, one must think beyond the single source they are consuming and think about everything they know. Although keep in mind selective attention for true learning and thinking.

This process is habitualized by means of Zettelkasten and further aided in tool like hypothes.is

When switching, do this only at the end of a chapter, not in media res (in the middle of action).

Also summarize the last thing that happened/got explained for an easy refresher the next time you get back.

Bib-Card? Potentially Marginaelia? Feeling more like a dedicated notebook for this. Need to work out.

Vashik does this summary of a chapter on index cards... Useful to do in a Zettelkasten, or too much effort?

Reply to Kathleen Spracklen's video

Useful line of thought about the use of Folgezettel in Zettelkasten.

KS keeps a bibliography section for her own works... Interesting, very useful.

Kathleen Spracklen keeps an index specific to the bibliography, detailing all the works in the bib-box. This is quite useful, and an index card is not too big to need alphabetical sorting, which would be cumbersome on paper.

I will adopt this practice most likely.

The additional benefit is that you can see which bib-card IDs you have already used, preventing duplicate entries.

The people box is used to: - Keep collections of authors and their works located within the bib-box - Keep cards on other people than sources in the book Such as friends and contacts.

Useful to see at a glance how many sources you have read from an author and what the author writes a lot about.

Also useful to find the bib-card codes for any particular work by an author.

Doing commonplace books using index cards (Zettelkasten) also bypasses a page limit, no need to think about amount of pages to leave free.

Of course if you write the quotes/sayings in your Zettelkasten you can have both the treasury & manuscript style commonplace book at the same time. For treasury you just look through the sayings, but for manuscripting, you reference the notes and then write about it. Ideal situation.

Useful tip to collect wise sayings; mark them in the book and write "Proverb" next to them, or a symbol...

Can also then write the page number on your bib card, or perhaps a dedicated index card to proverbs per book.

Those different types of commonplace books can be integrated into a notebox as well instead of a notebook... Give them all a unique ID and integrate them into a ZK.

Especially the wise sayings "Pocket Proverbs" one this would be cool.

(~1:20)

Apparently Markus Krajewski is the one with "perhaps the most intimate knowledge of the Zettelkasten process alive"...

Why?

( ~8:00 )

This explanation of why to read books in a certain order in dependency of each other is analogous to why a Zettelkasten (in Luhmannian sense) cannot be used collaboratively.

In order for someone else to understand your notes (not meant to be published), they would have to understand both the source text you are referencing and the implicit references you make. Things you understand instinctively and do not need to write down.

Because others do not have your experiences and worldview, it is more difficult for them, perhaps impossible, to completely comprehend your Zettels, your notes.

( ~11:00 )

Another misconception, for sure because of Ahrens, namely that a Zettel should be able to stand on its own, Atomic thought... Explain without context.

This is not what Luhmann did at all.

In fact, it is the COMPLETE OPPOSITE.

Luhmann quite literally said that the value of a note is ONLY with regards to the other notes in the system. He wrote in thought sequences, and more often than not, a single note was not intelligible without the context of the other notes.

PLEASE PEOPLE, LEARN FROM MULTIPLE PRIMARY SOURCES, NOT JUST AHRENS :(

( ~4:40)

Where the peep did he get the idea of writing dates as part of the alphanumeric ID? Ahrens?

It's a bad habit, it has nearly no value and when writing a lot of cards in a day this quickly becomes cumbersome.

Stick to the normal alphanumeric IDs.

( ~ 2:57)

False overview of how a ZK would look visually. A ZK is more interlinked, and at the same time more "linear". It's trains of thought.

This is closer to the Bubblegraphboiz

I have always misinterpreted this idea.

I thought it referred to the rumination of ideas... Don't put notes you just made in it (from any source, like reading a book), instead let it ruminate.

I was wrong. I realized this when chatting with Gemini Advanced.

But either way, the DeepL translation of this paragraph: "Slip box as a clarification pit - don't just put clarified notes in it. Postponing reviewing and deciding - also a question of speed."

It is moreso related to the idea of fleeting notes and unprocessed ideas. Have to think a bit more about what Luhmann meant. Maybe @chrisaldrich knows something.

[[Chris Aldrich]] is enthousiast over [[A System for Writing by Bob Doto]] bij publicatie want hij las een preprint versie.

Quick glance at Amazon shows Doto adds in illustrations of his processes, might be interesting.

https://www.jonmsterling.com/index.xml

ᔥRichard in A forest of evergreen notes at 2024-06-02<br /> (accessed:: 2024-06-07 11:14:53)

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...)

https://www.printables.com/model/919349-a6-dividers-with-labelled-index-tabs

via r/antinet

Theatres of Memory (1994) sounds like it's taking lots of examples from a zettelkasten and tying them together.

It's also interesting to note that he published several books posthumously. Was this accomplished in part due to his zettelkasten notes the way others like Ludwig Wittgenstein?

Historian Raphael Samuel used a zettelkasten-like note taking method which he adopted from Beatrice and Sidney Webb.

Comment by chrisaldrich: I personally identify with this since I'm porting my annotations and thoughts to a notebook as part of a process for active thinking, revision, writing, and eventual publication.

What Obsidian gurus get wrong about Zettelkasten by [[Tony Ramella]]

generally meh... nothing I don't already know

I do like his focus on simplicity.

https://site.xavier.edu/polt/typewriters/nabokov.jpeg via https://site.xavier.edu/polt/typewriters/typers.html

This photo, similar to others in the Carl Mydans series for LIFE Magazine is surely from his September 1958 photo series, though I couldn't find an original from the LIFE archive.

Nabokov, reading off of index cards in his zettelkasten, dictates to his wife Vera who is typing on what appears to be a 1949 or 1950 Henry Dreyfuss Royal Quiet De Luxe typewriter.

Notice metal strip on the back of the typewriter with small rectangular blocks. This is the Royal's tabulator set up which distinguishes the Quiet De Luxe model from the Arrow model.

The body styling of this typewriter changed in 1950 from Dreyfuss' original 1948 design. Because it's light gray it has to be from '49 or '50 as the '48 original was a black body with dark gray highlights and didn't have chrome across the front as this one does in an alternate angle.

I've always wondered if Luhmann's jokerzettel was inspired by Claude Shannon's Ultimate Machine: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G5rJJgt_5mg

Luhmann couldn't have worked in systems theory and information for so long without being intimately familiar with Shannon's work. There's direct evidence that he read at least his seminal work: https://niklas-luhmann-archiv.de/bestand/literatur/item/shannon_weaver_1949_communication

While we're on about the "Cargo Cult of Zettelkasten" and Claude Shannon, his short essay "The Bandwagon" is an infamous article he wrote about the cargo cult of information theory applications in 1956.

Shannon, Claude Elwood. “The Bandwagon.” IEEE Transactions on Information Theory 2, no. 1 (March 1956): 3. https://doi.org/10.1109/TIT.1956.1056774. .pdf copy at https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?arnumber=1056774

Finally, too many Zettelkasten adherents of the Luhmann-artig sort seem to want to forget that Luhmann's system was far from new and that thousands upon thousands had used similar systems for several hundreds of years before him. Many thousands of them also wrote huge amounts of material, many of them producing work far more consequential than anything Luhman wrote.

reply to u/taurusnoises and u/Filion_Alexandrian at I've always wondered if Luhmann's jokerzettel was inspired by Claude Shannon's Ultimate Machine: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G5rJJgt_5mg

Luhmann couldn't have worked in systems theory and information for so long without being intimately familiar with Shannon's work. There's direct evidence that he read at least his seminal work: https://niklas-luhmann-archiv.de/bestand/literatur/item/shannon_weaver_1949_communication

While we're on about the "Cargo Cult of Zettelkasten" and Claude Shannon, his short essay "The Bandwagon" is an infamous article he wrote about the cargo cult of information theory applications in 1956.

Shannon, Claude Elwood. “The Bandwagon.” IEEE Transactions on Information Theory 2, no. 1 (March 1956): 3. https://doi.org/10.1109/TIT.1956.1056774. .pdf copy at https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?arnumber=1056774

Finally, too many Zettelkasten adherents of the Luhmann-artig sort seem to want to forget that Luhmann's system was far from new and that thousands upon thousands had used similar systems for several hundreds of years before him. Many thousands of them also wrote huge amounts of material, many of them producing work far more consequential than anything Luhman wrote.

I only have a few very specific memes indexed in my box: https://boffosocko.com/tag/zettelkasten-memes/ and a few more at https://hypothes.is/users/chrisaldrich?q=zettelkasten+meme

Historically, Aby Warburg had a large image-based zettelkasten for his work on art which predated Richard Dawkins' conception of meme, but I think qualifies. See: https://boffosocko.com/tag/aby-warburg/ or his Bilderatlas Mnemosyne project: https://warburg.sas.ac.uk/archive/bilderatlas-mnemosyne

It's digital in nature, but Shawn Gilmore has a large collection of images of string walls, Anacapa charts, walls and floors littered with paperwork by obsessives, etc. for his cultural research. It also includes some popular memes. https://www.vaultofculture.com/nst

replyy to u/a2jc4life at https://www.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/1ddhn9n/memes/

Let's turn your question around: What exactly are you hoping to get out of it for yourself? Do you have specific goals for your own use?

You may like the idea of having and using a hammer, but if you don't have a project that requires a hammer, then owning and trying to hammer on random things in an unfocused way is probably not the right tool for your needs.

reply to u/arealnamestakenreal at https://www.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/1dko10r/success_histories_4_years_into_zettelkasten_and/

A forest of evergreen notes by Richard

See also comments at cross-posting at https://www.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/1d69inw/a_forest_of_evergreen_notes/

@Andy

Perhaps Wikipedia's underlying zettelkasten nature is hiding in the more narrative nature of the ultimate pages, but it's definitely there. The "standard" web user interface view of Wikipedia pages makes it less obvious that the added pieces are atomic in nature, and that Wikipedia in fact is a group zettelkasten being built in the public/commons. However, if you've customized your own specific view of Wikipedia; are using an Atom Subscription (and yes, it's actually called this!); watching recent changes; or are using the history functionality (example: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Zettelkasten&action=history), then you're getting closer to the sorts of views of atomic additions I was speaking of. Some of this is also the reason that there is a checkbox for "minor edits" to take account of typos and minutiae which are sub-atomic and filters out or cleans up the stream of the updates one could receive.

Viewed from this perspective, Wikipedia is a distributed zettelkasten of the highest order. Intellectually all this traces back to the original zettelkasten of Konrad Gessner, who uncoincidentally is one of the most famous and prolific encyclopedists in history.

One could easily take small notes made in their own zettelkasten and add them on a 1-1 corresponding basis (including the note, the references, and even a unique identifier chosen and applied by Wikipedia; here's an example with the identifier 1118181304 as a demonstration) to a variety of Wikipedia articles. For certain topics I'm interested in watching, this can be a great boon to my own zettelkasten as I can reverse this process and subscribe to/watch additions at the smallest level and not only excerpt them directly into my zettelkasten, but I can usually locate the original source and excerpt directly from it as a means of verification/fact checking. As a result this zettelkasten being built in the commons on a daily basis can be imminently more useful to me. (Sadly, I don't think that many others are using it the same way or if they are, they're not doing so at the rate/speed/facility that I am.)

A similar example can be seen in the topically arranged group zettelkasten created for The Great Books of the Western World which was lightly edited into the book form of The Syntopicon (volumes 2 and 3 of the 54 book series). One could certainly try to argue that The Syntopicon isn't a zettelkasten because it is in edited book form, but in fact, it's just an easier published and more portable form for me to have a copy of Adler and Company's physical zettelkasten as the end product is a 1-1 version of their card index with some introductory material added for readability and direction. The sad part here is that Adler's zettelkasten has ceased updating in 1952 while Wikipedia continues apace.

For the "fans", one might say Wikipedia is even more closely related to Luhmann's variation of a zettelkasten as the user adding a particular idea doesn't need to add explicit links to other external ideas (though they certainly could), but by placing it on a particular page in a particular paragraph, they're juxtaposing it to a specific location that closely relates it to nearby ideas which already exist in that particular page (train of though/folgezettel).

Certainly Wikipedia has a hypertextual nature as well as a text and document editing capabilities and dozens of other interesting and useful affordances, but at it's core, it's true soul is that of a (digital) zettelkasten.

Reply to @andy at https://forum.zettelkasten.de/discussion/comment/20462/#Comment_20462

Contact Schreyer about existence of archived version of Syntopicon...

the word "dreams" here along with great books and classical education reminds me of Martin Luther King, Jr.'s education on the classics as seen in his zettelkasten.

Surely his cultural up brining along with his religious training and his great books education empowered him to critically eye and change the culture around him.

https://github.com/terrychenzw/obsidian-zettelkasten-navigation

(~6:30)

I think the major point here is that Adler points out our minds, and thus our thinking, changes over time. Therefore, when a book is read at a later point in time, our notes are different.

Perhaps his argument to "think again as to make the thought more current" is antithetical to Luhmann's Zettelkasten, which principles upon continuing previous lines of thought, even decades later.

(future note, about half an hour later)... I think in the Zettelkasten the problem is dealt with adequately, since you actually can make new notes expressing why your thought changes... So in this sense it is even more expanded upon the point that Adler makes even though at first sight it seems the complete opposite.

https://scottscheper.com/vanbillemont/

archive copy: https://web.archive.org/web/20230212131135/https://scottscheper.com/vanbillemont/

I've looked and looked for such a template and printer method to no avail myself. Your best bet here is probably either Avery Multi-use labels (maybe 5418 or 5428 depending on your card tabs) which have templates you can print a sheet at a time, or buying a labeler like the Brother P-touch which has a variety of different colored labels available. A third method is to line up multiple tabbed cards in your typewriter and do 3-4 at a time.

Tabbed cards are significantly more expensive than standard index cards, so if you're all in on this, I'd recommend contacting one of the manufacturers directly and buying in bulk to drive the price down. Alibaba can also be your friend here for a bulk order too. Last year I got a bulk order of 15,000 4x6" index cards for well under $0.005 per card, while the current going rate on Amazon or most office supply stores is $0.02 - $0.03/card.

Let me know if you find someone manufacturing inexpensive tabbed dividers in 1/5, 1/6, 1/7, or even 1/8 cut tabs. I'd love to buy a couple thousand of these in bulk as well.

Knowing the extra work involved in this method, I HIGHLY recommend you try it out by hand for a bit to see if it's something you'll do for more than a few months before going all-in. I've read some of Joseph Voros' work, which I understood to be theoretical only. Did he ever fully implement it himself? Before you try, you might want to read up on others' earlier work like that of Paul Otlet, Mortimer J. Adler, et al. Many here will lionize Luhmann's method, but recall that S. D. Goitein managed to take a 1/3 of the notes that Luhmann did while creating a published output a 1/3 larger than Luhmann all while using a method similar to that of Adler and company which is also very close to the method recommended by almost all academics from Jacques Barzun to Umberto Eco.

Definitely think about what you're hoping to accomplish before going straight down the rabbit hole too far.

If you do go all-in, then buying a big storage box upfront can save you a lot of time and expense, try https://boffosocko.com/2022/12/26/the-ultimate-guide-to-zettelkasten-index-card-storage/ for some ideas. My daily driver now is a 60,000+ card index from Steelcase that I picked up on the used market for $125.

LIFE. “The 102 Great Ideas: Scholars Complete a Monumental Catalog.” January 26, 1948.

Eco, Umberto. How to Write a Thesis. Translated by Caterina Mongiat Farina and Geoff Farina. 1977. Reprint, Cambridge, MA, USA: MIT Press, 2015.

Barzun, Jacques, and Henry F. Graff. The Modern Researcher. 6th ed. Belmont, CA: Thomson/Wadsworth, 2004.

Reply to u/SpacePatrician at https://www.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/1ctsu78/blank_tabbed_4x6_cards/

I will start doing this too, but on the associated bib-card.

I might actually use a system similar to this myself to aid with the dissection of a book in its fullest; to keep track of arguments and points, I am in need of this. Combine the bib-card with the Marginalia to enhance my reading process.

This is the entire point of an Antinet or Zettelkasten, and it is far more advanced/useful for this purpose than just Marginalia. Sorry Adler, but you should have spoken to Luhmann in this regard. Both of you are heroes of mine, but in this round, Luhmann takes the crown.

I need to do this more often myself. Too often, at least when reading physical books, I am doing the thinking in my head instead of writing on my bib-card what I actually think.

I agree on these three points, which I usually do through the bib-card method or annotating on hypothes.is if I read digitally. I keep the physical book mostly clean.

However, I am looking for a way to keep track of points and arguments in works, and I hypothesize that marginalia are the way to do this the best.

Apparently, the real ownership of a book, to make it a part of oneself, you need to mark it up. To make use of marginalia, according to Adler that is.

I personally don't like Marginalia, as I want to keep my books clean, which is why I use Luhmann's bibliography card method, but perhaps Adler can convince me of the opposite. We shall see.

Adler makes a valid point here, books in its own have no worth. Owning a book, or even having "read" it don't serve any purpose. One must read properly in order to this, analytically or syntopically as Adler would call it.

What he is wrong at, in my opinion, that Marginalia are the key to doing this... Yes, they might be helpful, but other techniques, such as Luhmann's bib-card method and learning methodologies like GRINDEmapping could perhaps be even more useful for this purpose.

David Lynch Interview supposedly... source? (asking mrtnj at https://discord.com/channels/992400632390615070/992400632776507447)

Interesting with respect to orality almost more than literacy.

I very much like this idea! I have years of journals that I sometimes peruse, and have lamented that so many "good ideas" live in there, but I never use them, or much see them. This has me wondering if I can incorporate them into my zettelkasten.

That said, I have had some pretty amazing conversations with ChatGPT-4. I've found it to be useful, too, for brainstorming. In one recent case (which I blogged about on my personal blog), the AI helped me through figuring out a structural issue with my zettelkasten.

Rolodex Item #67380 https://www.ebay.com/itm/166733559184

You have to appreciate the way that this zettelkasten is designed to be decorative and include personal family photos almost as a representation of what it directly contains.

Caption: A small rolodex file in grey and black plastic with a picture frame on the front with space for a small photo, in this case either a picture of a young child or a family dog

00:26 Zettelkasten wasn't conceived by Niklas Luhmann; this is a myth (which the person in the video puts forward). Zettelkasten has a long history, and, Niklas Luhmann had a specific taste and version of it.

1:09 He puts the question forward: "why is the material on zettelkasten so divergent?" Well, it has been, historically speaking. There is no one way to keep a zettelkasten. What the person is pointing at, I think, is why are practices so divergent from Niklas Luhmann?

reply to u/Lauchpferd at https://www.reddit.com/r/ObsidianMD/comments/1c6ydzp/how_much_googleable_information_do_you_have_in/

This is the wrong question to be asking. If it were useful, then Google has everything already, so why bother? Let them do all the work for you.

Most note taking methods were evolved to not only aid in sensemaking, but to help people with the exponentially growing "information overload" problem. Sure you can Google many things, but doing so usually provides "facts" and rarely ever actual insight. Thus: discover, collect, index, link, build.

If you had to search every time to use a thing, you'd lose out most of your effort to the scourge of time when you've probably seen it before and could find it internally among your own collection of millions of things (with greater accuracy as well as reliability of the information you've previously vetted) versus Google's quadrillions of things which would all need to be vetted for relevancy, accuracy, and then placement among the thread of ideas you were attempting to potentially build toward. And once you've found it to place where you need it to make an argument or complete an argument, where will you put it? in your notes? And now you've come full circle.

Save yourself the time and only do the job once.

No piece of information is superior to any other. Power lies in having them all on file and then finding the connections. There are always connections; you have only to want to find them. —Umberto Eco