https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5O8pBbcCWME

Harri Potter yn Cymraeg

https://duome.eu/chrisaldrich/progress

Duolingo progress with words and grammar tabs

Johnson's articles on DT were a great inspiration when I fiddled with the app. Surprise/serendipity is a moment he shares with the Zettelkasten Method -- but he focuses too much on finding new stuff in original sources (PDFs, web clippings), so you figured that out all right: his popular approach only makes you suffer from Collector's Fallacy more and more. Christian Tietze 2015-11-16 https://zettelkasten.de/posts/luedeckes-follow-up/#comment-2362116722

Christian Tietze credits Stephen Johnson for inspiration with respect to his DevonThink work and writing but accuses him of popularizing an approach which tends to draw people into the "collector's fallacy". Johnson's more traditional commonplace book approach seems to have worked incredibly well for him and allowed him to have a rather large output of books, articles, and blog posts over the years.

Tietze also suggests that the surprise/serendipity portion of the system works well for both the commonplace book and Luhmann-esque zettelkasten approaches.

Fast, Sascha. “No, Luhmann Was Not About Folgezettel.” Topical Blog. Zettelkasten Method, October 31, 2015. https://zettelkasten.de/posts/luhmann-folgezettel-truth/.

Sascha Fast appreciated Lüdecke's ZKN3 application as one of the best for adapting Luhmann's techniques to a digital space, but felt that it could have gone further in realizing Luhmann's principles.

Some of the tension in this debate is that between the affordances of analog (paper) versus digital information storage and tagging.

Paper lacks easy corpus text search while simultaneously requiring additional manual indexing to make up for it. Paper also doesn't have the discovery value of autocomplete. On the opposite end paper forces one to more regularly review physical associative trails through one's past work while digital allows one to skip over some of this review process.

Do folgezettel in combination with an index help to prevent over-indexing behaviors? Or the scaling problem of categorization in a personal knowledge management space?

Where do subject headings within a zettelkasten dovetail with the index? Where do they help relieve the idea of heavy indexing or tagging? How are the neighborhoods of ideas involved in keeping a sense of closeness while still allowing density of ideas and information?

Having digital search views into small portions of neighborhoods like gxabbo suggested can be a fantastic affordance. see: https://hypothes.is/a/W2vqGLYxEe2qredYNyNu1A

For example, consider an anthropology student who intends to spend a lifetime in the subject and its many sub-areas. If they begin smartly tagging things with anthropology as they start, eventually the value of the category, any tags, or ideas within their index will eventually grow without bound to the point that the meaning or value as a search affordance within their zettelkasten (digital or analog) will be utterly useless. Let's say they fix part of the issue by sub-categorizing pieces into cultural anthropology, biological anthropology, linguistic anthropology, archaeology, etc. This problem is fine while they're in undergraduate or graduate school for a bit, but eventually as they specialize, these areas too will become overwhelming in terms of search and the search results. This problem can continue ad-infinitum for areas and sub areas. So how can one solve it?

Is a living and concatenating index the solution? The index can have anthropology with sub-areas listed with pointers to the beginnings of threads of thought in these areas which will eventually create neighborhoods of these related ideas.

The solution is far easier when the ideas are done top-down after-the-fact like in the Dewey Decimal System when the broad areas are preknown and pre-delineated. But in a Luhmann-esque zettelkasten, things grow from the bottom up and thus present different difficulties from a scaling up perspective.

How do we classify first, second, and third order effects which emerge out of the complexity of a zettelkasten? - Sparse indexing can be a useful long term affordance in the second or third order space. - Combinatorial creativity and ideas of serendipity emerge out of at least the third order. - Using ZK for writing is a second order affordance - Storage is a first order affordance - Memory is a first order affordance (related to storage) - Productivity is a second+ order (because solely spending the time to save and store ideas is a drag at the first order and doesn't show value until retrieval at a later date). - Poor organization can be non-affordance or deterrent which results in a scrap heap - lack of a reason why can be a non-affordance or deterrence as well - cross reference this list and continue on with other pieces and affordances

Sascha Fast felt in 2015 that the idea of Folgezettel within a zettelkasten was unnecessary "clutter".

Did he later change his mind after further discussion?

check this for further arguments: https://hypothes.is/a/xzuclLbBEe2Ov4viA3XOkQ

For the folgezettel debate check the following through 2020-04-15: - https://forum.zettelkasten.de/discussion/928/hierarchical-branched-note-taking-and-the-archive-app-is-topography-important - https://forum.zettelkasten.de/discussion/978/is-there-a-benefit-to-luhmann-ids-vs-date-time-ids - https://forum.zettelkasten.de/discussion/976/the-case-for-a-digital-folgezettel - https://zettelkasten.de/posts/understanding-hierarchy-translating-folgezettel/

Many long time practitioners of note taking methods, particularly in the present environment enamored with shiny object syndrome, will advise to keep one's system as simple as possible. Sascha Fast has specifically said, "I got rid of most of the features after I realized that they are redundant or a (sic) just plain harmful when they slowed me down."

Seems like he's saying he developed the Zettelkasten Method... perhaps his version of the method based on Luhmann's? Commodifying the version "created" by Luhmann?

Credit here for native German speaker writing in English....

source?

https://github.com/pyrochlore/obsidian-tracker

• Examples: https://github.com/pyrochlore/obsidian-tracker/tree/master/examples
• Concepts: https://github.com/pyrochlore/obsidian-tracker/blob/master/docs/Concepts.md

https://ditchthattextbook.com/

https://notes.nicolevanderhoeven.com/Fork+My+Brain

https://publish.obsidian.md/hub/00+-+Start+here

https://tantek.com/2023/051/t1/five-years-ago-w3c-social-web

The Big Payback - First Reparations for Black Americans Stirs Up Debate

How to Report on the Repatriation of Native American Remains at Museums and Universities Near You<br /> by Ash Ngu, ProPublica

see also: https://hypothes.is/a/B8eyALcFEe2f02egqtFwgg

Does Your Local Museum or University Still Have Native American Remains?<br /> by Ash Ngu, Andrea Suozzo (ProPublica)

p143 contains details for calculation of gravity

see: https://hypothes.is/a/Q1UdwLb8Ee2Mtrt-YbDa4g

1478-1518, Notebook of Leonardo da Vinci (''The Codex Arundel''). A collection of papers written in Italian by Leonardo da Vinci (b. 1452, d. 1519), in his characteristic left-handed mirror-writing (reading from right to left), including diagrams, drawings and brief texts, covering a broad range of topics in science and art, as well as personal notes. The core of the notebook is a collection of materials that Leonardo describes as ''a collection without order, drawn from many papers, which I have copied here, hoping to arrange them later each in its place according to the subjects of which they treat'' (f. 1r), a collection he began in the house of Piero di Braccio Martelli in Florence, in 1508. To this notebook has subsequently been added a number of other loose papers containing writing and diagrams produced by Leonardo throughout his career. Decoration: Numerous diagrams.

Marginalia Uncovered in Leonardo's Famous Codex Arundel Suggests the Renaissance Polymath Theorized Gravity Before Galileo by Jo Lawson-Tancred, February 20, 2023, Artnet News

cc: @remikalir

Nearly a hundred years before Galileo and two hundred years before Newton, in a series of diagrams and notes in the Codex Arundel, Da Viinci was able to calculate the gravitational constant to an accuracy within 10 percent of the accepted value.

Da Vinci composed a collection of hundreds of papers from 1478 and 1518 which are now bound in the Codex Arundel, named for the Earl of Arundel who acquired it in the 17th century.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/255991930646?mkevt=1&mkpid=0&emsid=e11021.m43.l1120&mkcid=7&ch=osgood&euid=0f6517c566d94de08c6b921ab3252194&bu=45618614899&ut=RU&exe=0&ext=0&osub=-1%7E1&crd=20230226034744&segname=11021

Stop Procrastinating With Note-Taking Apps Like Obsidian, Roam, Logseq https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=baKCC2uTbRc by Sam Matla

sophisticated procrastination - tweaking one's system(s) or workflow with the anticipation it will help them in the long run when it is generally almost always make-work which helps them feel smart and/or productive. Having measurable results which can be used against specific goals will help weed this problem out.

Example of someone who says most of their best flashes of thought or creativity come when they're out walking or doing something else #

optimization-procrastination trap is related to shiny object syndrome - the idea of tweaking one's system constantly

perfect tool trap - guess what? there isn't one

"Personal knowledge management is an aid to your work, not the work itself." —Sam Matla #

This is entirely dependent on what and how you're doing it. If you're actively reading and annotating, and placing it somewhere, then that is the work, just in small progressive steps.

He needs to be more specific about what he means by "personal knowledge management" as a definition of something.

Sam Matla talks about the collector's fallacy in a negative light, and for many/most, he might be right. But for some, collecting examples and evidence of particular things is crucially important. The key is to have some idea of what you're collecting and why.

Historians collecting small facts over time may seem this way, but out of their collection can emerge patterns which otherwise would never have been seen.

cf: Keith Thomas article

concrete examples of this to show the opposite?

Relationship to the idea of AI coming up with black box solutions via their own method of diffuse thinking

G-L-O-R-EYE-EYE-EYE<br /> by Dale Keiger

Not sure I completely follow the logic of the debate between Sascha and taurusnoises (Bob Doto) here. I'll have to look closer.

Perhaps mapping out the 1-1 distinctions between the digital and the analog here would be helpful. What structures would be needed to make them 1-1?

https://forum.zettelkasten.de/discussion/comment/14250/

I do like the framing of folgezettel as a benefit with respect to user experience.

There is a lot of mention of the idea of trees within the note taking and zettelkasten space, but we really ought to be looking more closely at other living systems models like rhizomes and things which have a network-like structure.

Part 2: Search & Inspect. Denote as a Zettelkasten, 2023. https://share.tube/w/4ad929jjNYMLc6eRppVQmc.

His file naming convention and search operation in this is really fantastic:

20230226155400==51a3b--note-title__tag1_tag2.org

This allows one to search the file by date/time, signature, title or tags, by using the =, - or _ along with text.

Beyond this however, there's a fair amount of context to build to use this system including using regex search.

Part 1: What Do We Need? Denote as a Zettelkasten, 2023. https://share.tube/w/mu7fMr5RWMqetcZRXutSGF.

It starts and ends with Denote, but has an excellent overview of the folgezettel debate (or should one use Luhmann-esque identifiers within their digital zettelkasten system?)

Some of the tension within the folgezettel debate comes down to those who might prefer more refined evergreen (reusable) notes in many contexts, or those who have potentially shorter notes that fit within a train of thought (folgezettel) which helps to add some of the added context.

The difference is putting in additional up-front work to more heavily decontextualize excerpts and make them reusable in more contexts, which has an uncertain future payoff versus doing a bit less contextualization as the note will speak to it's neighbors as a means of providing some of this context. With respect to reusing a note in a written work, one is likely to remove their notes and their neighbors to provide this context when needed for writing.

(apparently I didn't save this note when I watched it prior to number 2, blech....)

https://strengejacke.wordpress.com/2015/11/01/you-underestimate-the-power-of-the-dark-folgezettel/

https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/download.html

ᔥ u/gxabbo in r/Zettelkasten - Video Series: Denote as a Zettelkasten (accessed:: 2023-02-26 02:52:52)

—u/theinvertedform

It's an "industry" now! long live the zettelkasten capitalists!

antecedent: research on Walter Benjamin's Archive

reply to u/m_t_rv_s__n at https://www.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/11bxjms/am_i_taking_too_long_to_finish_notes/

Some of it depends on what you're reading for and what you're trying to get out of the reading. On a recent 26 page journal article, I spent several hours over a couple of days (months apart) reading and taking notes in a relatively thorough fashion. I spent another hour or so refining them further and filing them and another 15 minutes noting out references for follow up. It was in an area I'm generally very familiar with, so it wasn't difficult or dense, but has lots of material I specifically know I'll be using in the near future for some very specific writing. Because I know it's something of specific interest to me and several overlapping projects, I had a much deeper "conversation with the text" than I otherwise might have.

Because it was done digitally, you can see the actual highlights and annotations and even check the timestamps if you like (you'll have to click through individual notes to get these timestamps): https://hypothes.is/users/chrisaldrich?q=url%3Aurn%3Ax-pdf%3A6053dd751da0fa870cad9a71a28882ba Some of it is basic data I'll use for a variety of purposes on several already well-defined projects. A few are for more slowly developing projects further out on the horizon. It's relatively easy to see the 10 or 15 permanent notes that I'll pull out of this group of about 74 notes. Since writing them, I've already referenced two of the more fleeting notes/highlights by searching for related tags on other reading which look like they may actually develop further.

Had this been something less targeted to my specific area, say for a master's level course of general interest, I'd probably have spent far less time on it and likely not gone over about 15 or so notes. Sometimes for these, I'll just read the abstract and conclusions and scan the references. Reading lots of these in your area of interest gives you some idea of the space and types of questions you might be asking. As you hone in on a thesis, you'll begin asking more and more questions and delve more deeply into material, and if something you read in the past becomes more specific to your project then you'll likely go back to re-read it at a deeper level, but you'll still have your prior work at your fingertips as a potential guide.

Once you know what your particular thesis is going to be your reading becomes more dense and targeted. Some things you'll read several times and go through with fine-toothed combs while others you'll skim to get the gist/context and only excerpt small specific pieces which you need and then move on.

(If you need it, remember that you only need one or two good permanent notes per day to make some serious progress.)

• ~ 90,000 notes
• 1,250 index entries
• 600 notes as manuscript outlines
• ~15,000 Literature notes

(10:35)

Ahrens had started out using his method in an analog process using shoe boxes, but in 2018 was using a small program based on Luhmann's process, but it was a one man show and wasn't an open source project.

(I'm pretty sure this is Daniel Lüdecke's ZKN3, but should double check.)

Ahrens, Sönke. “How to Take Smart Notes.” Presented at newcrafts: Professional Developer’s Conference at Paris, France, May 17, 2018. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nPOI4f7yCag.

annotations at https://docdrop.org/video/nPOI4f7yCag/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nPOI4f7yCag

Ahrens' 6 notes per day calculation doesn't include Saturdays or Sundays

Sönke Ahrens used to use Daniel Lüdecke's ZKN3, but currently uses Roam Research, though he's said he might choose Obsidian if he were starting over again today.

Link to: https://hypothes.is/a/2XZdmLWhEe2_lg8caDPWMw

https://www.zotero.org/support/note_templates

Used this and the templates for setting up templates in Zotero to import notes from .pdf files into Zotero to migrate into Obsidian.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/11awtrx/whats_something_you_do_with_your_zettelkasten/

Who made up this supposed rule against quotes! Are they not aware that quotes, particularly of sententiae, are some of the most excerpted and transmitted bits of knowledge in the entire Western canon? Without quotes, the entire tradition of note taking would probably not exist. Of course properly quoting is a sub-art in and of itself within rhetoric and the ars excerpendi.

A zettelkasten with no quotes— by definition— shouldn't carry the name.

I've done something like this when I think a particular reference(s) can answer a question related to a train of thought. But I keep cards of unread sources at the front of my sources section so that it's easier to pull it out frequently to prioritize and decide what I should be reading or working on next. These will then have links to the open questions I've noted, so that I can go back to those sections either as I'm reading/writing or to add those ideas into the appropriate folgezettel. These sorts of small amounts of work documented briefly can add up quickly over time. Source cards with indications of multiple open questions that might be answered is sometimes a good measure of desire to read, though other factors can also be at play.

That to-read pile of bibliographic source notes (a mini antilibrary) is akin to walking into a party and surveying a room. I may be aware of some of the people I haven't met yet and the conversations we might have, but if there are interesting questions I know I want to ask of specific ones or conversations I already know I want to have, it can be more productive to visit those first.

This sort of practice has been particularly helpful for times when I want to double check someone's sources or an original context, but don't have the time to do it immediately, don't want to break another extended train of thought, have to wait on materials, or may have to make a trip to consult physical materials that are singular or rare. For quick consultative reading, this can be a boon when I know I don't want or need to read an entire work, but skimming a chapter or a few pages for a close reading of a particular passage. I'll often keep a pile of these sorts of sources at hand so that I can make a short trip to a library, pick them up, find what I need and move on without having to recreate large portions of context to get the thing done because I've already laid most of the groundwork.

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

Generally mirrors most of my opinion.

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

amen

Bullet journaling works well in a noisy world because it forces people to confront what they're eventually not going to do anyway and gets them to drop it rather than leaving it on an ever-growing list.

Carrying forward to do lists manually encourages one to quit things that aren't going to get done.

Scalding...

PKM Weekly Feb 19 2023 – Issue 057 – Curtis McHale<br /> by Curtis McHale

https://discord.com/channels/717965437182410783/737323300967022732/1072563304289030164

https://forums.zotero.org/discussion/71852/how-to-remove-or-edit-zotero-shortcut-in-chrome

Keyboard shortcut to add something to Zotero using Zotero connector browser extension.

Could potentially be changed at chrome://extensions/shortcuts

Autobibliographie annotée (2018-2022) <br /> by Arthur Perret on 2023-02-20 (accessed:: 2023-02-24 11:30:20)

Perret looks back at several years of blogposts and comments on his growth over the intervening years. This sort of practice and providing indicators of best posts is an interesting means of digital gardening.

Kathryn Greenhill in PhD notetaking workflow – PDF to Zotero to Zotfile to Dropbox to GoodNotes to Zotero to Scrivener. Blogjune 2019/7 at 2019-06-07 (accessed:: 2023-02-24 10:18:56)

Regina Martínez Ponciano aka u/NomadMimi in r/ObsidianMD - PhD workflow: Obsidian, Zettelkasten, Zotero, Pandoc, and more at 2021-03-15 (accessed:: 2023-02-24 10:10:11)

Broadly similar to my own workflow though I use Hypothes.is for fleeting notes rather than Zotero.

Original copy at: https://martinezponciano.es/2021/04/05/research-workflow-as-a-phd-student-in-the-humanities/

Keeping one's fleeting notes separate from their permanent notes can be useful for managing the idea of clutter.

Luhmann generally did this by keeping things in different boxes. Modern academics may use different digital applications (Zotero/Obsidian, Hypothes.is/Zettlr, etc.as examples) for each as long as there is some reasonable dovetail between the two for data transfer when necessary.

Most veteran note takers will advise against importing old notes into a new digital space for the extra amount of administrative overhead and refactoring it can create.

Often old notes may be: - well assimilated into your memory already - poorly sourced or require lots of work and refactoring to use or reuse them - become a time suck trying to make them "perfect"

Better advice is potentially pull them into your system in a different spot so they're searchable and potentially linkable/usable as you need them. If this seems like excessive work, and it very well may be, then just pull in individual notes as you need or remember them.

With any luck the old notes are easily searchable/findable in whichever old system they happen to be in, so they're still accessible.

I'll note here the conflicting definitions of multiple storage in my tags to mean: - storing a single note under multiple subject headings or index terms - storing notes in various different (uncentralized locations), so having multiple different zettelkasten at home/office, storing some notes in social media locations, in various notebooks, etc. This means you have to search across multiple different interfaces to find the thing you're looking at.

I should create a new term to distinguish these two, but for now they're reasonably different within their own contexts that it's not a big problem unless one or the other scales.

A partial answer to note taking why.

relation to Note taking problem and proposed solution?

This seems to be a common reality and/or fear.

—NomadMimi

Perfectionism is a good thing to be an imposter at.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nS0luYZd4fs

INFORMA(C)TION No. 135: Plain Text <br /> by Jorge Arango at 2023-02-19 (accessed:: 2023-02-24 09:05:06)

This looks intriguing...

autocomplete tells me I've seen her before....

update: it's a Rowan Wilken reference! https://hypothes.is/a/xwRnzr-REeyvvDd7YBbLVA

Living with a Zettelkasten | Blay <br /> by Magnus Eriksson at 2015-06-21 <br /> (accessed:: 2023-02-23 06:40:39)

a zettelkasten method one pager based generally on Luhmann's example and broadly drawn from material only on zettelkasten.de up to the date of writing in 2015.

Interesting to see the result of a single source without any influence from Ahrens, Eco, or any others from what I can tell. Perhaps some influence from Kuehn, but only from the overlap of zettelkasten.de and Kuehn's blog.

Note that it's not as breathless as many one page examples and doesn't focus on Luhmann's massive output, but it's still also broadly devoid of any other history or examples.

I would have hoped for more on the "living with" portion that was promised.

And here he says it out loud... see https://hypothes.is/a/Gl5ferPsEe2Yf5P83a3wUg

He's arguing here for even more work to make an outline for writing as if some of that work hasn't already been done. This seems very off to me.

The author would likely fall into the "folgezettel is not an outline" camp. I take a middle ground that it could be an outline or at least help to lower the activation threshold to making one.

traces of your past thoughts feels closely related to Vannevar Bush's associative trails

The second reference to "archive fever" in almost as many weeks.

• Derrida, Jacques, and Eric Prenowitz. Archive Fever: A Freudian Impression. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996.

There's some truth and falsity here...

link to related: https://hypothes.is/a/whBvKrLnEe2OvPOgSd_4zg

Factors that will cause one to lose interest in the maintenance of their card index...

Has the author accidentally included a zettelkasten identification number here?

anecdotal definition/summary of zettelkasten.

I like the "shorter notes" idea here which would have arisen before the "atomic notes" or "evergreen notes" ideas.

Interesting to see a somewhat out of place link to Pile of Index Cards system here.

Given the 2015 date of the post this could be a part of the small distribution of the 2006 idea into the conversation a decade later.

At least they don't say he invented it...

I've always disliked the idea of "work" involved in "making" notes and "processing" them. Framing zettelkasten and knowledge creation in terms of capitalism is a painful mistake.

the quote is from https://blay.se/2015-06-21-living-with-a-zettelkasten.html

On Ahrens' shipping container analogy to the zettelkasten

@ZettelDistraction said Perhaps the shipping hub is a better analogy for the Zettelkasten than the shipping container (Ahrens, 40).

We should be careful to separate the ideas of analogy and metaphor. Analogies are usually more direct and well-defined in scope.

While there's an apt and direct correlation between shipping containers and zettelkasten as boxes, Ahrens was making the analogy with respect to the shift that shipping containers made to the overall system:

shipping containers : shipping industry and globalism :: zettelkasten : thinking and writing/content creation

As with many analogies, stretching it the way one might stretch metaphors isn't usually fruitful or even possible.

In hindsight, we know why they failed: The ship owners tried to integrate the container into their usual way of working without changing the infrastructure and their routines. They tried to benefit from the obvious simplicity of loading containers onto ships without letting go of what they were used to.

He's saying one needs to consider how one's note taking method fits into their work in a more integrative way. Without properly integrating it into one's workflow seamlessly the system will fail. This is also one of the most difficult problems many zettelkasten aspirants have. In addition to creating a zettelkasten, they're often also simultaneously trying to integrate new (digital) tools into their process at the same time and they get distracted by them rather than focusing on the move to increasing writing/creating and creativity overall (globalism).

To focus on Ahrens' analogy a bit, if Obsidian, for example, is your "ship", is it as custom built for your specific purpose the way a container ship would be for a cargo container? Might you be better off with something like The Archive, ZKN3, or simple index cards that help to limit you to only do the function you want rather than all the other possible functions (wiki, blog, to do list, calendar, journal, kanban, etc.)? Obsidian and many other applications can be a proverbial row boat, a yacht, a tugboat, a steamer, a cruise ship, and even a warship in addition to a container ship, so one has to be extra careful how they choose to use it.

Misreading of Ahrens. The shipping container wasn't a direct analogy to the zk. It was an analogy about process of building a system from the ground up to better effectuate a result.

https://www.amazon.com/s?i=digital-text&rh=n%3A133140011%2Cn%3A133141011%2Cn%3A154606011%2Cp_36%3A0-0%2Cp_30%3ARoutledge&s=date-desc-rank&qid=1676881333&ref=sr_pg_1

reply https://forum.zettelkasten.de/discussion/comment/16622/#Comment_16622

Adler has an excellent primer on this subject that covers a lot of the basics in reasonable depth: - Adler, Mortimer J. “How to Mark a Book.” Saturday Review of Literature, July 6, 1940. (https://stevenson.ucsc.edu/academics/stevenson-college-core-courses/how-to-mark-a-book-1.pdf)

Marking books can be useful not only to the original reader, but future academics and historians studying material culture (eg: https://apps.lib.umich.edu/online-exhibits/exhibits/show/marks-in-books), and as @GeoEng51 indicates they might be shared by friends, family, romantic interests, or even perhaps all of the above (see: https://newcriterion.com/issues/2017/4/mrs-custers-tennyson).

For those interested in annotation marks and symbols (like @ctietze's "bolt" ↯) I outlined a few ideas this last month at: https://www.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/10qw4l5/comment/j6vxn6a/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=web2x&context=3

Mrs. Custer’s Tennyson April 2017<br /> by William Logan

Reagan’s Note Card Treasures<br /> by John H. Fund <br /> at August 10, 2011, 12:00 AM<br /> (accessed:: 2023-02-23 12:25:06)

archived copy: https://web.archive.org/web/20151017020314/http://spectator.org/articles/37399/reagans-note-card-treasures

John H. Fund wrote that while he was a a 15-year old high school student, Reagan taught him how he arranged his index card-based notes to tailor-make a speech for almost any audience. In 2011, Fund said he still used a variation of Reagan's system for his own speeches.

Reagan, however, did not source many of his one-liner jokes.

On many quote-based cards, Reagan was careful to cite his sources.

Ronald Reagan compiled hundreds of index card-based notes over his career. Some were lost or given away as souvenirs, but 91 we discovered at the Reagan library (circa 2011). They were discovered among boxes which contained the contents of his Los Angeles office desk after his death in June 2004,

Ronald Reagan broke the typical rule to "write only on one side" of his index cards. His cards would typically have five to ten items written out by hand.

Given some of the cards I've seen, it seems that they weren't categorized generally and with multiple ideas on the same card they also broke Gessner's other common advice.

Ronald Reagan's index card-based commonplace book consisted of quotes, economic statistics, jokes, and anecdotes.

Though other sources like the CBS News article look like 3 x 5" index cards, John Hunt indicates that Ronald Reagan used 4 x 6" inch cards for his notes.

Ronald Reagan's index cards of one-liners at 2014-07-20 <br /> (accessed:: 2023-02-23 11:41:42)

archived version: https://web.archive.org/web/20200305070906/https://www.cbsnews.com/pictures/ronald-reagans-index-cards-of-one-liners/12/

ᔥ Manfred Kuehn in Ronald Reagan's Notecards at 2015-01-25<br /> (accessed:: 2023-02-23 11:34:10)

—Ronald Reagan

Little would he have expected January 6th...

—Ronald Reagan

—Ronald Reagan

—Ronald Reagan

Now that we know better about the history and the results of the Regan administration, we really should be listening more to women —Ronald Reagan said it himself!

—Ronald Reagan

—Ronald Reagan

—Ronald Reagan

—Ronald Reagan

—Ronald Reagan

A sad show for the man who gutted mental health support in California and then more broadly in the United States.

—Ronald Reagan

—Ronald Reagan

One of Ronald Reagan's Index cards with four bullet-pointed one-liners has the annotation "(over)" written on the bottom which indicates that he wrote on both sides of his cards.

If he was keeping these in clear plastic sheets in a binder, this would have been easy to see the opposite sides.

Were all of his cards double-sided? This particular example seems to be a list of one liners which may have been used in the same speech (or timeframe) and thus served solely as a reminder of the jokes to be told.

Ronald Reagan used 3 x 5" index cards.

—Ronald Reagan

Manfred Kuehn in Ronald Reagan's Notecards at 2015-01-25<br /> (accessed:: 2023-02-23 11:34:10)

Kuehn felt that Ronald Regan's note taking "does not seem like a good system. In fact, it's hardly any system at all..."

What makes note taking exciting?

• serendipity
• surprise
• creativity

Manfred Kuehn in Umberto Eco on How to Write a Thesis at 2015-01-30<br /> (accessed:: 2023-02-23 11:29:34)

Kuehn felt Luhmann's writing on note taking was more exciting that Umberto Eco's.

We tend to think in terms of our tools.<br /> ᔥ Christian Tietze in Eco's 'How to Write a Thesis' Available in English at 2015-03-17<br /> (accessed:: 2023-02-23 11:26:16)

Eco's 'How to Write a Thesis' Available in English<br /> by Christian Tietze

meh...

Interesting that he credits Manfred Kuehn here...

Related here is the horcrux problem of note taking or even social media. The mental friction of where did I put that thing? As a result, it's best to put it all in one place.

How can you build on a single foundation if you're in multiple locations? The primary (only?) benefit of multiple locations is redundancy in case of loss.

Ryan Holiday and Robert Greene are counter examples, though Greene's books are distinct projects generally while Holiday's work has a lot of overlap.

Should You Have One Zettelkasten or Many?<br /> by Christian Tietze

—Will via https://forum.zettelkasten.de/discussion/2519/ideas-im-grappling-with-february-23-2023#latest

Of course the metaphor of the bees and their honey is the biggest which we've all failed to mention! It's my favorite because of its age, its location within the tradition of rhetoric and sententiae/ars excerpendi, its prolific use through history, and the way it frames collecting and arranging for the use of creativity and writing.

In the his classic on rhetoric, Seneca gave an account of his ideas about note-taking in the 84th letter to Luculius ("On Gathering Ideas"). It begins from ut aiunt: "men say", that we should imitate the bees in our reading practice. For as they produce honey from the flowers they visit and then "assort in their cells all that they have brought in", so we should, "sift (separate) whatever we have gathered from a varied course of reading" because things keep better in isolation from one another, an idea which dovetails with ars memoria, the 4th canon of rhetoric.

"We should follow, men say, the example of the bees, who flit about and cull the flowers that are suitable for producing honey, and then arrange and assort in their cells all that they have brought in; these bees, as our Vergil says: 'pack close the flowering honey And swell their cells with nectar sweet.' "

Generations later in ~430 CE, Macrobius in his Saturnalia repeated the same idea (he assuredly read Seneca, though he obviously didn't acknowledge him):

"You should not count it a fault if I shall set out the borrowings from a miscellaneous reading in the authors' own words... sometimes set out plainly in my own words and sometimes faithfully recorded in the actual words of the old writers... We ought in some sort to imitate bees; and just as they, in their wandering to and fro, sip the flowers, then arrange their spoil and distribute it among the honeycombs, and transform the various juices to a single flavor by some mixing with them a property of their own being, so I too shall put into writing all that I have acquired in the varied course of my reading... For not only does arrangement help the memory, but the actual process of arrangement, accompanied by a kind of mental fermentation which serves to season the whole, blends the diverse extracts to make a single flavor; with the result that, even if the sources are evident, what we get in the end is still something clearly different from those known sources."

Often in manuscripts writers in the middle ages to the Renaissance would draw bees or write 'apes' (Latin for bees) in the margins of their books almost as bookmarks for things they wished to remember or excerpt for their own notes.

Of course, neither of these classical writers mentions the added benefit that the bees were simultaneously helping to pollenate the flowers, which also enhances the ecosystem.

• Seneca (2006) Epistles 66-92. With an English translation by Richard G. Gummere. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press (Loeb Classical Library), 277-285.
• Havens, Earle. Commonplace Books: A History of Manuscripts and Printed Books from Antiquity to the Twentieth Century. New Haven, CT: Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, 2001.

Mull on this...

Bruno Latour showed us how to think with the things of the world | Aeon Essays<br /> by Stephen Muecke

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Actor%E2%80%93network_theory

I ought to dig into some of Bruno Latour's work which keeps popping up in some of my reading....

Journal and zettelkasten.<br /> by flin

One of the benefits of journaling on an index card is that the small space is much less intimidating than a large blank sheet, particularly when one isn't in the mood but feels like they ought to write. This is similar to the idea that many people find that microblogs (Twitter, Mastodon, Tumblr) are much easier to maintain than a long form blog.

I keep a wholly separate section of one of my boxes as a journal/diary as well, but it's less significant and is ordered only by date with very sparse indexing and an almost non-existent amount of linking. I have a bit of @Sascha's practice going on there, though certainly not as deep as his excellent description. I would caution newcomers to the practice of ZK to be very conscious of what, how, and why they're integrating a journaling practice into their workflow so that they don't risk what I call "zettelkasten overreach". Guarding against this sort of overreach can very easily be seen in my separate/distinct "journal on index cards" versus Sascha's more explicitly thought out "journal within a zettelkasten".

One might have considered some of this part of his (Roland Barthes') fichier boîte (French for zettelkasten) as a journal/diary or what some might today consider a private microblog of thoughts and observations.

reply lifted from my notes:

Henry David Thoreau kept both a commonplace book (essentially a traditional (non-Luhmann-esque) zettelkasten in notebook form) and a separate writing journal where he did what most would consider typical 'journaling', but where he also tried out phrasing, writing, and other experimental work that would ultimately become part of his published written output. This may be a useful model for some. His journals ran to multiple volumes, but a good edited version with a nice introduction to some of his work and methods can be found in:

• Thoreau, Henry David. The Journal: 1837-1861. Edited by Damion Searls. Original edition. New York: NYRB Classics, 2009.

Similarly Roland Barthes used his card index as more than the traditional bibliographical, excerpting, and note taking tool that many had before him. He also used it to accumulate notes on what he had seen and heard in his daily life, phrases he liked, and plans. It came to serve the function, particularly in the last two years of his life, of a diary or what biographer Tiphaine Samoyault came to call his fichierjournal or index-card diary. Published posthumously on October 12, 2010, Mourning Diary is a collection from Roland Barthes' 330 index cards focusing on his mourning following the death of his mother in 1977.

• Barthes, Roland. Mourning Diary. Macmillan, 2010. https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780374533113/mourningdiary.
• Budelis, Kristina. “Barthes’s Hand.” The New Yorker, September 8, 2010. http://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/barthess-hand.
• Samoyault, Tiphaine, and Jonathan Culler. Barthes: A Biography. Translated by Andrew Brown. 1st edition. Cambridge ; Malden, MA: Polity, 2017.

—Sasha Fast https://forum.zettelkasten.de/profile/Sascha

I love the deeper definition and distinction of self-care here.

via Will

zettler is another common one used by Chritian Tietze

https://jan.boddez.net/articles/giving-credit

🤩

https://petersmith.org/webmentions/replies/2023/reply-202320230217-134119/

https://www.reddit.com/r/qnnnp/comments/115iwjj/%D1%81%D1%81%D1%8B%D0%BB%D0%BA%D0%B8_%D0%BD%D0%B0_%D0%BF%D0%BE%D0%BB%D0%B5%D0%B7%D0%BD%D1%8B%D0%B5_%D1%80%D0%B5%D1%81%D1%83%D1%80%D1%81%D1%8B_%D0%BE_%D0%B7%D0%B0%D0%BC%D0%B5%D1%82%D0%BA%D0%BE%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BB%D0%B8%D0%B8/

translation:

https://boffosocko.com

Chris Aldrich's blog with many articles on knowledge management. Aldrich is an incredibly meticulous researcher. If you are interested in a serious study of the history of the issue, you are here.

https://booksbythefoot.com/

Lustig, Jason. “‘Mere Chips from His Workshop’: Gotthard Deutsch’s Monumental Card Index of Jewish History.” History of the Human Sciences, vol. 32, no. 3, July 2019, pp. 49–75. SAGE Journals, https://doi.org/10.1177/0952695119830900

Cross reference preliminary notes from https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0952695119830900

Finished reading 2023-02-21 13:04:00

urn:x-pdf:6053dd751da0fa870cad9a71a28882ba

Example of a student who saw/learned/new a zettelkasten note taking method from a teacher.

Döring, T. and Beckhaus, S. (2007) ‘The Card Box at Hand: Exploring the Potentials of a Paper-Based Tangible Interface for Education and Research in Art History’. Proceedings of the First International Conference on Tangible and Embedded Interaction, Baton Rouge, Louisiana, February 15-17, 2007. New York, ACM, pp. 87–90.

Did they have a working system the way Ludeke did?

Despite the affordances of recording, searching, tagging made by computerized note taking systems, the problem still remains what to search for or collect and how to relate the smaller parts to the whole.

customer relationship management vs. personal knowledge management (or perhaps more important knowledge relationship management, the relationship between individual facts to the overall whole) suggested by autocomplete on "knowl..."

Can zettelkasten be used for other than positivitistic methodologies?

from<br /> Fling, F. M. (1920) The Writing of History: An Introduction to Historical Method. New Haven: Yale University Press.

Most of these are on my list, but doublecheck them...

Of course the hardest problem in big data has come to be realized as the issue of cleaning up messing and misleading data!

Did he write about his zettelkasten in this article?! Deutsch, G. (1917b) ‘Siyum’, American Israelite, 8 March, 15 March.

Gotthard Deutsch celebrated his fifty thousandth card in 1917. ᔥ

An example of a zettelkasten, meant for productivity in most settings, being called unproductive in Gotthard Deutsch's case.

Of course this calls to mind the definition of productivity and from who's perspective. From Deutsch's written output perspective it may have been exceptionally low in comparison to the outputs of others like Niklas Luhmann, S.D. Goitein, or Roland Barthes. But when viewed from the perspective of a teaching instrument and influence on his students, perhaps it was monumentally productive?

Beyond their epistemological utility do zettelkasten also "embody a moral value"? Jason Lustig argues that they may have in the teaching context of Gotthard Deutsch where the reliance on facts was of extreme importance for historical research.

Some of this is also seen in Scott Scheper's religious framing of zettelkasten method though here the aim has a different focus.

Great example of a historian implying the benefit of not only a card index, but of potentially how commonplace it was to not only have one, but to have stenographers or secretaries to help manage them.

Link this to the reference in Heyde about historians and others who were pushed to employ stenographers or copyists to keep their card indexes in order.

Given the cost of employing secretaries to manage our information, one of the affordances that computers might focus on as tools for thought is lowering the barrier for management and maintenance. If they can't make this easier/simpler, then what are they really doing beyond their shininess? Search is obviously important in this context.

What was the reference to employing one person full time to manage every 11 or 12 filing cabinets' worth of documents? Perhaps Duguid in the paper piece?

Interesting to see this quote in light of the work of Ernst Bernheim and historical method.

At what point did history begin to be viewed as a science this way? (Did it predate Berheim?) Is it still?

Interesting statement about how much memory matters, though it's missing some gravitas somehow.

Is there more in the original source?

Not sure that I agree with the framing of "algorithmic processing" here as it was done manually by a person pulling out facts. But it does bring out the idea of where collecting ends and synthesis of a broader thesis out of one's collection begins. Where does historical method end? What was the purpose of the collection? Teaching, writing, learning, all, none?