33 Matching Annotations
  1. Feb 2024
    1. Some weeks ago I explain the philosophy of Antinet Zettelkasten to my girlfriend. She was sceptical at that moment but when she saw my purple metal box full of cards and dividers she started to gather information and with her father made this one. The name is zauberkasten (magic box in german) and this is not the final version. Hope you like folks! :)
  2. Aug 2023
    1. However, I strongly recommend trying out Zettelkasten on actual note-cards, even if you end up implementing it on a computer. There’s something good about the note-card version that I don’t fully understand.

      Another advising to use the analog method for learning even if one is going to switch to a digital zettelkasten.

      He uses the word "good" here while others may have potentially used the word "magic", but writing in a space that values critical thinking, he would have been taken to task for having done so. In any case he's not able to put his finger on the inherent value of analog over digital.

  3. Jul 2023
  4. Jun 2023
    1. Todd Henry in his book The Accidental Creative: How to be Brilliant at a Moment's Notice (Portfolio/Penguin, 2011) uses the acronym FRESH for the elements of "creative rhythm": Focus, Relationships, Energy, Stimuli, Hours. His advice about note taking comes in a small section of the chapter on Stimuli. He recommends using notebooks with indexes, including a Stimuli index. He says, "Whenever you come across stimuli that you think would make good candidates for your Stimulus Queue, record them in the index in the front of your notebook." And "Without regular review, the practice of note taking is fairly useless." And "Over time you will begin to see patterns in your thoughts and preferences, and will likely gain at least a few ideas each week that otherwise would have been overlooked." Since Todd describes essentially the same effect as @Will but without mentioning a ZK, this "magic" or "power" seems to be a general feature of reviewing ideas or stimuli for creative ideation, not specific to a ZK. (@Will acknowledged this when he said, "Using the ZK method is one way of formalizing the continued review of ideas", not the only way.)

      via Andy

      Andy indicates that this review functionality isn't specific to zettelkasten, but it still sits in the framework of note taking. Given this, are there really "other" ways available?

  5. May 2023
    1. @Will Thanks for always keeping up with your regular threads and considerations.

      I've been keeping examples of people talking about the "magic of note taking" for a bit. I appreciate your perspectives on it. Personally I consider large portions of it to be bound up with the ideas of what Luhmann termed as "second memory", the use of ZK to supplement our memories, and the serendipity of combinatorial creativity. I've traced portions of it back to the practices of Raymond Llull in which he bound up old mnemonic techniques with combinatorial creativity which goes back to at least Seneca.

      A web search for "combinatorial creativity" may be useful, but there's a good attempt at what it entails here: https://fs.blog/seneca-on-combinatorial-creativity/

    2. The magic comes from the repetition of adding your thoughts to the notes you take and reviewing notes regularly.

      Will Simpson feels that the magic of note taking stems from "the repetition of adding your thoughts to the notes you take and reviewing notes regularly".

      I think it sems more from the serendipitous connections and resultant combinatorial creativity.

    3. Links are where the magic happens.
    1. Write down all these slender ideas. It is surprising how often one sentence, jotted in a notebook, leads immediately to a second sentence. A plot can develop as you write notes. Close the notebook and think about it for a few days — and then presto! you’re ready to write a short story. — Patricia Highsmith: Her Diaries and Notebooks

      quote is from Highsmith's Plotting and Writing Suspense Fiction

      I love the concept of "slender ideas" as small, fleeting notes which might accumulate into something if written down. In saying "Close the notebook and think about it for a few days" Patricia Highsmith seems to be suggesting that one engage in diffuse thinking, passive digesting, or mulling rather than active or proactive thinking.

      She also invokes the magic word "presto!" (which she exclaims) as if to indicate that magically the difficult work of writing is somehow no longer difficult. Many writers seem to indicate that this is a phenomenon, but never seem to put their finger on the mechanism of why it happens. Some seems to stem from the passive digestion over days with diffuse thinking, with portions may also stem from not starting from a blank page and having some material to work against instead of a vacuum.


      From Patricia Highsmith: Her Diaries and Notebooks: 1941-1995 (Swiss Literary Archives)

  6. Mar 2023
    1. That’s it. That’s what Luhmann did with his Zettelkasten. The magic began when he built up a critical mass of interconnected notes. That’s what will ultimately happen provided you keep at it.

      Somehow building up a critical mass will create "magic"?

      No rhyme or reason here, just "magic"... 🤪

  7. Feb 2023
    1. “These cards are the tools of his trade. He can take any speech and insert some of these zingers and one-liners. Let’s say he’s speaking to a Kiwanis Club. He knew what to put in. If he was talking to a group of firemen, he had a joke about putting out a fire. If you’re really looking for the hand of a president, and how his mind is working, all of these note cards together, in a way, give you the magic of Ronald Reagan.”
    1. Und doch fand er darin nie das, was er eigentlich suchte, sondern etwas Neues, Überraschendes.

      google translate:

      And yet he never found what he was actually looking for, but something new and surprising.

      While you'll only find in your zettelkasten exactly what you placed there, you may be surprised to find more than you expected.

    1. The authors agreed that the ability to conjure ideas "out of thin air" was one of the most compelling parts of co-writing with an AI model.

      Again note the reference to magic with respect to the artificial intelligence: "the ability to conjure ideas 'out of thin air'".

    2. We like to describe Wordcraft as a "magic text editor". It's a familiar web-based word processor, but under the hood it has a number of LaMDA-powered writing features that reveal themselves depending on the user's activity.

      The engineers behind Wordcraft refer to it "as a 'magic text editor'". This is a cop-out for many versus a more concrete description of what is actually happening under the hood of the machine.

      It's also similar, thought subtly different to the idea of the "magic of note taking" by which writers are taking about ideas of emergent creativity and combinatorial creativity which occur in that space.

  8. Dec 2022
    1. 9/8,3 Geist im Kasten? Zuschauer kommen. Sie bekommen alles zusehen, und nichts als das – wie beimPornofilm. Und entsprechend ist dieEnttäuschung.

      https://niklas-luhmann-archiv.de/bestand/zettelkasten/zettel/ZK_2_NB_9-8-3_V

      I've read and referenced this several times, but never bothered to log it into my notes.

      Sasha Fast's translation:

      Ghost in the box? Spectators visit. They get to see everything, and nothing but that - like in a porn movie. And the disappointment is correspondingly high.

    1. Klaus Kusanowsky uses the ideas of witchcraft or fascination to describe the sort of magic created by zettelkasten use. [0:09:15]

    1. There’s magic within the analog medium incapable of beingreproduced in digital tools.

      A side reference here to magic, but he defers what this is... why mention it if you're not going to back it up here?

    2. Even thoughsuch apps are thought of as a Zettelkasten, the magic that Luhmann builtinto his system is lost.

      I'm not a fan of the magic framing here and I'm not really sure that Luhmann consciously designed or built his system to do this. Prior systems had these "magical" features before Luhmann's.

    1. No es magia.

      I love that he points this out explicitly.

      Some don't see the underlying processes of complexity within note taking methods and as a result ascribe magical properties to what are emergent properties or combinatorial creativity.

      See also: The Ghost in the Machine zettel from Luhmann

      Somehow there's an odd dichotomy between the boredom of such a simple method and people seeing magic within it at the same time. This is very similar to those who feel that life must be divinely created despite the evidence brought by evolutionary and complexity theory. In this arena, there is a lot more evolved complexity which makes the system harder to see compared to the simpler zettelkasten process.

  9. Oct 2022
    1. It never helps historians to say too much about their working methods. For just as the conjuror’s magic disappears if the audience knows how the trick is done, so the credibility of scholars can be sharply diminished if readers learn everything about how exactly their books came to be written.

      Except that, seemingly, many historians have written and published about just this very topic!

      People often talk about the "magic of note taking", but it's not frequent that they frame the methods as magician's secrets.

    1. A friend of mine, well versed in all sorts of PKM and stuff, was convinced the ZK was beneficial, but took a long time before you started seeing benefits. My experience was completely different. I think I had about 5 permanent cards established when I made my first jump to a new idea... I don't know if the idea is any good at this moment, but I got a chill up my spine when I did it. I have more cards now, and have had a few more "new thoughts" that I would not have had otherwise. Don't put it off.

      The zettelkasten can be a useful educational substrate for thinking in as few as five cards.

      link to: https://hypothes.is/a/Iwy7MGlMEeyztTNgvCXUOA

    1. Provided with some sort of a card box, whether of metal or wood, oreven of cardboard, the English teacher will find that an era of peace andorder has come over his classe

      Sounds like magic, n'cest pas? 😜

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  10. Sep 2022
    1. https://lu.ma/x7zlzv95

      NoMa Method (note making method)<br /> JOMO mindset (Joy of Missing Out)<br /> MIMO - Mindfully In, Magically Out

      Nick Milo's got WAY too many buzzwords and acronyms. Are we creating a new cult with in groups and out groups using language?

      "Notice when you do" --- the root word of notice and note are related...

  11. Jul 2022
    1. I think claims of magical moments of “emergentcomplexity” where the note system reaches some sortof critical mass and begins spitting out answers like anoracle are probably a bit exaggerated. They sound a bittoo much like the Singularity. But it’s also true, I suspect,that by reviewing our notes regularly, comparing SourceNotes and making Point Notes out of them, anddiligently connecting new ideas into the train of thoughtthey emerged from, we’ll create a tree that will have morebranches and leaves in some places than in others. Thosebranches will be where the action is; where we can expectto find a lot of material we can turn into output.
    1. But it's not a trivial problem. I have compiled, at latest reckoning, 35,669 posts - my version of a Zettelkasten. But how to use them when writing a paper? It's not straightforward - and I find myself typically looking outside my own notes to do searches on Google and elsewhere. So how is my own Zettel useful? For me, the magic happens in the creation, not in the subsequent use. They become grist for pattern recognition. I don't find value in classifying them or categorizing them (except for historical purposes, to create a chronology of some concept over time), but by linking them intuitively to form overarching themes or concepts not actually contained in the resources themselves. But this my brain does, not my software. Then I write a paper (or an outline) based on those themes (usually at the prompt of an interview, speaking or paper invitation) and then I flesh out the paper by doing a much wider search, and not just my limited collection of resources.

      Stephen Downes describes some of his note taking process for creation here. He doesn't actively reuse his notes (or in this case blog posts, bookmarks, etc.) which number a sizeable 35669, directly, at least in the sort of cut and paste method suggested by Sönke Ahrens. Rather he follows a sort of broad idea, outline creation, and search plan akin to that described by Cory Doctorow in 20 years a blogger

      Link to: - https://hyp.is/_XgTCm9GEeyn4Dv6eR9ypw/pluralistic.net/2021/01/13/two-decades/


      Downes suggests that the "magic happens in the creation" of his notes. He uses them as "grist for pattern recognition". He doesn't mention words like surprise or serendipity coming from his notes by linking them, though he does use them "intuitively to form overarching themes or concepts not actually contained in the resources themselves." This is closely akin to the broader ideas ensconced in inventio, Llullan Wheels, triangle thinking, ideas have sex, combinatorial creativity, serendipity (Luhmann), insight, etc. which have been described by others.


      Note that Downes indicates that his brain creates the links and he doesn't rely on his software to do this. The break is compounded by the fact that he doesn't find value in classifying or categorizing his notes.


      I appreciate that Downes uses the word "grist" to describe part of his note taking practice which evokes the idea of grinding up complex ideas (the grain) to sort out the portions of the whole to find simpler ideas (the flour) which one might use later to combine to make new ideas (bread, cake, etc.) Similar analogies might be had in the grain harvesting space including winnowing or threshing.

      One can compare this use of a grist mill analogy of thinking with the analogy of the crucible, which implies a chamber or space in which elements are brought together often with work or extreme conditions to create new products by their combination.

      Of course these also follow the older classical analogy of imitating the bees (apes).

    1. In one of his videos he talks about "approaching the mind of god" or something similar, in a way I can't entirely tell whether he is paraphrasing an early-modern note-taker or saying that's what he thinks he is doing himself. I don't really care whether he's religious or not, unless it compromises the system he's building.

      These always read as hyperbole to me, but it's difficult to explain the surprise and serendipity of re-finding things in one's notes on a regular basis. It's akin to the sort of cognitive dissonance that religious people have when encountering the levels of complexity formed by living systems through evolution. Not having better words for describing the experience, they may resort to descriptions of magic or religion to frame their experiences.

  12. Jun 2022
    1. First, while using the previous retrieval methods, it is a good ideato keep your focus a little broad. Don’t begin and end your searchwith only the specific folder that matches your criteria.

      The area of serendipity becomes much more powerful when one has ideas both directly interlinked, ideas categorized with subject headings or tags, or when one can have affordances like auto-complete.

      The method Forte suggests and outlines allows for some serendipity, but not as much as other methods with additional refinements. Serendipity in Forte's method isn't as strong as in others.

      In this section he's talking about some of the true "magic of note taking" which is discussed by Luhmann and others.

      link to:<br /> Luhmann's writings on serendipity and surprise when using his zettelkasten (Communication with the Slipbox...)<br /> Ahrens mentions of this effect

    2. eventually you’ll have so many IPs at yourdisposal that you can execute entire projects just by assemblingpreviously created IPs. This is a magical experience that willcompletely change how you view productivity.

      another example of the idea of "magical" experience that comes when taking notes. This one isn't about idea creation or even serendipity though, but relates specifically to being "bulk productive".

    1. If Luhmann’s notebox system was not dynamic and fluid and not one of pure order, either, how can one think of Luhmann’s notebox system? In my experience using an Antinet Zettelkasten, I find it to be more organic in nature. Like nature, it has simple laws and fundamental rules by which it operates (like the laws of thermodynamics in physics); yet, it’s also subject to arbitrary decisions. We know this because in describing it, Luhmann uses the word arbitrary to describe its arbitrary internal branching. We can infer that arbitrary, means something that was decided by Luhmann outside of some external and strict criteria (i.e., strict schemes like the Dewey Decimal Classification). (12)12 This arbitrary, random structure contributes to one of its most distinctive aspects of the system–the aspect of surprises. Because of its unique structure, the Antinet is noted as “a surprise generator,” and a system that develops “a creativity of its own.” (13)

      There's some magical thinking involved here. While the system has some arbitrary internal branching, the surprises come from the system's perfect memory that the human user doesn't have. This makes it appear that the system creates its own creativity, but it is really the combinatorics of the perfect memory system with use over time.

      Link to: serendipity of systems based on auto-complete

  13. May 2022
    1. The second way that people use their Second Brain is to connectideas together. Their Second Brain evolves from being primarily amemory tool to becoming a thinking tool. A piece of advice from amentor comes in handy as they encounter a similar situation on adifferent team. An illuminating metaphor from a book finds its wayinto a presentation they’re delivering. The ideas they’ve capturedbegin gravitating toward each other and cross-pollinating.

      Missing from this description is the work that is involved in revisting, re-reading, and interacting with your notes. This is not an easy process, but this paragraph belies the work involved and makes it seem "magical" with the use of the words 'illuminating', 'gravitating', 'cross-pollinating' which are all external processes or forces that don't require work from the individual.

    2. In the digital realm, informationcould be molded and shaped and directed to any purpose, like amagical, primordial force of nature.

      He does build a sense of excitement and magic around the idea of taking notes here, though sadly he's covering up the amount of work that maintaining such a system entails.

  14. Apr 2022
    1. nother factor militating against completeadvice was the notion that methods should be kept secret to be most effective.One author of a university thesis on the topic noted that most scholars were un-willing to share their secrets on note-taking with others. A few advice givers rec-ommended “keeping the secrets of your studies to yourself ” on the grounds thatpeople would be most impressed by achievements that they did not understand.39

      Sönke Ahrens apparently missed this bit of advice.

      link to the Arthur C. Clarke quote “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." which appeared in his 1962 book “Profiles of the Future: An Inquiry into the Limits of the Possible”.

  15. Feb 2022
    1. https://reallifemag.com/rank-and-file/

      An interesting example of someone who fell into the trap of thinking that a particular tool or tools would magically make them smarter or help them do a particular line of work without showing any deep evidence of knowing what they were doing. The discussion here flows over a number of mixed note taking domains with no clear thrust for what they were using it pointedly for. The multiple directions and lack of experience likely doomed them to failure here.