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My computer doesn’t always feel like a bicycle for the mind, but it does when I use my Zettelkasten. My digital Zettelkasten allows me to seamlessly engage my thoughts with a high-powered database of the most interesting things I’ve read or thought – things I know I know, but which are just beyond the reach of my consciousness.
It’s what productivity consultant Ari Meisel would call an “external brain.”
The first American newspaper was published monthly, but information became a commodity to be sold when the telegraph connected the globe in the mid 1800s.
When we make this mental calculation, it’s hard for big, daunting projects to compete with little dopamine hits.
The tiny bites you’ll be consuming happen to be the most interesting things you’ve ever read, or the most compelling thoughts you’ve ever had.
Zettelkasten is German for "slip box" (Plural: Zettelkästen). In analog form, a Zettelkasten is literally a box filled with slips of paper, each slip with a note on it, as well as metadata used to organize those notes.
Re-writing passages, choosing keywords, and linking notes to one another all cause you to think associatively. Thinking associatively has been shown to improve mood, so that explains why note-taking is deceptively fun.
design my workflow so that I can be exposed to new information, absorb that information, retrieve and develop and link that information, and turn it into writing – with minimal friction, like a bicycle.
The traditional Zettelkasten consists of three main types of notes (I'll break these down, with examples, in a bit). Fleeting Notes: Notes you take "on the fly." Literature Notes: Condensed notes of an entire article, book, etc. Permanent Notes: Notes summarizing a single idea. These are assigned keywords and linked to other notes.
Aside from your "Literature Notes" and "Permanent Notes" (or “Slip Box”), I suggest three other folders: Inbox Someday/Maybe Raw
The purpose of a fleeting note is to say, "here's something interesting I might want to remember or refer to some day." You need to record just enough information to later decide whether you want to turn your fleeting note into a literature note, permanent note, or someday/maybe.
Literature Notes Literature notes are informal summaries you write about a piece of media you've consumed.
To write literature notes, you have to think about what you learned, and how you might explain it to a friend (or your future self). This helps you remember the material better than you would otherwise.
Permanent Notes Permanent notes are explanations of a single idea, annotated with metadata about the subject of the note, other notes that note is related to, and the source of the note. You usually write permanent notes using literature notes as your source. You take only the most important ideas from your literature notes, and turn them into singular notes you can connect with other notes. Once you have many permanent notes, you can construct a rough draft for an entire article or book.
So, resist the urge to copy and paste. Even when you're recording an exact quote, take the extra effort to re-write it (very carefully!) You'll be surprised what you discover.
As Marshall McLuhan said, "The medium is the message." The characteristics of each medium call for you to express the same idea in a different way.
Once you've exported your highlights, review them and highlight, once again, the parts of those highlights that are the most interesting.
Here's a highlight, with bolded text, from Sönke Ahrens' book on the Zettelkasten method, How to Take Smart Notes: The educational psychologist Kirsti Lonka compared the reading approach of unusually successful doctoral candidates and students with those who were much less successful. One difference stood out as critical: The ability to think beyond the given frames of a text (Lonka 2003, 155f). Experienced academic readers usually read a text with questions in mind and try to relate it to other possible approaches, while inexperienced readers tend to adopt the question of a text and the
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(Tiago Forte calls the highlighting of highlights "progressive summarization.")
Look at the highlights of your highlights and re-write the interesting ones in your own words. You're now turning your fleeting notes into a literature note. It's okay not to summarize every highlight. Only worry about the information you most want to learn or that you can foresee wanting to use in the future.
I dropped qualifiers like "usually" and "tend to," because that fits better the kind of writing I do. That's what makes it "in your own words" – you re-write it as you might write it in a finished piece.
I highlighted (twice) this passage – about choosing keywords for organizing notes – from elsewhere in Ahrens' book: The archivist asks: Which keyword is the most fitting? A writer asks: In which circumstances will I want to stumble upon this note, even if I forget about it?
Now take only the most interesting ideas from the literature notes, and turn each into individual permanent notes. Permanent notes should have one idea per note.
The Folgezettel method is good because it allows every note to have a unique ID, and that ID holds meaning.
The way people choose their keywords shows clearly if they think like an archivist or a writer. Do they wonder where to store a note or how to retrieve it? The archivist asks: Which keyword is the most fitting? A writer asks: In which circumstances will I want to stumble upon this note, even if I forget about it? It is a crucial difference.
The dignity of movement of an ice-berg is due to only one-eighth of it being above water. Hemingway is saying that what you see in a piece of his writing is the tip of the iceberg. There’s more knowledge going on behind the scenes. He’s not telling you everything he knows, yet that knowledge is adding grace and confidence to his writing.
The point of a Zettelkasten is to turn your notes into completed writing. The act of note-taking helps solidify knowledge in your mind, while developing miniature rough drafts you can turn into completed writing.
