Are Zettelkasten the latest Hipster fad? A fortnight or so ago, I saw a link on HN mentioning 'Zettelkasten' and had to look up the word, because I'd never heard it before. Since then, there must have been a Zettelkasten reference at least every other day.
Stop Taking Regular Notes; Use a Zettelkasten Instead
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Re: Stop Taking Regular Notes; Use a Zettelkasten Instead
#112Re: Stop Taking Regular Notes; Use a Zettelkasten Instead
#113> Zettelkasten is German for “slip-box”. It originates from German sociologist Niklas Luhmann. Should this implicate that Luhmann invented Noteboxes? Because this is absolute not the case. There are many famous Zettelkaesten from famous people. The most famous might be the Mundaneum, a kind of wikipedia in noteboxes, from around 1900. What Luhmann did was adding basic hypertext-principles to a common note-taking-tool…
"Zettelkasten" is a terminus technicus for the specific method Luhmann used. Nobody claims that Luhmann invented rectangular paper. That word isn't in general use in German, and it's certainly not in general use in English. So I don't see any confusion.
No, it is not. The term was already around decades before Luhmanns birth.
> That word isn't in general use in German
Wrong.
Re: Stop Taking Regular Notes; Use a Zettelkasten Instead
#114Are Zettelkasten the latest Hipster fad? A fortnight or so ago, I saw a link on HN mentioning 'Zettelkasten' and had to look up the word, because I'd never heard it before. Since then, there must have been a Zettelkasten reference at least every other day.
Feels more like viral marketing for Roam than anything.
Re: Stop Taking Regular Notes; Use a Zettelkasten Instead
#115Earlier quoted context omitted.
You're in a perceptive loop concerning this particular object (systems like this) then. You see future-self behaving as past-self did. You can keep doing that, looping. People who are natural contingency planners do this all the time--they map their past onto future-self. Flexing this muscle because it's strongest. However this is also a good way of preventing yourself from re-exploring new objects through a differen…
This is a pretty astonishing insight! @themodelplumber1 do you have more information about this? Either a blog post you have written, or a book you read (or wrote!) on the topic? Edit: ... and I checked out your profile and bookmarked your blog in my feed reader. Awesome!
Re: Stop Taking Regular Notes; Use a Zettelkasten Instead
#116It's important to keep in mind that Zettelkasten's creator was an academic in the humanities. When I tried this system, I found it really shone when my goal was literature review -- i.e. to weave together arguments from disparate sources and articles, particularly when there was no quantitative or numeric way to do that weaving (e.g. in a table). I think that more technical and quantitative subjects do not benefit as…
> you gain nothing by creating a new linked note under the 'for loop construct' heading. Just do some practice problems instead! This is when you are learning very basics and not equivalent of literature review. The proper equivalent would be doing overview of current frameworks. Or learning about bitcoin where you are going through math, design, algorithm, economics considerations and social consideration. Or securi…
Or simply linking libraries to ideas for applications, and explaining how they fit together to provide end user functionality.
Re: Stop Taking Regular Notes; Use a Zettelkasten Instead
#117Earlier quoted context omitted.
"Zettelkasten" is a terminus technicus for the specific method Luhmann used. Nobody claims that Luhmann invented rectangular paper. That word isn't in general use in German, and it's certainly not in general use in English. So I don't see any confusion.
> Zettelkasten" is a terminus technicus for the specific method Luhmann used. No, it is not. The term was already around decades before Luhmanns birth. > That word isn't in general use in German Wrong.
Despite the fact that the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leitner_system was pushed by just about every teacher.
The usual word is "Karteikasten", "(Lern-)Kartei" oder "Vokabelbox".
Re: Stop Taking Regular Notes; Use a Zettelkasten Instead
#118I searched for hours for a viable Zettelkasten method: org-mode, vim-org, TiddlyWiki, Roam, Notion, Joplin, Notable, Obsidian, Zettlr. All of them were too complex, and not lightweight, cross-compatible, private/secure, or futureproof enough. I decided to settle on the default MacOS editor using a mix of .txt/.rtf files, with extensive folder organization and the built-in tagging system. I plan on consolidating journ…
Would you mind sharing what caused you to abandon TiddlyWiki? I like the look of Notion and Roam, but I don’t like SaaS. I’m a few weeks into customising a TiddlyWiki instance and I am becoming quite committed to it. It seems to have the right balance of out-of-the-box functionality and customisability for me. But I am a little apprehensive about finding that it gets slow after a few years of use, or something like t…
Re: Stop Taking Regular Notes; Use a Zettelkasten Instead
#119It's important to keep in mind that Zettelkasten's creator was an academic in the humanities. When I tried this system, I found it really shone when my goal was literature review -- i.e. to weave together arguments from disparate sources and articles, particularly when there was no quantitative or numeric way to do that weaving (e.g. in a table). I think that more technical and quantitative subjects do not benefit as…
I tried Zettelkasten a few months ago and I found a lot of what you said to be true. It also has a serious upfront labor overhead that really makes it hard to stick with. Then I discovered Building a Second Brain and it's P.A.R.A. method which was like Just-in-Time Zettelkasten and it's suddenly become a cornerstone of my productivity routine. I compare the two approaches in this blog post: I recently studied both Ze…
Re: Stop Taking Regular Notes; Use a Zettelkasten Instead
#120I'm also developing a CLI script to visualize your zettelkasten[1]. I mainly use it to print stats, like the number of connected components and find orphaned notes.