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The Zettelkasten Method (2019)

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Re: The Zettelkasten Method (2019)

#81

Post by AlanYx »

twic wrote: post #65
bodge5000 wrote: post #21

Time for the daily/weekly/monthly note taking and productivity thread! On a serious note, I actually like these threads. Earlier in the year I decided to look into better note taking and task management, and it became an entire month of me gradually becoming more and more stressed about it. HN was actually a great source for this, mostly because a lot of the people on here seem a bit less "into it" than dedicated sou…

Who is the audience for these threads? The only time in my life i've taken substantial quantities of notes was when i was a student. When i've had a job, the learning i do isn't the kind where i'm making copious notes. Are there a lot of students on HN? Are there a lot of people doing out-of-hours study? Do people make lots of notes at work? Is this productivity LARP?

To a large extent it probably depends on the nature of your work. I found that once I transitioned to more horizontal roles at work, taking good, organized notes became more essential.

I don't think the specific system matters all that much though. The recent popularity of Zettelkasten is not really about systems per se as much as it is about recognizing that being able to refer to other things, or tell what other things refer to the current thing, is valuable. For people who just sort their e-mails into Outlook folders and have never thought more deeply about any of this, it is often a helpful shift in one's mental model.

Re: The Zettelkasten Method (2019)

#82

Post by aaldrick »

yesenadam wrote: post #41

This sounds very similar to a paper version of what I do with LaTeX PDF books. I constantly am typing and pasting stuff into a notes .txt file–every idea I have, anything I don't want to forget, anything I learn, URLS, names of books/movies etc. Then every few weeks I move stuff from the notes file to a place in a LaTeX PDF book, mainly the current year's book, then others split off as they get big enough, e.g. progr…

This sounds right up my alley - one question: do you use this books are reference in the future to help cement your learning? I feel like I would also end up never looking in them again just like you mentioned with the physical notebooks.

Re: The Zettelkasten Method (2019)

#83

Post by chrisbai »

My Zettelkasten and secure note-taking tool is Passfindr. My sketch book is a Moleskine notebook.

Most of my notes are URLs, micro-notes, ideas, login credentials for online and other accounts, addresses and everything between. Lots of micro documents. Some of the notes are 20+ years old. Finding these notes and finding them fast is crucial. Passfindr does that with ease and I get information faster than anything else. Fast searching/finding matters. Once you get the idea behind the internal about: commands, you can even enhance the searching and finding capabilities and build your own Zettelkasten.

Re: The Zettelkasten Method (2019)

#84

Post by andi999 »

dSebastien wrote: post #61
sdoering wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I strongly believe one can't understand this method and the sheer amount of effort necessary to consistently tend to this system and keep it alive (like Luhmann) did without the deep explanations and also at least diving into the examples of Luhmann's zettelkasten as it is digitalized. Nonetheless - I also do not believe, that a lot of people would benefit from the zettelkasten system. It has in my opinion a very nar…

I personally look at this method (and others) as means to help keeping track of discoveries and knowledge in general. I believe that it is useful for all knowledge workers, but especially for academics & content creators.

Looks to me only good for academics who can discover new things from old texts. Not sure how it help Stem research.

Re: The Zettelkasten Method (2019)

#85

Post by pbhjpbhj »

CraigJPerry wrote: post #5

I tried hard to like this, i still have my “second brain” collection in onenote (which worked surprisingly well across linux, Windows & mac) but i don’t add to it anymore. However PARA has just proven more ergonomic and far less time consuming for me. https://fortelabs.co/blog/para/ 1. I don’t waste time trying to eek out atomic thoughts, PARA is a more pragmatic idea - if some bit of knowledge proves useful it will…

How do you run OneNote on Linux, just via browser or ...? Can you 'print to OneNote'?

Re: The Zettelkasten Method (2019)

#86

Post by binnyva »

caser wrote: post #79

If anyone is interested, I'm currently starting a weekly ZK meetup on Zoom w/ a few founder friends who want to dive into the method. Format is: * 15 mins - check in on your workflow * 30 mins - work on your ZK (write notes, refactor, etc.) * 15 mins - set ZK goals for upcoming week and discuss tactics If you're interested in joining, drop me a quick note to the email in my profile with a bit about yourself and exper…

I'm interested in this - and there is no email in your profile.

Re: The Zettelkasten Method (2019)

#87

Post by exolymph »

twic wrote: post #65
bodge5000 wrote: post #21

Time for the daily/weekly/monthly note taking and productivity thread! On a serious note, I actually like these threads. Earlier in the year I decided to look into better note taking and task management, and it became an entire month of me gradually becoming more and more stressed about it. HN was actually a great source for this, mostly because a lot of the people on here seem a bit less "into it" than dedicated sou…

Who is the audience for these threads? The only time in my life i've taken substantial quantities of notes was when i was a student. When i've had a job, the learning i do isn't the kind where i'm making copious notes. Are there a lot of students on HN? Are there a lot of people doing out-of-hours study? Do people make lots of notes at work? Is this productivity LARP?

If I don't write down everything I need to do, I will forget 1/4 of it, sometimes including crucial or time-sensitive items. Same goes for context, info that needs to be included in X deliverable, etc.

Re: The Zettelkasten Method (2019)

#88

Post by mekoka »

twic wrote: post #65
bodge5000 wrote: post #21

Time for the daily/weekly/monthly note taking and productivity thread! On a serious note, I actually like these threads. Earlier in the year I decided to look into better note taking and task management, and it became an entire month of me gradually becoming more and more stressed about it. HN was actually a great source for this, mostly because a lot of the people on here seem a bit less "into it" than dedicated sou…

Who is the audience for these threads? The only time in my life i've taken substantial quantities of notes was when i was a student. When i've had a job, the learning i do isn't the kind where i'm making copious notes. Are there a lot of students on HN? Are there a lot of people doing out-of-hours study? Do people make lots of notes at work? Is this productivity LARP?

One may embrace and become more dedicated to a note taking practice after realizing how much useful information would've been lost had they not jotted down some notes. It stems from a deeper acknowledgment of the limitations of the mind and the practicality of the pencil.

Taking your question from the reverse perspective, we can say that one does not take notes for at least one of two reasons, either because they think they can afford to forget the information they've already spent time to acquire, or they trust their mind to recall enough of it when they'll need to.

Re: The Zettelkasten Method (2019)

#89

Post by fouric »

Fredvk wrote: post #18
gexla wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems like we see this everywhere. Bob is highly productive and comes up with a "system" which he uses to be productive. Bob probably would have been productive with any other system, he's just a productive guy. Joe reads Bob's book and picks up this system thinking he'll be just like Bob. The story ends with Joe giving up on his dreams and taking a day job entering data into spreadsheets. Bob was smart though, he ma…

I feel like i have been Joe before and still am to some degree, are you just born as bob or are there actual fundamental things one can do to be more like bob ?

I suspect that you can go from being Joe to being Bob just by thinking. At least, that's what happened to me - I read David Allen's book Getting Thing Done, and then over a few years of trying to figure out why the GTD system wasn't quite working for me, I slowly re-invented the Zettelkasten system.

(I thought that I was on to something big, and then had quite a shock when I saw it hit the front page of HN)

To clarify: by "thinking" I mean "thoughtful analysis and introspection" - that is, if you're not being productive, or if you're not able to organize your thoughts, actually sit down and think really hard about it until you start getting a better understanding of your problems and ideas to fix them.

My personal observations of those around me seem to indicate a pattern where those who aren't productive haven't done any analysis as to why (although I know many productive people who haven't done any analysis either).

Re: The Zettelkasten Method (2019)

#90

Post by yesenadam »

aaldrick wrote: post #82
yesenadam wrote: post #41

This sounds very similar to a paper version of what I do with LaTeX PDF books. I constantly am typing and pasting stuff into a notes .txt file–every idea I have, anything I don't want to forget, anything I learn, URLS, names of books/movies etc. Then every few weeks I move stuff from the notes file to a place in a LaTeX PDF book, mainly the current year's book, then others split off as they get big enough, e.g. progr…

This sounds right up my alley - one question: do you use this books are reference in the future to help cement your learning? I feel like I would also end up never looking in them again just like you mentioned with the physical notebooks.

Hi. Well..for me, it's more like reminding/relearning than cementing! Like am currently into Forth for the third time within a few years. I forgot just about everything. Rereading that chapter was the best refresher course I could imagine. And I'll add the stuff I'm learning now to the chapter.

But the answer is different for each book. I guess the ones I look in least are the past year books, as I'm still adding to the other specific topic books, but still I sometimes search in them for something. Anyway, they're like gold for me, like the diary I kept 1992-recently – without it I wouldn't have a clue what I was doing or thinking in a particular year. They only increase in value, the longer you don't look in them!

I've been into so many different things, and am only capable of 1 or 2 at a time, so I cycle back to them (a)periodically. Before I had to rely on my memory. (I do have a filing cabinet full of photocopied books and academic papers that I very rarely look into) I did always keep a paper diary, but I didn't put the kind of stuff that would go in notebooks in there.

In the front of each book is a short contents with just chapter names, then detailed contents (thanks to shorttoc package), everything clickable. Or sometimes scrolling through looking at the pictures is faster. So, I can find stuff very quickly.

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