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Stop Taking Regular Notes; Use a Zettelkasten Instead

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Re: Stop Taking Regular Notes; Use a Zettelkasten Instead

#161

Post by ErikBjare »

knzhou wrote: post #83

I've taken 3000 pages of notes in a linear, bullet-point fashion, and I also keep up with education research. As far as I can tell, both in studies and in personal experience, the fiddly details of your note-taking schemes don't matter. The only thing that matters is attempting to integrate the information into a cohesive whole, which takes intentional thought. With linear notes, there's a failure mode where links th…

>But with a web, there's an equally bad failure mode where your knowledge gets diffuse and unstructured (instead of "X causes Y if Z", you get "X, Y, and Z are related. But... was Z the thing that caused X? Wait, but then what was Y for?").

Isn't that exactly what the point of a memex-like system is? Instead of simple X-Y links, you get 3-tuples such as (X, "can cause", Y).

Re: Stop Taking Regular Notes; Use a Zettelkasten Instead

#162

Post by vvillena »

M5x7wI3CmbEem10 wrote: post #11

I 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…

Creating a hierarchy of notes using folders can be counterproductive. It will be easy to classify the majority of notes, but some of them will match multiple categories, or even none of them. Unfortunately, those notes are usually the most interesting. Case in point: I have some notes regarding good technical writing, and some notes concerning good Git usage. If I had a hierarchy, the first notes would go under "writing", and the second ones would go under "development". But where would I have filed the notes regarding Git commit messages? I feel like they belong on both categories. Choosing just one of them means ignoring the other. That's why, if you still want to classify some of your tags, I strongly advise to use a tagging system, and to avoid creating note hierarchies.

It can be way more simple: I use one folder for my notes, and another one for my "sources" (linear notes on articles, books, talks, etc). Files have unique filenames (guaranteed because a timestamp is added to the name when they are created). And there's no need for structure, because I open the files with Emacs using Projectile, so I can autocomplete the filenames. If I need to search the contents of the files, full text search is also accessible and quick. All note taking programs have these features, and you don't really need much more.

Re: Stop Taking Regular Notes; Use a Zettelkasten Instead

#163

Post by pundurs »

stippenplan wrote: post #125

Personally, I am a big fan of Vim-Wiki [0]. Provides basic note taking, can be reached anywhere from Vim. It is great for jotting down TODOs, while it is also suited for more substantial, longer thoughts. You can add links to other notes as references, or just for quick navigation. These internal links can then be visualised, to highlight the connection between your notes and thoughts [1]. [0] https://github.com/vimw…

Yeah, agreed about vimwiki. I've been using it as a knowledge base for years, for quick snippets, ideas, article/book synopsis and notes etc. And the fact that you can interlink them conveniently is a big upside.

A question about vimwikigraph while I'm at it - does it work with the markdown syntax? For instance, VimwikiCheckLinks doesn't work for me at all. And the HTML export isn't supported, although that's a minor issue since there are a million tools which can parse markdown into anything.

Re: Stop Taking Regular Notes; Use a Zettelkasten Instead

#164

Post by stippenplan »

pundurs wrote: post #163
stippenplan wrote: post #125

Personally, I am a big fan of Vim-Wiki [0]. Provides basic note taking, can be reached anywhere from Vim. It is great for jotting down TODOs, while it is also suited for more substantial, longer thoughts. You can add links to other notes as references, or just for quick navigation. These internal links can then be visualised, to highlight the connection between your notes and thoughts [1]. [0] https://github.com/vimw…

Yeah, agreed about vimwiki. I've been using it as a knowledge base for years, for quick snippets, ideas, article/book synopsis and notes etc. And the fact that you can interlink them conveniently is a big upside. A question about vimwikigraph while I'm at it - does it work with the markdown syntax? For instance, VimwikiCheckLinks doesn't work for me at all. And the HTML export isn't supported, although that's a minor…

So far it does not support markdown syntax yet. I made it over the weekend, and as my vimwiki uses the vimwiki syntax, I started out with that.

I will add an issue to support markdown as well, I will probably get to it this week.

Re: Stop Taking Regular Notes; Use a Zettelkasten Instead

#165

Post by cycomanic »

read_if_gay_ wrote: post #158
slightwinder wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Believe it or not, but I'm a native speaker and I can say that I've never heard the word in any other context. How is your own lack of knowledge relevant for this? Did you even bother to at least visit https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zettelkasten to educate yourself first? > The usual word is "Karteikasten", That is a modern synonym, but not quite the same. This is more specific for organized indexboxes. > "(Lern-)Ka…

You’re defending the claim that Zettelkasten is a commonly used word. You do that by smugly telling GP they need to go to Wikipedia to educate themselves about it. I guess that nicely proves their point?

He is correct though, just because the GP has not heard of it doesn't mean it isn't commonly used. I'm also a German native speaker and I agree the term Zettelkasten is more common than Karteikasten. I encountered Zettelkasten when I was in high-school a long time ago. That said the way I've encountered it was always more as a study tool (like flashcards, or the vokabelkarten/box the GP mentioned ) not so much for note taking, but then that's what you do in high-school.

Re: Stop Taking Regular Notes; Use a Zettelkasten Instead

#166

Post by dghf »

IIRC, Robert Pirsig (author of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance) described pretty much exactly this method of taking and organising notes on index cards in Lila, his 1991 follow-up to Zen ....

Does anyone know whether Pirsig got the idea from Luhmann, Luhmann from Pirsig, both from someone else, or if both invented it independently?

Re: Stop Taking Regular Notes; Use a Zettelkasten Instead

#167

Post by [deleted] »

slightwinder wrote: post #133
Tomte wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Believe it or not, but I'm a native speaker and I can say that I've never heard the word in any other context. 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".

> Believe it or not, but I'm a native speaker and I can say that I've never heard the word in any other context. How is your own lack of knowledge relevant for this? Did you even bother to at least visit https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zettelkasten to educate yourself first? > The usual word is "Karteikasten", That is a modern synonym, but not quite the same. This is more specific for organized indexboxes. > "(Lern-)Ka…

[deleted]

Re: Stop Taking Regular Notes; Use a Zettelkasten Instead

#168

Post by slightwinder »

read_if_gay_ wrote: post #158
slightwinder wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Believe it or not, but I'm a native speaker and I can say that I've never heard the word in any other context. How is your own lack of knowledge relevant for this? Did you even bother to at least visit https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zettelkasten to educate yourself first? > The usual word is "Karteikasten", That is a modern synonym, but not quite the same. This is more specific for organized indexboxes. > "(Lern-)Ka…

You’re defending the claim that Zettelkasten is a commonly used word. You do that by smugly telling GP they need to go to Wikipedia to educate themselves about it. I guess that nicely proves their point?

No, because nobody can know everything. Even common knowledge is not so common that everyone knows all and the same. And the mention of wikipedia was more to show the usage and origin of this, not how common or uncommon it is. Because that's not really mentioned there.

Re: Stop Taking Regular Notes; Use a Zettelkasten Instead

#169

Post by vvillena »

kitd wrote: post #103

Does this work well for teams? Or does anyone know of a version of this that would do so? I work on a large K8s-based project. Each person may know a lot about one small part of it, but when they need to find out about an unfamiliar part, they need to trawl through Slack messages or Github issues. I could see something like this being really useful, assuming everyone is disciplined in using it.

Isn't that what wikis are for? Just remember to avoid creating hierarchies, and focus on making information accessible in 2 ways: search, and links between pages.

Re: Stop Taking Regular Notes; Use a Zettelkasten Instead

#170

Post by boraoztunc »

Cogito wrote: post #124

I have no idea what system they used (if any) but this reminded me a lot of how 'Every Frame a Painting' [0] described their note-taking when watching films. One of the best parts of their videos was that every technique they were describing had multiple examples from often very different genres, or directors, or periods. The assumption was that they managed to keep all those connections in their head, but the realit…

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