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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

#181

Post by estoniandwarf »

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…

For Academic writing like the creator of zettelkasten was, web method is much preferred.

For linear notes, the remedy is not really feasible, you'd have to go through everything thoroughly fixing unlinked notes.

For the 2nd, the 'failure mode' of the web note taker as you describe, that isn't really a problem. Notes are just tools/building blocks to writing or coming up with cohesive ideas/arguments. If you don't know what Y was for, its either irrelevant or you've found a gap in your knowledge you need to plug.

Re: Stop Taking Regular Notes; Use a Zettelkasten Instead

#182

Post by unkulunkulu »

Widdlius wrote: post #140
ZainRiz wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I find that for myself, the ease with which I can take notes depends on the tool that I'm using. I've tried Notion and Zettlr, but both take a bit to get going. Have you used anything that you find well suited for the tasks of either PARA or Zettelkasten?

Pen and paper, there is something about writing and quickly drawing diagrams using the pen that seems to be involving the right parts of my brain that seem to be asleep otherwise.

Re: Stop Taking Regular Notes; Use a Zettelkasten Instead

#183

Post by marvinblum »

Widdlius wrote: post #140
ZainRiz wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I find that for myself, the ease with which I can take notes depends on the tool that I'm using. I've tried Notion and Zettlr, but both take a bit to get going. Have you used anything that you find well suited for the tasks of either PARA or Zettelkasten?

Take a look at Emvi [1]. We wrote about how you can use it as a Zettelkasten [2] even it's not build primarily for that.

[1] https://emvi.com/

[2] https://emvi.com/blog/luhmanns-zettelkasten-a-productivity-t...

Re: Stop Taking Regular Notes; Use a Zettelkasten Instead

#184

Post by marvinblum »

can3p wrote: post #178

I tried roam research and org roam only to find out that the overhead of managing notes quickly started preventing me from taking notes in the first place. Why? Because now instead of just writing down a note I started thinking about what terms do I want to make links and maybe go through previous notes to do the same. Of course you don't have to do that but the whole promise of the system is that the more you connec…

The part about "just write it down" is the most important. Connecting information as you go can add value to the knowledge base, but writing down everything that's important is the first step and the tool you use should support that. I think the book keeping part is more of a personal thing and some people feel that they need to do it and others do not. I for myself "separate" notes into problem domains (when I think about them I have a broader topic in mind) and connect all the notes that belong to the same topic when I see fit. That greatly reduces the book keeping part and I can add connections as I go.

We build Emvi [1] to support that idea if you're interested.

[1] https://emvi.com/

Re: Stop Taking Regular Notes; Use a Zettelkasten Instead

#185

Post by marvinblum »

Gatsky wrote: post #23

This looks interesting, but one potential problem with this method is that you start treating the number of notes or the size of the graph as a success metric. The author even notes how it is 'pleasing' to see their note graph grow in size. This could be a perverse incentive.

I had the same thought. I see these graphs more as a gimmick that look nice but don't provide much insight as soon as they grow to a certain size. The first roam research graphs I saw where completely useless. Only when you zoom in and look at an individual note the connections become clearer.

Re: Stop Taking Regular Notes; Use a Zettelkasten Instead

#186

Post by daniel-levin »

tagh wrote: post #10

It'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…

It’s useful in pure (abstract) math for linking similar proofs. If you can spot some subjective link between proofs (e.g a proof in algebra and a proof in number theory that use essentially the same counting method) then you might be onto a deeper connection. I used this as an undergrad to “borrow” proofs from other areas.

Re: Stop Taking Regular Notes; Use a Zettelkasten Instead

#187

Post by baylessj »

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…

Agreed, I've been using VimWiki as the means for writing my Zettelkasten and I've really enjoyed it. Wrote a post about the experience on my blog here: https://jonathanbayless.com/2020/03/09/zettelkasten-vimwiki....

Re: Stop Taking Regular Notes; Use a Zettelkasten Instead

#190

Post by chrisweekly »

rendall wrote: post #95
themodelplumber wrote: post #57

Earlier 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!

Hi @rendall, in exploring this subject more broadly you may find it useful to search for "metacognition". See also the book "Ultralearning", https://RoamBrain.com, Tiago Forte, NessLabs...
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