Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Stop Taking Regular Notes; Use a Zettelkasten Instead

eugeneyan.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

201–210 of 309 posts

Re: Stop Taking Regular Notes; Use a Zettelkasten Instead

#201

Post by criddell »

nojito wrote: post #154
vijucat wrote: post #92

OneNote's Linked Notes Taking does exactly this. You can combine it with the "Dock to Desktop" / Docked Window feature which makes it hijack a part of the desktop space (to the RHS, typically) so that you can continue to take notes while reviewing stuff on the LHS. The window on the LHS can be another OneNote window (or one of the other Office applications), and as you type in the RHS, docked window, sentences are au…

Linked notes are amazing because they instantly give you context to your notes. OneNote is easily the best note taking app out there.

Does OneNote generate back links? If I pull up a note, I'd like to see not just the notes it links to, but also the notes that link to it. It's probably the one thing I wish Evernote would add.

Re: Stop Taking Regular Notes; Use a Zettelkasten Instead

#202

Post by kitd »

vvillena wrote: post #169
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.

Wikis get you most of the way there, but they're missing tagging, which is the differentiating feature of Zettelkasten, it seems to me.

Tags provide a semi-structured index into unstructured data, making searching and sorting much easier.

Maybe a extension for GH wikis would work.

Re: Stop Taking Regular Notes; Use a Zettelkasten Instead

#203

Post by detaro »

kitd wrote: post #202
vvillena wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Wikis get you most of the way there, but they're missing tagging, which is the differentiating feature of Zettelkasten, it seems to me. Tags provide a semi-structured index into unstructured data, making searching and sorting much easier. Maybe a extension for GH wikis would work.

Most wiki systems have categories you can use like tags and the ability to list pages linking a page, which you can also can use for tags (i.e. if you want to use the category mechanism for hierarchical categories).

Re: Stop Taking Regular Notes; Use a Zettelkasten Instead

#205

Post by johnminter »

One needs to find a note-taking tool that fits one's workflow. I do a lot of analysis using R and compose many documents in Rmarkdown using R-Studio. I keep a git repository with "tips" - one Rmarkdown document per subject area and master document that links all the others. I can access my notes from any computer and it is easy to keep them in sync. Like Zettelkasten's creator, writing (and editing) these help refine my thinking.

Re: Stop Taking Regular Notes; Use a Zettelkasten Instead

#207

Post by FalconSensei »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #121
meagher wrote: post #22

People love doing things that feel like work, but aren’t. I’m terrified of picking up new systems like this without having a purpose. I could spend hours building out a graph, admiring all of MY knowledge, but not really have any intended use for it other than telling others about it and how I’m going to use it someday.

Same; I've been using various note taking approaches over the years, but my "problem" is that I rarely actually have to go back to a note, they are usually only relevant for one task like e.g. writing a blog post or implementing a feature. So while I'd like to retain my knowledge and research somewhere, at the same time I don't actually use it??? But some writing I've done that will be relevant in the next years is w…

I would say that one of the goals of note taking is to make it so that you don't need to go back to them. If you write notes about a book you read, not copy-pasting the exact quotes, but writing your understanding, you'll be more likely to remember it later. And if, at some point you want to remember more, then you actually go to the note and check.

Re: Stop Taking Regular Notes; Use a Zettelkasten Instead

#208

Post by henrikeh »

gas9S9zw3P9c wrote: post #196

This seems to be a new trend now. I'm skeptical. Many of the most successful people I know don't have complicated systems like this - instead of spending time on optimizing note taking, they actually get stuff done. In fact, many don't have systems at all. On the other side, most people raving about the systems are "productivity gurus" writing articles and books, not people who actually get stuff done or would be con…

I think your skepticism and concern is well placed -- the output is what matters. But I'm a little confused about one aspect: what is it that you perceive as "complicated" and "complex" in this? Genuinely curious and not meant to be snarky.

Re: Stop Taking Regular Notes; Use a Zettelkasten Instead

#209

Post by marttt »

gas9S9zw3P9c wrote: post #196

This seems to be a new trend now. I'm skeptical. Many of the most successful people I know don't have complicated systems like this - instead of spending time on optimizing note taking, they actually get stuff done. In fact, many don't have systems at all. On the other side, most people raving about the systems are "productivity gurus" writing articles and books, not people who actually get stuff done or would be con…

This kind of links to Alan Kay's insights on remembering content: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11809285

Same thread, on not taking notes, but capturing ideas: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11852959

I'm a long time Luhmannian Zettelkasten fan, but thus far all my efforts on keeping one myself have failed. I still admire this method, though; maybe it's just optimized for a different brain than mine. I have had better success with Lion Kimbro's latest (2004-ish, I think) method for indexing paper notebooks. Thanks to a short correspondence with him (really nice guy!), I even dug up his blog posts on that:

https://web.archive.org/web/20130304042318/http://lion.poste...

https://web.archive.org/web/20130304042836/http://lion.poste...

He outlines his "new" method more thoroughly and with images in the book "Mindhacker" by Ron & Marty Hale-Evans (Hack no 17 - Write Magnificient Notes).

Kimbro's eralier book "How to Make a Complete Map of Every Thought You Think" has been on HN earlier, eg: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8078819

All in all, I suppose it is just a matter of whether someone is a "free-form guy" or tends to prefer more complex, e.g. hierarchical notes. I would like to be more systematic, but I guess in reality I am not.

I want to think that for me the perfect note taking technique is a well built-up "memory palace" + guilt-free forgetting. In other words, taking as little written notes as possible and retaining important things in my head as visual (often metaphorical) images. There is a world where that would keep all relevant ideas and connections always floating on top. And everything irrelevant would magically sink to the bottom of my brain. How easy. Unfortunately I have yet to visit that world.

Re: Stop Taking Regular Notes; Use a Zettelkasten Instead

#210

Post by miki123211 »

99% of the notetaking tools I've tried were completely inaccessible for screen readers.

In the end, I went with a much simpler, zettelkasten-like approach. All my notes are stored in a single wiki.txt file, stored on Dropbox for easy editing and in Git for history and as a backup. The file has very little formatting, two blank lines to separate notes, a line surrounded by single blank lines for headings and a "-" for lists. New notes are always appended at the end, and my journal for the current day is always my last note. That makes it very easy to append stuff there.

I use hashtags for organization. If I consider a note relevant to an idea, i just put #ideaName in there, wherever it fits. I find connections by searching for #ideaName via the search box of my text editor.

The system is very simple, very portable and works pretty well for me.

Post reply on HN