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Stop Taking Regular Notes; Use a Zettelkasten Instead

eugeneyan.com

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Re: Stop Taking Regular Notes; Use a Zettelkasten Instead

#221

Post by sethammons »

gas9S9zw3P9c wrote: post #212
henrikeh wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

By using tools for this you will inevitably spend additional time organizing, tagging, and summarizing notes, most of which is probably a waste of time. The article has a pretty good example of this > I find watching how this knowledge graph grows satisfying Yep, it's satisfying. Because it's procrastination and gives you the illusion of "being in control" - just like engaging in social media is satisfying. Or cleani…

For me, I am a hand-written note taker. Action items, insights, situation summaries, interesting thoughts or quotes. They are rough and often hastily written. Some numbers of days later, I review all of them and transcribe important notes to a nicer notebook. This allows for some spaced repetition and ensures I don’t miss action items. Way less frequently, I review my nicer notes. Anything still relevant gets rewritten and pulled forward in the notebook. I spend less than fifteen minutes a week on this. This isn’t procrastination, it is organization that ensures I don’t forget important and not yet completed things. I later learned of bullet journaling. Mine is similar in spirit but waaaaay less formal or structured.

Re: Stop Taking Regular Notes; Use a Zettelkasten Instead

#222

Post by qwerty456127 »

By the way, what I hate about most of the note-taking apps is they usually require or push you to give every note a title. C'mon, people, do you invent a title for every note you would write on a paper or a sticky?

The same is relevant to e-mail subjects: i many cases the subject is wide, volatile or plain lacking. It often happens the actual contents of an email I receive has nothing to do with what's there in the subject field.

Re: Stop Taking Regular Notes; Use a Zettelkasten Instead

#223

Post by hypertexthero »

Creativity is just connecting things together.

Consider paper and pencil or ink when away from a computer.

Consider the simplest notes application that supports a wiki linking system when on a computer.

For the latter I like [nvAlt][n] which lets you write [[this]] to create a link to and a note titled ‘this’, and I hope Simplenote [implements wikilinks functionality][s] at some point.

[n]:https://brettterpstra.com/projects/nvalt/

[s]:https://github.com/Automattic/simplenote-macos/issues/185

Re: Stop Taking Regular Notes; Use a Zettelkasten Instead

#224

Post by dhimes »

omginternets wrote: post #220

I've come to realize that: 1. 80% note-taking value is in writing the info down in *any* form. 2. 19% is in re-reading your notes. Moreover, you'll evolve a loose/informal system if you stick with it long enough. You'll learn to read your past self. That's presumably what Herr Luhmann did. Note-taking changed my life. I urge people to stop chasing perfection and just get started.

The power of any system comes when you re-organize the information in your own mind. Reviewing might be enough to allow your brain to do it automatically, but you can also force the process with things like concept-maps and, apparently, this system (which seems to be a type of concept map- but I've not used it so I'm not sure).

Re: Stop Taking Regular Notes; Use a Zettelkasten Instead

#226

Post by fsiefken »

sjy wrote: post #69
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…

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…

Another TiddlyWiki fan here, I used to use DevonThink - which is pretty awesome, but less portable - it only runs on MacOS and has a barebones web frontend. I could carry or host my OSX VM anywhere, and use VNC or such, but TiddlyWiki is much more portable as it is a self-contained html+js file running in the browser. I loose functionality, but there's search, tagging, linking and listing and a ton of plugins. It's good enough. I used to think of the file system text file route as well, and there is this vimwiki, but as I'm used to browsing and looking up information in the browser TiddlyWiki is more convenient, and I can use SVG, mindmaps and diagrams. Emacs could be used to with the convenience of org-mode. There is also org-brain... all this is nice but is a bit more work and a bit less portable.

Regarding the potential slowing and bloating of TiddlyWiki, there is this filesystem plugin to link to local external images and documents. I use as much plain text, icons and svg diagrams as possible. I also segment several tiddlywiki's - perhaps at most 7. Now I use:

* 'VR oriented development, which is very broad and can include WebXR, UE4, Quill, C++, C#, hardware, game development, cyborg antropology, psychology

* Spirituality (meditation, christian theology, hindu tantra and buddhist philosophy) and health

* Family and friends, non-violent communication

* Tasks, notetaking, journaling, habits - including shadow work journaling (semi-spiritual/psychological practice). Work or private related, there is no seperation.

Ideally TiddlyWiki could be mounted in a FUSE-like filesystem manner, more intuitive search operators or had built-in compression to make it even more speedy but it's good enough, just like my tweaked dvorak. Perfect doesn't exist. I don't complain, I love it! I can use it on my phone and on my Quest as well.

If one day my browser grinds to a halt due to a 20 Mbyte TiddliWiki I'll think of a solution then. I think at most I'm at 16 tiddlers a day on average.

Re: Stop Taking Regular Notes; Use a Zettelkasten Instead

#227

Post by bogwog »

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…

> if your goal is to learn a new programming language, I don't see Zettelkasten being particularly helpful

I started using one to learn Erlang, and have found it incredibly helpful. Going down a wikipedia-style rabbit hole of my own notes is cool, like I'm exploring my own brain. Sometimes I completely forget how something works, and when I look up the note I took I just have to read a few of my own words to immediately remember it all.

I will say though that progress actually feels pretty slow compared to my usual strategy of just reading through books and articles once or twice, and then web searching whenever I forget something. But I guess that just has more to do with meticulous note-taking in general rather than the "zettelkasten" thing.

> you've already grokked a a for loop in other languages, and you gain nothing by creating a new linked note under the 'for loop construct' heading

So don't do that. Your notes are for you and you only. If you write useless notes, then the notes will be useless. Just write down what you think you might have trouble remembering later.

Re: Stop Taking Regular Notes; Use a Zettelkasten Instead

#228

Post by mumblemumble »

browningstreet wrote: post #219
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’ve worked with a few very successful business people. What was common among them was they wrote things down (frequently, but a little, not a lot) and had excellent recall. They wrote on anything handy, and discarded when done. Their systems were mostly disposable. They didn’t create libraries of notes. I’m technical, self-employed, with an academic background. I’m very tempted by systems (I often think of the book…

Two random thoughts:

First, one of my high schools had a workshop on how to study. One of the things they encouraged us to do is to take notes, but only a moderate amount of them. Some amount of note-taking can have a huge positive impact on memory and retention. But overdoing it is actually harmful. It's overwhelming.

The other is that, if there's one thing I really like from name-brand Scrum, it's the idea that you should strive to make each decision no more than once. Lots of deep deep planning ahead tends to maximize the amount of effort you burn on re-making decisions. And the decisions that are most vulnerable to this effect are the ones that you made the furthest ahead of time.

Re: Stop Taking Regular Notes; Use a Zettelkasten Instead

#229

Post by BeetleB »

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…

> 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.

I admit not reading the article fully - I scanned it and it's not that great. But I'd like to ask - why relate ZK with "getting stuff done"? That's not a selling point of Zettelkasten and seems like misplaced criticism.

ZK is for academics. And while I don't know any personally who used it, I do know plenty who have some sort of extended note system, and the correlation to their success is not low.

And since ZK is becoming more popular, like so many other comments, I would caution people in not expecting too much from it. It is a lot of work. I used to (and still try to) keep notes on my computer for everything I study - done in the "inefficient" manner, and it is very time consuming. ZK requires more effort than that. You can't just dump notes in the system and have it work out. For every note you add, you need to ponder over what other related notes you already have, and explicitly link them. This is not fun and it is "expensive".

I read an account from one academic who started using ZK in his grad school years. He said something similar: It is a lot of effort, and he said most of the real gains happened after he'd collected notes for eight years - then things took off for him.

> I see a similar trend with org-mode users. It's great and all on a technical level (I've used it myself in the past) but it's easy to fall into the elisp and customization rabbit hole.

OK - now the gloves come off :-)

Most org mode users don't know elisp. I didn't for almost my first decade of using it. And people only stick to org mode because it is fairly successful for them. I use it extensively to author documents (be it for Word, HTML, LaTeX, Reveal, Beamer, etc). Except for a few PPTs, I haven't authored in any other system for over a decade.

I use it for taking notes, and nothing has replaced it since I started. I often refer to notes I took years ago.

I'll admit I haven't used it well enough as a TODO system and this is likely where people may get stuck tinkering.

I use it as a logging tool (weights, people I've met and when, etc) and it's great.

I use it for literate programming. Awesome - especially when learning a new language. I have code snippets, with evaluated results all in the same document.

All my blog's content is authored in one org document and exported to individual pages. I tried many blogging systems in the past and this is the only one I stick to.

Org mode is just amazing.

Re: Stop Taking Regular Notes; Use a Zettelkasten Instead

#230

Post by omginternets »

dhimes wrote: post #224
omginternets wrote: post #220

I've come to realize that: 1. 80% note-taking value is in writing the info down in *any* form. 2. 19% is in re-reading your notes. Moreover, you'll evolve a loose/informal system if you stick with it long enough. You'll learn to read your past self. That's presumably what Herr Luhmann did. Note-taking changed my life. I urge people to stop chasing perfection and just get started.

The power of any system comes when you re-organize the information in your own mind. Reviewing might be enough to allow your brain to do it automatically, but you can also force the process with things like concept-maps and, apparently, this system (which seems to be a type of concept map- but I've not used it so I'm not sure).

Again, from one internet stranger to another, it has been my experience that:

1. Writing & reviewing notes is forcing the process. It is not automatic.

2. Specialized methods don't generalize well.

3. Personalized methods/notations/styles emerge naturally.

4. Nothing beats pencil-and-paper (with a lot of sketches).

5. Chasing "more efficient note-taking" is grossly counter-productive.

YMMV.

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