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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

#291

Post by zeveb »

M5x7wI3CmbEem10 wrote: post #278
zeveb wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I searched for hours for a viable Zettelkasten method: org-mode, vim-org, TiddlyWiki, Roam, Notion, Joplin, Notable, Obsidian, Zettlr. Org mode works well, but honestly what works the absolute best in my experience are actual slips of paper in a slipcase — or 'index cards,' to use the colloquial term. I find that physically writing words with a pen aids memory, and the little notebooks that I form over time (I punc…

yes, but how would you link notes, then?

> how would you link notes, then?

I number each slip when I create it, and when I need to reference it I just write [$NUMBER].

I started with a slip numbered 1. I add a new numeral whenever the topic is sufficiently different from any other topic. When a slip fits in with an existing topic, I insert it between cards, giving it a letter. So if 1 were programming languages, maybe 1a is Lisp. Then if I need to move a level down I just go back to numerals: maybe 1d3 is some notes on a Lua interpreter.

But I don't get too hung up on the numbers: as long as similar slips are just somewhat near one another, that's good enough. The goal is to accidentally run into similar thoughts (otherwise one could just number them sequentially, and not worry that card 1,467 is a Lua compiler and 1,468 is a recipe for mutton).

Re: Stop Taking Regular Notes; Use a Zettelkasten Instead

#292

Post by goktugk97 »

I would say if your workflow is not research-centric where you only implement software, these kinds of methods are not necessary. Only simple note-taking would suffice to ease your brain.

On the contrary, if you are reading papers and doing research, taking notes in a meaningful way is more helpful than you would realize. The human brain tends to skip information while reading and you only realize you didn't actually understand that part when you try to write it yourself. The note-taking part doesn't actually take that much brain resources. I am not a native English speaker but I am taking my notes in English. While taking my notes I don't care about grammar or anything, I just read and write what I understood. When I finish the paper and I am comfortable with the topic, I return to my notes, fix grammars and, link them with my other notes. For example, sometimes I come up with a research idea, I make a note about it. In the future, while reading a paper, I realize some of the techniques that are described in the paper might be beneficial to that idea so I link them together.

In conclusion, it really depends on your area of work whether to take regular notes or Zettelkasten notes. Forcing your workflow to these methods might hurt your productivity but if you are a researcher I can say, it will be beneficial.

I recommend reading "How to take smart notes" book if you are interested in the topic.

I am using https://github.com/org-roam/org-roam to take my notes, https://github.com/org-roam/org-roam-server to visualize it.

Re: Stop Taking Regular Notes; Use a Zettelkasten Instead

#293

Post by poutrathor »

erikig wrote: post #85
Normille wrote: post #49

Are Zettelkasten the latest Hipster fad? A fortnight or so ago, I saw a link on HN mentioning 'Zettelkasten' and had to look up the word, because I'd never heard it before. Since then, there must have been a Zettelkasten reference at least every other day.

Baader-Meinhof Phenomenon or Frequency Illusion is the phenomenon where something you recently learned suddenly appears everywhere

https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=2010-05-03%202...

There is renewed interest.

Re: Stop Taking Regular Notes; Use a Zettelkasten Instead

#294

Post by kragen »

marttt wrote: post #216
kragen wrote: post #104

Maybe a description of my notetaking practice will be useful to others. I don't know if this is strictly a "Zettelkasten" or not. My note box for the last little while is Dercuano: http://canonical.org/~kragen/dercuano . The notes are longer than a single index card (there are 882 notes averaging about 1300 words each), and they are hierarchically organized into sections and subsections. They often include links to o…

Very interesting. I suppose when you use this every day, you actually won't get "lost" within it. Also, this kind of links to the One Big Text File idea (discussed here and there quite often in around 2005-2006, see e.g. http://www.matthewcornell.org/blog/2005/8/21/my-big-arse-tex... ).

Yeah, Danny O'Brien is a friend of mine, and we discussed the idea a bit at the time. I feel like it might be easier to not get lost with the file divided into units smaller than a megabyte though. Does org-mode scale up to files with 10,000 headings?

Re: Stop Taking Regular Notes; Use a Zettelkasten Instead

#295

Post by kragen »

nextos wrote: post #250
julianeon wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know elisp and I never use it for org-mode. Actually all of my use of org-mode can be summarized in this short comment. I use org-mode as 'outline mode.' I only do this with it: * asterisk denotes a level * asterisk next to an asterisk denotes a sub-level of a level * sublevels can have sublevels, effectively making them a level, by the above rules Then you press tab to expand a level or sub-level, press tab again…

org-mode is outline-mode plus some extra markup like timestamps or links. Those are the basics. Then, you can create views of one or several combined files. For example all items with a timestamp in the near future (deadlines). The standard view for organization is called org-agenda. Aside from that, you have many other features which you won't need to use initially. For example, the ability to embed code and do lite…

Also, better keybindings and a table editor to die for.

Re: Stop Taking Regular Notes; Use a Zettelkasten Instead

#296

Post by kragen »

clairity wrote: post #251
omginternets wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> "4. Nothing beats pencil-and-paper (with a lot of sketches)." i bought the first ipad pro with pencil to replace paper for this use case, on the promise of search for handwritten notes. i thought it would be the killer app for ipad pro. instead, it's been disappointing. if only apple had improved the notes app, especially OCR/search, over time rather than regressing it.

I think the Newton was actually better at that.

Re: Stop Taking Regular Notes; Use a Zettelkasten Instead

#297

Post by kragen »

miki123211 wrote: post #210

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…

Raman uses org-mode with emacspeak, last I heard. He reports it's the first thing he's found that beats raw HTML for writing HTML.

Re: Stop Taking Regular Notes; Use a Zettelkasten Instead

#298

Post by kragen »

kragen wrote: post #104

Maybe a description of my notetaking practice will be useful to others. I don't know if this is strictly a "Zettelkasten" or not. My note box for the last little while is Dercuano: http://canonical.org/~kragen/dercuano . The notes are longer than a single index card (there are 882 notes averaging about 1300 words each), and they are hierarchically organized into sections and subsections. They often include links to o…

Notes on my paper notetaking practices are at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23411493.

Re: Stop Taking Regular Notes; Use a Zettelkasten Instead

#299

Post by marttt »

kragen wrote: post #294
marttt wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Very interesting. I suppose when you use this every day, you actually won't get "lost" within it. Also, this kind of links to the One Big Text File idea (discussed here and there quite often in around 2005-2006, see e.g. http://www.matthewcornell.org/blog/2005/8/21/my-big-arse-tex... ).

Yeah, Danny O'Brien is a friend of mine, and we discussed the idea a bit at the time. I feel like it might be easier to not get lost with the file divided into units smaller than a megabyte though. Does org-mode scale up to files with 10,000 headings?

Interesting question. I did some research, but couldn't figure this out. I did find a reddit thread where org's performance with larger files is discussed: https://old.reddit.com/r/orgmode/comments/e9p84n/scaling_org...

I suppose it is best to ask this in emacs-orgmode list.

Re: One Big Text File: About a decade ago I used it daily for everything for about a year or even longer. Strangely, it was actually working remarkably well. I like to think that over time it grows into a nice image of a person's brain. It is very flexible -- loosely structured "dump" where needed, and strictly structured on other places.

I abandoned it in favor of "one thought, one file" type of approaches, just out of curiosity, I guess; I was hoping to create a Zettelkasten That Works For Sure instead. But this never happened.

I still think One Big Text File a great, somewhat forgotten idea. It's easy to add some structure to everyday use with scripting/grep, turning it into a loosely structured database of sorts. I did less of that at the time than I initially imagined myself doing, though.

Re: Stop Taking Regular Notes; Use a Zettelkasten Instead

#300

Post by kragen »

marttt wrote: post #299
kragen wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, Danny O'Brien is a friend of mine, and we discussed the idea a bit at the time. I feel like it might be easier to not get lost with the file divided into units smaller than a megabyte though. Does org-mode scale up to files with 10,000 headings?

Interesting question. I did some research, but couldn't figure this out. I did find a reddit thread where org's performance with larger files is discussed: https://old.reddit.com/r/orgmode/comments/e9p84n/scaling_org... I suppose it is best to ask this in emacs-orgmode list. Re: One Big Text File: About a decade ago I used it daily for everything for about a year or even longer. Strangely, it was actually working rem…

Is One Big Text File somewhat forgotten? I think of it as being pretty prevalent, maybe more so now than before, now that org-mode is in such wide use.
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