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

41–50 of 309 posts

Re: Stop Taking Regular Notes; Use a Zettelkasten Instead

#41

Post by kn0where »

ARandomerDude wrote: post #15
exmadscientist wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whether you agree with any particular Controversial Political Figure or not, using one as an example will annoy about 50% of your audience (variable, of course, with your audience's current politicization and self-selection). Using neutral examples will help keep the focus on your message rather than incidental politics.

> will annoy about 50% Why? I'm conservative but I've taken tips from Obama and Bill Clinton. A good idea is a good idea. That Obama and Clinton are successful is all the more reason to pay attention when they give productivity advice, even though I disagree with several of their policies.

Many people find certain opinions of JP’s fall beyond the spectrum of reasonably debatable points of view, and cross the line into the unacceptable. You may disagree on whether JP is too extreme to be part of reasonable discourse, but everyone has a line somewhere. I would find it distracting if the article randomly showed a screenshot of quotes from Chairman Mao, and regardless of the rest of the article, it would unavoidably have some influence on my perception of the author. That’s an extreme example chosen because it is broadly relatable to most people on HN, but I’m sure there are far less controversial people than Mao that you would think are over the line of good taste for inclusion in such a blog post. It should be understandable that for some people JP is over their line.

Re: Stop Taking Regular Notes; Use a Zettelkasten Instead

#43

Post by adrianN »

kranner wrote: post #32
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.

Doesn't seem that harmful, as it might increase their motivation to study a subject?

Studying a subject is not exactly the same as writing more notes about it.

Re: Stop Taking Regular Notes; Use a Zettelkasten Instead

#44

Post by sandGorgon »

In terms of an actual product, this is a note with clickable hashtags ?

This seems like an evolution of an idea that originated in the days before free text search.

If you have a personal diary which supports free text search (most hug trackers), why would you need to build structure?

Re: Stop Taking Regular Notes; Use a Zettelkasten Instead

#45

Post by kiba »

ramraj07 wrote: post #33
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…

This is useful for anyone whos life goals are a little more generic. If all you use it is for learning a new programming language, it's probably limited in usefulness. If however you use it to not just note interesting ideas in a language but whatever you learn about tech in general, it will become more useful. I intend to use it to keep track of interesting tech notes, my project ideas, potential things I want to le…

I have notes on the internal of a programming language, or what library function does what, along with accompanying example code, as well definitions for things I saw in the wild.

It was sometime difficult for me to figure out how to use an API due to lack of examples. So it's important to document that.

Re: Stop Taking Regular Notes; Use a Zettelkasten Instead

#46

Post by kn0where »

exmadscientist wrote: post #9
self_awareness wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Care to elaborate why?

Whether you agree with any particular Controversial Political Figure or not, using one as an example will annoy about 50% of your audience (variable, of course, with your audience's current politicization and self-selection). Using neutral examples will help keep the focus on your message rather than incidental politics.

Interestingly, it looks like the JP screenshot is suddenly gone from the post.

Re: Stop Taking Regular Notes; Use a Zettelkasten Instead

#47

Post by Swizec »

sooheon wrote: post #34
Swizec wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only note taking approach that's ever worked for me: 1. Read/listen/absorb 2. Write down (or tweet) ideas it creates while you're absorbing 3. Wait 4. Create Your mind (or at least mine) finds connections you aren't even aware of and when the time comes, when the right prompt sparks, there it is. The knowledge is ready to be used. Use search and half remembered stuff to find direct citations and brush up on detai…

Zettelkasten is exactly what you wrote here, with one addition. It not only offloads querying for detail (i.e. search) to the machine, it also offloads some connection-making. Search and lookup is internet-as-extended-memory, links and backlinks are internet-as-serendipitous-thought.

Ah I thought you had to explicitly create connections. That part seems like a lot of work that my subconscious seems great at on its own

Re: Stop Taking Regular Notes; Use a Zettelkasten Instead

#48

Post by BeetleB »

kiba wrote: post #45
ramraj07 wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is useful for anyone whos life goals are a little more generic. If all you use it is for learning a new programming language, it's probably limited in usefulness. If however you use it to not just note interesting ideas in a language but whatever you learn about tech in general, it will become more useful. I intend to use it to keep track of interesting tech notes, my project ideas, potential things I want to le…

I have notes on the internal of a programming language, or what library function does what, along with accompanying example code, as well definitions for things I saw in the wild. It was sometime difficult for me to figure out how to use an API due to lack of examples. So it's important to document that.

> I have notes on the internal of a programming language, or what library function does what, along with accompanying example code, as well definitions for things I saw in the wild.

I don't think Zettelkasten will provide much benefits for this type of note taking. It probably still is better than normal note taking, but don't expect great benefits using ZK for things like this.

Re: Stop Taking Regular Notes; Use a Zettelkasten Instead

#50

Post by BeetleB »

sandGorgon wrote: post #44

In terms of an actual product, this is a note with clickable hashtags ? This seems like an evolution of an idea that originated in the days before free text search. If you have a personal diary which supports free text search (most hug trackers), why would you need to build structure?

That's kind of like asking why one needs hypertext when a single text file should suffice. The fact that one is linking adds structure, and a simple text search will not be easy.

ZK is mostly a Wiki, with some guidelines on how to decide when to link things, etc.

Post reply on HN