Stop Taking Regular Notes; Use a Zettelkasten Instead • Hacker News Board

Re: Stop Taking Regular Notes; Use a Zettelkasten Instead

#61

Post by Normille » Tue, Jun 02, 2020, 5:07 AM UTC

Mizza wrote: post #35

I find it very funny that all of my nerd friends are all suddenly using an archaic German note-taking system. I started a simple system myself after reading the thread about them here a few weeks ago, and I have to say that it's already been useful. It reduces the lookup times from O(all of the internet) to O(just my notes).

>reduces the lookup times from O(all of the internet) to O(just my notes).

This ^^

I use a combo of Pinboard [1] to save URLs I think I'll want to refer to in future, plus NValt [2] stored on my Jottacloud [3] for recording snppets of info and more free-form notes and for making that info available from any of my devices.

Nine times out of ten [if not 99 out of 100] however, I'll just StartPage or DDG whatever info I'm looking for, since I always have a browser open anyway.

It's also quite common that, having thus found such a nugget of info, I go to add it to my Pinboard or NValt notes for future reference, only to find it was already stored there [often years ago], if only I'd thought to "shop locally" in the first place.

[1] https://pinboard.in

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

[3] http://jottacloud.no

Re: Stop Taking Regular Notes; Use a Zettelkasten Instead

#62

Post by sandGorgon » Tue, Jun 02, 2020, 5:07 AM UTC

BeetleB wrote: post #50

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.

hyperlinks are relevant for navigation. here hyperlinks (as hashtags) are used for discovery.

I can understand the first...but not the second if full text search was available.

Re: Stop Taking Regular Notes; Use a Zettelkasten Instead

#63

Post by klysm » Tue, Jun 02, 2020, 5:08 AM UTC

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.

Certainly a fad I think partly due to the book “How to Take Smart Notes”. Personally I think it’s a very well thought out argument about why this particular note taking system works and why it might work for you. But as the author says, it is meant for academics, particular those in the humanities although it doesn’t state that explicitly.

I believe this kind of work doesn’t share a lot of commonality with the research that readers of HN would do - although it is a very effective tool for some stuff we do.

I think if you’re gonna read it, don’t take it as “the one true way” to take notes. Take what you like and do what works for you.

Re: Stop Taking Regular Notes; Use a Zettelkasten Instead

#64

Post by BiteCode_dev » Tue, Jun 02, 2020, 5:10 AM UTC

Isn't what hypertext links are for ?

Re: Stop Taking Regular Notes; Use a Zettelkasten Instead

#65

Post by nightowl_games » Tue, Jun 02, 2020, 5:12 AM UTC

themodelplumber wrote: post #57

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.

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 was a very insightful analysis. Thank you. I absolutely loved how you brought it back to technological development.

Re: Stop Taking Regular Notes; Use a Zettelkasten Instead

#66

Post by zez » Tue, Jun 02, 2020, 5:17 AM UTC

Interesting, I keep coming across the technique but have yet to give a a try, I enjoy the thought of linking notes especially cross concept/domain which I can imagine aids in learning and saving to both short/long term memory

But rather than fumbling with cards it seems like an interesting use case for AR/VR

I always thought VR/AR would be very interesting in the studying/notetaking space, are any of you working on something similar?

Re: Stop Taking Regular Notes; Use a Zettelkasten Instead

#67

Post by dangirsh » Tue, Jun 02, 2020, 5:18 AM UTC

ssivark wrote: post #4

bowmessage wrote: post #2

Roam looks neat. I wonder if anyone has tips on how one could use org-mode to achieve some similar results?

There's already an Emacs package which has become quite popular over the last few months! :-) See "org-roam" [1,2] (and several blog posts and youtube videos by now) [1]: https://github.com/org-roam/org-roam [2]: https://blog.jethro.dev/posts/introducing_org_roam/

Love org-roam. I've been heavily using it for a few months, and not looking back.

Don't miss these additional packages, which build on org-roam:

org-roam-server: better graph visualization and navigation [1]

org-roam-bibtex: Reference management in your Zettelkasten [2]

The latter, combined with org-ref and org-noter, is the most effective way I've found for taking notes on PDFs. Beautiful demo at [3].

FWIW RoamResearch has yet to implement a useful graph view, PDF annotation, or reference management. OTOH, tending to a setup like this in Emacs can easily become a time-sink, and it's single-player only.

[1]: https://github.com/org-roam/org-roam-server

[2]: https://github.com/org-roam/org-roam-bibtex

[3]: https://youtu.be/Wy9WvF5gWYg

Re: Stop Taking Regular Notes; Use a Zettelkasten Instead

#68

Post by fsloth » Tue, Jun 02, 2020, 5:26 AM UTC

klysm wrote: post #63

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.

Certainly a fad I think partly due to the book “How to Take Smart Notes”. Personally I think it’s a very well thought out argument about why this particular note taking system works and why it might work for you. But as the author says, it is meant for academics, particular those in the humanities although it doesn’t state that explicitly. I believe this kind of work doesn’t share a lot of commonality with the resear…

"I believe this kind of work doesn’t share a lot of commonality with the research that readers of HN would do - although it is a very effective tool for some stuff we do."

I'm not sure what your expectations of the "normal" HN reader are but lots of people engage in stuff like creative writing, essays, general research to esoteric topics and so on.

For example I have a notebook I constantly scribble on. I've moved a portion of that scribbling to a zettlekasteln like system to a great benefit - although I just use text files and in a simple onedrive directory structure.

Re: Stop Taking Regular Notes; Use a Zettelkasten Instead

#69

Post by sjy » Tue, Jun 02, 2020, 5:28 AM UTC

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 that.

Re: Stop Taking Regular Notes; Use a Zettelkasten Instead

#70

Post by dang » Tue, Jun 02, 2020, 5:33 AM UTC