Do You Have A ZettleKasten?
I’m a person who does a lot of reading. Reading continues my learning throughout my life. Over the years I’ve often taken notes when reading something of interest in an effort to recall more of it later.
The test of having learned something yourself is being able to explain it to someone else. Nothing teaches me how little I know about something than trying to explain it. Back I go to the notes I took. Or, even to the original source for what I didn’t take notes on.
Using A Commonplace Book
My most common method of taking notes is a notebook. I’d just write things down as I came across them, usually without organization. This method has a long history and is known as keeping a ‘commonplace book’. If you search online, you can find many commonplaces kept by famous figures throughout history.
The books serve as the place to look to recall a note, but, it means having to hunt through the book to find it. Hunting takes time and shows up the chaotic nature of the method for note-taking. Worse, is taking notes I intend to use later and forgetting about them.
The Zettlekasten Method
The Zettlekasten method is a personal note-taking system based more on thoughts, ideas and the connections between them. Instead of trying to impose a rigid structure on how you take and store notes, they are organized in the system in a way that it helps you to build onto it over time and becomes a timeless source of facts, thoughts, ideas and connections.
It’s in effect building a second brain to handle and process the overflow from your own brain.
Niklas Luhmann's Use of a Zettlekasten
German born Niklas Luhmann is considered one of the most important social theorists of the 20th century. Over a 40 year period he published over 70 books and 400 scholarly articles drawing on the 90,000 notes in his system.
Trained as a lawyer, Luhmann had a career in public administration by day. In his off hours he read, studied and made notes using a Zettlekasten system of his own. The system was built completely on index cards and pieces of paper. He never used a computer.
Drawing on that material he wrote and published two books on social systems theory. The books led to him being invited to teach at the university level. Something he couldn’t do without being a graduate in Sociology. He undertook to complete the work and was successful in having his books accepted retroactively as his PHD thesis.
Introduced to Zettlekasten By the Luhmann Story
I came across the story of Luhmann and the Zettlekasten, also known as a slipbox. As I explored the concept I realized shifting to a similar system would give me opportunity to better organize and utilize the notes I take. Over the last several weeks I’ve been working on learning how the concept works and building what will work for me.
Obsidian is My Software of Choice
There are several pieces of software available that you can use for this. I’ve settled on using one called Obsidian. The files built in Obsidian are in markdown and reside where I want them on my computer. If something happens that Obsidian goes away, my files can all be read with a text editor. I’m not dependent on the software.
I’m far from well versed on using Obsidian but I think I’ve learned enough, I can talk about what I’ve been doing with it. That’s for another day though.
Were you familiar with Zettlekasten / slipbox for taking notes?
NOTE:
- Header images came from Pixabay.com
- All other images are mine
- This is day 1 of 30 in the #HiveBloPoMo Challenge for April.
Shadowspub is a writer from Ontario, Canada. She writes on a variety of subjects as she pursues her passion for learning. She also writes on other platforms and enjoys creating books you use like journals, notebooks, coloring books etc.
Would you like to receive writing prompts every day? You can subscribe to Prompt A Day to get started.
Share your posts by joining us on the DreemPort Discord
I do take notes typically in smaller pocket-sized notepads (convenience and mobility) and not sure of any method, but there are a lot of arrows relating ideas. Once it starts looking like scribbles and a maze, I tend to rewrite and visit them to see if they could or should be expanded on. 😁
Did you know there is a new community for learned things? Believe it may be @wwwiebe's. What I Learned Today (or any day for that matter).
Sounds like a method of sorts ... if you use Obsidian effectively the map view graphically shows the links and connections. Still building myself.
I don't typically post in communities. I will these ones as part of the April challenge.
I've always had notebooks to take my notes (things to do, things to remember, and the like). I've recently started using a Rocket Book Notebook. I take my notes, if I need to keep it, I scan it in with the Rocket Book app, then I erase the ink and have a new page. The app does an "ok" job of OCR for future searches, but it does keep the picture you snapped with your phone, too.
No more stacks of notebooks.
I saw that advertised the other day .. looked interesting.
@shadowspub, Some people have a problem writing on such a smooth/slick surface, but I didn't have any issues. The only thing I have to remember is that it takes a little longer to dry than on regular paper. Also, it can be so easy to forget to scan your notes (if you want to keep them) before erasing. But I love to use my Rocket Book Notebook.
I know there are other options out there - I looked at a lot - but I thought this would be the best fit for me.
ultimately that is what is important.. what works for you so you'll use it on a regular basis.
https://twitter.com/ShadowsPub/status/1510006943619993609
The rewards earned on this comment will go directly to the person sharing the post on Twitter as long as they are registered with @poshtoken. Sign up at https://hiveposh.com.
I'd not heard of the Zettlekasten method. Just the logistics of managing 90,000 notes is staggering, let alone writing them all in the first place.
Keep in mind that while we'd traditionally write notes from a book or article on one or several pages, he wrote short notes on multiple pages and then processed them looking for connections to existing notes. His system was a lot simpler than most people realized largely because it relied on a numbering system rather than a hierarchy
I learned about Zettelkasten (ZK) in 2020, and then last year I attended a rigorous course styled as a book club that selected "How to Take Smart Notes" by Sönke Ahrens. From that I gleamed that N. Luhmann was a one-of-kind thought leader. It reminds me of composers that aren't appreciated until long after they're gone.
I'm reading (and taking notes) on that book now. Plenty to learn there.
I became aware of Zettlekasten last year sometime, but it seems like I have been using it for years. Many years ago I started using nvALT, the backend of which is now used for several Zettlekasten apps. nvALT allows linking between notes, so I always referred to it as my "text file database". I have used nvALT over the years to keep track of all my haiku research, all the thousands of haiku I have translated, my Japanese history research, and... well, and so on. When I learned of Zettlekasten last year I was shocked to discovered that it was basically what I had been doing for years, though his method was much more meticulous than mine. Very interesting!
!PIMP
You must be killin' it out here!
@dbooster just slapped you with 1.000 PIMP, @shadowspub.
You earned 1.000 PIMP for the strong hand.
You can still slap 1/2 more people today.
Read about some PIMP Shit or Look for the PIMP District
OH you are definitely using the Zettlekasten method. I'm currently reading "How to Take Smart Notes" by Sonke Ahrens. He talks about Luhmann's system and then points out that it's not so much following his system as the concept behind it, which is keeping it simple enough to grow and be useful without having to keep restructuring it.
I'm completely new to blockchain, @hive, HiveBloPoMo and a long list of other things Web 3.0.
I chose Shadows' essay as my very first piece of content to consume because she is a generous person and a rock star of a writer. She is introducing me to blockchain, peakD and hive. Now, here she is blowing my mind with what is possible in this world with content creation. But how the hell can she also distill in <700 words what I've been studying on a half-dozen pricey six-week long courses to learn?
Describing Niklas Luhmann's note-taking method, Zettlekasten, she smoothly writes,
"he...was successful in having his books accepted retroactively as his PHD thesis."
Wait. What? He got his PhD without the dissertation angst?!
That's freaking noteworthy!
Good to see you stick your toe into the comment section. Commenting is a big part of the community on Hive. So, feel free to 'chat' away on posts. You'll find people appreciate the input.
The story of Luhmann's prolific work really is fascinating. He self-taught himself to the point he had the work for his PHD already in place before someone said "Hey, you should be a prof". Then he just went back to his cool note-taking system and drew on what he already had.
Imagine if school children were taught that system from an early grade? To not just memorize facts to get grades but to integrate facts into their knowledge base and find connections between their learning. I think the results would be amazing.
Sehr gut Shadows, das ist wunderbar! Seriously, thanks for the overview. I am very interested in Zettlekasten but my old soul is sorely tempted to start out with index cards and storage boxes (I'm not sure I can even spell Obsidian, much less use it!).
hehe it took me a little bit to get the concept of how to use it .. and from there I've been building on how to work out a system that works for me .. you might find "How to Take Smart Notes" by Sönke Ahrens an interesting read to get ideas from
Cool beans. Thanks!
This is most interesting. Every time I think I am just not able to do it Zettlekasten and Obsidian pops up :) Normally I could blame it on 'the algo' if it were any other part of social media, but here on Hive I can only say that it is fate. I guess I need to give it a go again :D
I do love the idea of Zettlekasten and do think Obsidian is a neat software. I have been evangelizing the latter to all my nieces and nephews and others. However I find that where I come short is in the actual note taking. I am unable to decide how to take notes, and to add to that I get even more confused on whether to take notes at a unit level like Mr (Prof?) Luhmann did, or just generally note it down.
All in all, I think I need to find some way to teach me note taking. It is something that was not really required in Indian universities when I used to study there ages ago :)
I do notice you have suggested the book by Sönke Ahrens. I think it is on my TBR. I will give it a go. I know this comment is a very late one (just got active on HIVE a few weeks ago) but if there is any other input you could give that can help me with note taking please do suggest. Many thanks.
I spent time trying to learn the 'right' way to take notes and eventually decided to make use of what works for me. I use MOCs (Maps of Content) and folders a lot. I have a HOME note that is my master MOC. Every note has a link back to HOME and to the MOC the next level up. I set them up using:
TOP::HOME (link used)
UP::Next Level
Then if there are other notes I want to cross-reference I'll use:
SEE::note to look at.
That gives me a relevant directory of sorts at the top of every note.
In the notes I will use hashtags on general topics like #biznotes #notetaking so I can then easily search out topics of focused interest for me.
Recently I found GPT4All which gives me an AI chatbot on my desktop that can be used without a connection to the next thus keeping my data private. It will read Obsidian vaults. I can tell AI to check my collection for whatever query I want and it will come back with a summary list of references I can look at or I can just ask it to summarize the information.
Unfortunately, they did an update of the software and it's triggered a fault that wont run on some machines, one being mine. I hope they are working on resolving the problem.
my practical issue with the way i take notes is that there is no consistent template/sytle/framework way to my taking notes. I keep getting scatterbrained about it somehow :(
maybe your framework is scatterbrained and write accordingly. Search functions can sort out of lot of scatter :)
Good Point. I should explore this further.