3 ms·

Egged on by Luhmann, whom I read obsessively in my youth, I started a Luhmann-like hyper-text. Been doing it for a long time now. There are several implemen

by mafribe 10y ago

Egged on by Luhmann, whom I read obsessively in my youth, I started a Luhmann-like hyper-text. Been doing it for a long time now. There are several implementations based on Luhmann's Zettelkasten, e.g. [1, 2, 3], but I've not used those myself, so can't comment on their usefulness. My own system is just HTML, grep and a few handwritten scripts. It's extremely lightweight. It's been spectacularly useful for me. In my experience such a system becomes more useful with time, and with effort put in for curating. I spend maybe 2-3 hours every day with my private 'index cards'. I guess most prolific writers in human history have been following a "write down every idea and refine it later" type system. But it must be so much easier now, with smartphones, computers, internet etc. [1] http://zettelkasten.danielluedecke.de/en/ http://zettelkasten.danielluedecke.de/en/ [2] http://www.verzetteln.de/synapsen/ http://www.verzetteln.de/synapsen/ [3] http://zettelkasten.de/tools/ http://zettelkasten.de/tools/

ycombinete 10y ago
I'm interested in your system. Do you explain it fully anywhere? To the extent that it's something that I could try?
- mafribe 10y ago
  Thank you for your interest. I'm afraid I have nothing in public. The technology is near trivial, mostly scripts to generate HTML5/CSS on demand, and grep for searching. The magic comes from how I use it. Short summary. - Write down every idea, and every insight. Write down half-baked ideas. You can later refine it. - Don't censor yourself. (That's why I don't write a public blog.) - When writing about some subject X, think carefully about how to link X to other pages. When making a link to another entry, read/browse the entry and let what you read give you inspiration about looking at X from another angle. This can be rather inspirational. - Curate carefully, I spend maybe 3-4 hours every day on your ZK. Have a long-term view: this is to be used your whole life. To longer you do it, the more useful it will become. - Be clear what you want from this system. - The whole system wasn't useful for the first couple years. Why? Because I could still remember what I had written. That changed after about a decade.
  - ycombinete 10y ago
    That's very interesting. Do you use it for ideas exclusively, or "personal logging"/journaling too?. I've found a program called Connected Text[0], which bills itself as a "personal wiki", and. I'm also looking at refining my use of OneNote Desktop which I've been using for years, and it has a [[link]] feature. [0] http://www.connectedtext.com/ http://www.connectedtext.com/

by mafribe 10y ago

ycombinete 10y ago

I'm interested in your system. Do you explain it fully anywhere? To the extent that it's something that I could try?

mafribe 10y ago
Thank you for your interest. I'm afraid I have nothing in public. The technology is near trivial, mostly scripts to generate HTML5/CSS on demand, and grep for searching. The magic comes from how I use it. Short summary. - Write down every idea, and every insight. Write down half-baked ideas. You can later refine it. - Don't censor yourself. (That's why I don't write a public blog.) - When writing about some subject X, think carefully about how to link X to other pages. When making a link to another entry, read/browse the entry and let what you read give you inspiration about looking at X from another angle. This can be rather inspirational. - Curate carefully, I spend maybe 3-4 hours every day on your ZK. Have a long-term view: this is to be used your whole life. To longer you do it, the more useful it will become. - Be clear what you want from this system. - The whole system wasn't useful for the first couple years. Why? Because I could still remember what I had written. That changed after about a decade.
- ycombinete 10y ago
  That's very interesting. Do you use it for ideas exclusively, or "personal logging"/journaling too?. I've found a program called Connected Text[0], which bills itself as a "personal wiki", and. I'm also looking at refining my use of OneNote Desktop which I've been using for years, and it has a [[link]] feature. [0] http://www.connectedtext.com/ http://www.connectedtext.com/