12 ms·

Zettelkasten note-taking in 10 minutes

329 points by vicek22 6y ago

praptak 6y ago
Ad-hoc Ask HN: Zettelkasten sounds a lot like a private Wiki. Is it different? How?
- qznc 6y ago
  I'd describe it as a certain style of private wiki. It comes with certain conventions how a wiki page should be. The article describes it as atomic, self-contained, permanent, and concise.
- vicek22 6y ago
  It is similar to private Wiki in how the notes are linked. My understanding simplified: Wiki - linked notes Zettelkasten - Wiki + process on how to read and work with resources, guidelines on how notes should be added, structured and tagged
- x775 6y ago
  It largely is. It seems as though Zettelkasten, despite being a relatively old phenomenon (e.g. see Niklas Luhmann), is experiencing a renaissance these days. Ultimately, it is just (yet) another way of keeping track of your notes and thoughts. You can think of it as cataloguing everything you write down. I reckon whether you stand to gain anything from converting your existing note-taking to a Zettelkasten operation depends entirely on how you currently take notes. What really matters is that whatever approach you employ works for you. In general, I wager the mere act of actually writing something down and approaching material in a critical, thoughtful manner as opposed to merely consuming is what drives both retention and understanding. Zettelkasten might help you attain that. It might also not.
- vvillena 6y ago
  The difference lies in how it's organized. An encyclopedia such as Wikipedia is organized using an encyclopedic hierarchy of knowledge. That makes no sense for a personal linked notes system: the key is to avoid hierarchy, and tag and link the notes in a way that helps them surface on the contexts you need.
DecayingOrganic 6y ago
I'm wondering: is there _any_ empirical data that shows that good old note-taking with a pen and paper is less effective when compared to Zettelkasten note-taking? (Disregarding advantages of digital note-taking such as easy to search, etc.) I personally use successive relearning, sometimes also referred to as retrieval-based learning, it's not a note-taking technique per se, but more of a framework on how to learn/study in a way that maximizes retention and meaningful learning. If anyone's interested in it, here are some resources: http://memory.psych.purdue.edu/downloads/2012_Karpicke_CDPS.pdf http://memory.psych.purdue.edu/downloads/2012_Karpicke_CDPS.... https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007/s10648-012-9202-2.pdf https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007/s10648-012-920... http://memory.psych.purdue.edu/downloads/2014_Karpicke_Lehman_Aue_PLM.pdf http://memory.psych.purdue.edu/downloads/2014_Karpicke_Lehma...
- learnstats2 6y ago
  I have personally always found that the act of conscious note-taking is more important than the ability to search afterwards. I generally take notes on paper and very rarely look at them afterwards.
  - bosie 6y ago
    I am wondering, are you selective on what you take notes too or just take lots of notes? I.e. do you take lots of notes in meetings and every website/paper/book you are reading?
    - learnstats2 6y ago
      Personally? I note down some thoughts or tasks every day and carry a journal around for that. I usually get more value out of (work) meetings if I do take notes. I usually take notes but prefer not to if I'm chairing/leading the meeting. I rarely take notes on what I have read, unless it's something I am actively learning.
- qznc 6y ago
  Zettelkasten in its physical version is just a certain way of pen and paper note-taking.
ThePhysicist 6y ago
After trying so many productivtiy tools in the past I settled on having two ordinary notebooks where I keep all my ideas and notes: One for the business side, where I write down meeting minutes and insights, in chronological order. Another one for technical and creative thoughts, also organized in a linear, chronological fashion. In addition I sometimes keep lab notebooks for specific projects. If I look for some specific information (e.g. whom I talked to in a given meeting and what the take-aways were) I typically know the rough date range when I wrote that information down, so I just go through the notebook entries until I find it. Same with the lab and creative notebooks. Another advantage is that writing by hand allows you to draw diagrams and write equations with ease. In my opinion nothing beats a paper notebook in this regard. I tried the new iPads and MS Surface tablets but the note-taking experience is just not the same and the results look disappointing IMHO. Also, if I really need to record an image or computer-generated diagram I simply print it, cut it out and glue it into the notebook. My former colleagues in science used the same method of keeping lab books for decades with great success, I have never heard of anyone using a system like Zettelkasten (but maybe that's just my bubble).
- dmortin 6y ago
  Zettelkasten can be done on paper too. Its point is making connections between notes and being able to do discover new connections giving you new insights. Simple note taking just records what you know and think. ZH can lead to new understandings of the same set of notes.
  - fsloth 6y ago
    You can use a date as a "link" in a notebook. A normal person does not create that many different entries per day. You can add a keyword to the notebook margin as well if you feel particularly systematic (then a link/reference would be 18jul23 for example).
  - DelightOne 6y ago
    This sounds time-consuming, is it? I dont see myself following permanent links by timestamp. It is so time-consuming and error-prone, I would drop the whole thing immediately. I know myself this far anyway^^
BlackVanilla 6y ago
Is Zettelkasten better than 'the big .txt file'? [1] Sure, the example here is about productivity, but I know it can be used for general notes. Anything from your to do list, to notes from books, to ideas you want to remember. You want to remember what you wrote about a book on gardening? Seach gardening. This seems to be a low effort, high reward way of doing things. What extra benefit does Zettelkasten bring and is it worth the additional effort? EDIT: Another consideration is that you don't want the time you dedicate to sorting a productivity system to be especially big. You want to make stuff. The big txt file doesn't take up a lot of time to organise and allows you to spend time doing good things. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22276184 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22276184 (entitled 'My productivity app for the past 12 years has been a single .txt file')
- dunefox 6y ago
  I use it to 1) store ideas, concepts, etc. in a markdown format. So, if I'm studying something - say backpropagation for neural networks - I create the note, search for material online, study it, and add links, images, formulas, etc. to the note so I can merge several good sources of information that would otherwise be scattered in PDFs, stack overflow, wikipedia, ... Then afterwards I can go back and read my note and maybe visit the links I used to obtain the initial understanding. It's really great so far. 2) I can link the notes to create a sort of personal wikipedia. So far I'm pretty happy with Zettlr for this purpose. I find that even if I don't have to go back to many notes or actively walk through the graph it's really useful for distilling knowledge.
- kiba 6y ago
  Zettlekasten was designed as a research tool, not a productivity system(for that I use task lists and progress bar). Anyway, I used grep too, but I also navigate by following the links in my notes, which can sometime take me to different location. That can be a single file too or multiple files. That doesn't matter. What matters more is organization(or rather lack of). With Zettlekasten, you build a concept map of topics that you wouldn't otherwise get if you write your notes linearly or chronologically. So yeah, zettlekasten doesn't make sense as a productivity system, but that isn't its intended use case anyway.
randomor 6y ago
I am not disciplined enough to do the initial linking by using these timestamps, will also not break out of the flow to find the previous note in another folder and copy the timestamp around. Instead I’ve been using a stream of small auto-timestamped logs with hashtags to take and retrieve my notes and ideas. It is not a tree-based system, it’s just a text log stream and has worked extremely well for me so far. I used to do this in a private slack group but eventually created an app called ZenJournal. You may also find it useful.
m0zg 6y ago
I don't get it. Even if I write a bunch of stuff down, I still don't have the time to read it, unless it's for a specific project and I'm summarizing data specifically for that. If it's not tied to a project, I might as well not write it down at all - it won't be read.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
golly_ned 6y ago
Cool
marvinblum 6y ago
This is the fourth explanation that I've seen on HN this year. Including my own [1]. I like the more practical approach of this one, but the long numbers (timestamps) used for referencing look confusing. It's easier to remember the title of a note or a number you made up yourself. In case you're looking for a visual editor, you can take a look at Emvi [2]. We didn't build it exactly as a Zettelkasten, but you can reach that goal in pretty much any note taking app. Ours is more focused on collaboration. [1] https://emvi.com/blog/luhmanns-zettelkasten-a-productivity-tool-that-works-like-your-brain-N9Gd2G4aPv https://emvi.com/blog/luhmanns-zettelkasten-a-productivity-t... [2] https://emvi.com/ https://emvi.com/ (the UI will change quite a bit in the coming weeks, read about it here https://emvi.com/blog/a-new-experimental-user-interface-QMZgmZG1L5 https://emvi.com/blog/a-new-experimental-user-interface-QMZg...)
unicornporn 6y ago
> Use Zettlr. It’s Free and Open-Source, uses Markdown files and it’s vendor agnostic. I don't see how I could adopt a system that doesn't work on the device I always carry with me — the phone.
- vincvinc 6y ago
  I put my markdown files in a Dropbox folder, so I can use apps like 1writer on iOS. Syncs well and works like a charm! Whenever I have an interesting thought, I get my phone, open 1writer, it creates a new [timestamp].md file, and I just jot it down. It instantly saves to dropbox so if I open Sublime on my laptop, the file's already there. On my PC, I mostly write in Sublime Text but now experimenting with Zettlr and Obsidian. I heard heard other combinations with other cloud file services and other markdown writing apps work just as good. Having a folder with plaintext notes going back years just feels ... future-proof.
fastball 6y ago
Shameless plug: I literally just pushed a change[0] to my online note-taking app[1] last night that makes it a "full" Zettelkasten (e.g. there are backlinks now!) There are also some other cool features like multi-parent nesting that (in my opinion) make it much cooler than just a Zettelkasten. The main downside for many in the HN community is that it's online-only at the moment. [0] https://supernotes.app/changelog https://supernotes.app/changelog [1] https://supernotes.app https://supernotes.app
- _def 6y ago
  "Online-only" is not a deal breaker for me, but closed source and the missing possibility to self host it kinda is. But I'm gonna give it a try nonetheless!
  - fastball 6y ago
    Thanks for the feedback! One of our goals is to have a robust API that anyone can build apps for so that you can integrate this with any sort of platform you want (and then obviously the client could be open source), but yes, otherwise it is closed-source.
jotm 6y ago
I've seen all these posts about this system and it still seems way too over-explained for what it is. Using Google keep with keywords at the end/start of the note, plus optional categories, seems to achieve the same thing. Everything is searchable, so if I'm thinking about something, I'll just do a few searches by keyword and see if I saved something before. No need for 2 pages of "how to use" :/
- soniman 6y ago
  Finally somebody makes some sense. I have an even lazier system, I type a search into bing like "bizidea - hydroponic urban farming" and save it to bookmarks and when search "bizidea" there are all the billion dollar ideas.
- tennineeight 6y ago
  I'll try to explain how I git where I am with this. I used the same Google keep as you for multiple years, but Keep isn't available offline on PC, it's interface doesn't help in interlinking, and it is not open source. Last one hurts especially considering its a Google project, one of the decent ones at that, and thus it can always be cancelled next quarter. I moved in to Emacs+org-mode on PC, and Orgzly/Orgro on Android. It syncs notes via syncthing, on my lan, no internet required, but can be used. This gives it a ruledundancy. Org-mode is also much Kore organic for note taking, since it allows collapsing trees, embedding code, equations. Adding links can be done inline, unlike Keep (I haven't used it in last year so that may have changed). As for search, Keep is good enough if your notes only have shopping lists and one off stuff that you require every now and then. Keep is, however, terrible for organizing any amount of knowledge. Org-rifle, for eg. gives context aware search results across my entire notes folder. The power is unmatched by Keep, where notes are mostly siloes, and interface too verbose to let you a birds eye view. And did I mention Keep takes multiple seconds to load on a good connection? And that its closed source? For some, that alone is reason enough.
zelphirkalt 6y ago
What, no Emacs org-mode comment so far? (Only searched for "org" and "org-mode" in the comments, superficially.) I guess I'll go ahead then: People have apparently implemented this workflow of note taking in their org-mode usage. Here are a few quick search results: * https://forum.zettelkasten.de/discussion/100/zettels-and-org-mode https://forum.zettelkasten.de/discussion/100/zettels-and-org... (also mentions org-brain) * https://www.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/fq54g5/using_emacss_orgmode_as_your_zettelk%C3%A4sten/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/fq54g5/using_... Org-mode is my go-to tool for any kind of notes or document, sometimes even for PDFs I want to make, via latex export and then latexmk. I find it more comfortable to use for literate programming than Jupyter notebooks too.
- e19293001 6y ago
  Thank you for mentioning org-mode. I was actually finding a good set-up. You're comment leads me to this blog[0] that I end-up following this set-up which is quite very simple. On the other hand, I recently saw a lot of Zettelkasten articles. I'm not sure if its been hyped but I still would like to give it a try. When I found emacs, I gave it a try (it was hard) and eventually I begin to like it because of its tons of features. When I found org-mode, I gave it a try and then I like it and use it everyday. When I found org-babel, I gave it a try and then I like it. When ... ... ... I hope more people would like to try emacs and org-mode. I know: learning at first is pretty hard. My advise it just to use it everyday. I remember I uninstalled notepad++ from my PC in order to force my self to use emacs. It took a month for my brain to be comfortable using emacs. [0] - https://dpitt.me/blog/2020/03/zettelkasten/ https://dpitt.me/blog/2020/03/zettelkasten/
  - pcnix 6y ago
    You can also check out Zetteldeft, a deft based org mode extension that adds a bunch of useful shortcuts.
  - jyriand 6y ago
    There us also org-roam that’s based on Roam Research app
- 6y ago
rcarmo 6y ago
My blog/wiki has been created somewhat along the same lines for many a year (including YYYY/mm/dd/HHMM page names), but somehow I can't get past Zettlr's default ID scheme, or the lack of hierarchy (having all my notes in a single folder is not something I'm keen on at all). (As an aside, both Zettlr and Obsidian completely freeze up on my 7000+ blog/wiki folder, but Obsidian eventually manages to parse and cross-link most of it given time)
snidane 6y ago
My problem with Zettelkasten is the granularity of notes which are supposed to be a single short concept only. I can't remember hundreds of notes I wrote in the past so that I can connect them when I write a new one. I actually prefer Martin Fowler's concept of bliki (blog+wiki) where the granularity is a blog post, instead of a singular note, which captures your understanding of a topic at that time. https://martinfowler.com/bliki/WhatIsaBliki.html https://martinfowler.com/bliki/WhatIsaBliki.html
- marvinblum 6y ago
  The idea behind the Zettelkasten is that you traverse it a lot. So it's not like "take a note and forget about it", it's more like write a bit and read it a lot of times. Luhmann wrote his books that way. So it's more about reading than taking the notes in the first place.
  - ctietze 6y ago
    Yes, this! +1
- rcarmo 6y ago
  That is exactly how taoofmac.com was designed. I've hidden away the Wiki bits for the sake of uniformity, but the engine works like that.
  - leephillips 6y ago
    Just want to say that I’ve been subscribed to the TofM RSS feed for many years, and thank you for sharing your interesting perspective.
    - rcarmo 6y ago
      Thanks for the kind words :)
  - ctietze 6y ago
    Shoutout to you, Rui, for Tao of Mac :)
mercacona 6y ago
The most important idea I got from zettelkasten was not tagging ontologically your notes, but thinking in future actions like #havingatea, #planningahike, etc.
renw0rp 6y ago
Any idea why would Zettlr (recommended application for Zettelkasten in the article) called one of the themes "Karl-Marx-Stadt" (which is a name used for Chemnitz during division of Germany). I know it's a bit off topic - so I guess my comment fits right in HN discussions :D edit: I figured this out myself; the author of the application is described: Hendrik Erz is a research assistant at the University of Bonn. His main research focusses on the nexus between Marxist economic theory, digitalisation and violence in capitalist societies (riots and terrorism).
bachmeier 6y ago
> The linking is done by placing links like these [[20200606154308]] into notes. Most of the slip-box software allows you to click on this link and opens a note with ID 20200606154308 for you. What's the purpose of using a number to link? Why not use words, like hyperlinks have been doing for decades?
- IlGrigiore 6y ago
  Usually you use an ID in place of the title of the note, because you may want to change the title at a later date. If you were to change the title, then you would have to also change any of the links. Therefore, you keep the ID the same and can change the title of the note without breaking any links.
  - klohto 6y ago
    So, just rename all occurrences or create a named hyperlink? Why do we keep coming up with already solved problems.
- gpanders 6y ago
  They're unique. Zettelkasten titles can be quite long: "Practices for nurturing healthy brain development during pregnancy" takes up a lot more space for a link than a 14 digit ID. You may say to just use a keyword of the title instead of the whole title, but then it is no longer unique and you must come up with another way of identifying which note it links to. Also, using IDs means it is very easy to visually scan a note for links. The [[##############]] format stands out vividly. I like it, it doesn't bother me. Do whatever works for you.
  - 7839284023 6y ago
    Is there a way to see a title or can you only show the ID in the preview on the left? I am very confused by this software because renaming a file brakes all my links... And if every file as a date as a name I would not know where to start.
    - 6y ago
znpy 6y ago
This thing that apparently worked very well for that sociologist that mostly likely operated before the iper-connected and mostly digital world that we currently live in (he died in 1998). It's now being marketed as another holy grail solution, it reminds me of the GTD method back in the day (in terms of marketing). Index cards and custom sized drawers? lol nope. To add some constructive feedback: I'm playing with MediaWiki and i noticed this nice links on the right side of all pages: "What links here". It reminded me of this Zettelkasten thing. But without much fuss.
- bloopernova 6y ago
  Think of Zettlekasten as a wiki-with-a-narrow-focus. This site https://roamresearch.com/ https://roamresearch.com/ can be considered a wiki, but its features are all designed around journals, linking, tags, etc. Something like how a text editor can be configured to be a very useful IDE for a given programming language.
- trms 6y ago
  To your last point: there's now ZK-focused software which has exactly that: a 'what links here' button on the side, which sort of removes the fuss. (Obsidian, to name one)
odomojuli 6y ago
Every time I see a new method of note taking I file it under notes for notetaking and never get around to it. These days I do everything in pen and paper. I file it in a file cabinet. I think this is what Fermi used to do, could be wrong. It works for me. No dependencies, no installations, no updates, no latency, pretty decent storage and great portability. I make an effort not to dwell on productivity tools, which feel like spending time to save time in spurious and inconsistent amounts. Yes, I wish I could memorize and remember everything worth knowing and doing. No, sometimes it's nice to forget things and prioritize the information that's in front of me.
- jonpurdy 6y ago
  I keep seeing articles about Zettelkasten pop up every couple of weeks on HN lately. Notetaking and productivity articles tend to get me thinking about how my own system works (I still have a bunch of Zettelkasten articles I would like to read...) I've been using Anki as my SRS system for language recall for years. A couple of months ago I started putting in random facts and bits of information that I would normally put into a note. This sort of thing tends to get inputted, filed, and forgotten about until I do a purge of notes every few months. But since I've started using Anki for this, I now 100% remember these types of random facts. A few examples: - FQ_CODEL stands for Fair Queueing with COntrolled DELay - ADSB is to air traffic what AIS is to marine traffic - In CAP theorem, must choose between availability and consistency (For Anki nerds, I have these as cloze deletions) The biggest benefit for me (aside from actually remembering this stuff) is that the cognitive overhead of inputting and studying is super low. I can stay focused on doing important work while not having cognitive overhead of learning new things affect my output.
- sorum 6y ago
  Then you’re already close to the Zettelkasten method; you can use individual paper notes and never touch digital. The difference is in how your individual notes are structured into a coherent system. Instead of filing a note in your cabinet by topic / theme, you give each note a unique ID number and over time add links to others within your note.
- leephillips 6y ago
7839284023 6y ago
Is there a good client for android for this system to sync with?
stewbrew 6y ago
Why can't people just recommend using personal wikis?
rhizome31 6y ago
Reading the linked article I'm very surprised that the author says they can't talk about what they read after reading it. I'm quite the opposite as I often talk about what I've read to my friends, even before finishing the book. Sure I might not remember things as well a year later, but then I can go back to the ToC or index and find the bit I've forgotten. Saying that books don't work in general doesn't ring true to me.
pedro1976 6y ago
Here is my personal experience after applying this method for more than a year. The crucial idea of the zettelkasten method is to contextualize knowledge instead of categorizig it. So its processing information instead of just storing it. Hence retrieving knowledge is much easier because its much more connected in your brain. I experienced this as extremely powerful, my thoughts became much more internalized. Cross-linking becomes the standard, which is a main driver of creativity and idea shaping.
jll29 6y ago
Niklas Luhmann collected 90,000 note cards and popularised "Zettelkasten" note-taking as a knowledge management method with paper-based hyperlinks: https://niklas-luhmann-archiv.de/projekt/beschreibung https://niklas-luhmann-archiv.de/projekt/beschreibung (archive, supports download as TIFF scans and JSON transcriptions). If you use Sublime (as I do beside Emacs), ther's a plug-in: https://zettelkasten.de/posts/sublime-text-plugin/ https://zettelkasten.de/posts/sublime-text-plugin/ During my undergraduate studies I summarized each paper or book I read in form of a single plain text file. This was very helpful when studying for oral exams that required internalizing in the order of >20 volumes. While these weren't cross-referenced, and no special tool was used, this still helped to ace the exams, mostly because the practice of summarizing/compressing the material to its essence itself is essentially the same as learning it. Main main advice is any tool or none is fine as long as the notes are in plain text so they can last - it's the most durable file format, and you can always build a full-text index to make it searchable e.g. using Lucene.
tony_codes 6y ago
I love tiddlywiki for atomic easily linkable notes
_sbrk 6y ago
I almost never take notes. My to-do lists are on post-it notes scattered on my desk, and I rarely miss a task or deadline. I tried the notebook route for a while, but I found that it was more like a diary; I never looked back until years had passed and, by then, the data was no longer relevant. Anyone else do it this way?
Maha-pudma 6y ago
There's been a few of these articles on HN recently. This method sounds to me like a personal wiki. And for that I use Zim-wiki. It has all the features the article talks about, as well as displaying pictures. It's a folder and text file structure as described, handles links, and back links, between notes and has a tagging system. Not only that it has a journal and task management. I use it at work and home. It's cross platform, but not mobile. Brilliant piece of software.
dude01 6y ago
I've been using https://github.com/vimoutliner/vimoutliner https://github.com/vimoutliner/vimoutliner for a decade now. It works well. It's so easy to backup, since it's just text files. And you can just use grep and other standard tools to look for content. I believe it's the vim-counterpart to emacs org-mode. I've been forced to use MS OneNote for one contract, since the laptop is locked-down. Works ok, but search-ability and keyboard-only usage sucks in comparison.
- rcarmo 6y ago
  Pro tip: OneNote supports [[WikiLink]] in most platforms. Try it.
bbx 6y ago
The linked example is very neat: https://notes.andymatuschak.org/About_these_notes https://notes.andymatuschak.org/About_these_notes The source code is not available, and each mouseover triggers a lot of Ajax calls (one for the note hovered, one for each link in the hovered note), but the experience is quite pleasant.
drcode 6y ago
There's a note-management system that can be built that's much better than all existing systems, I am certain of it, but all my attempts to design it so far have failed. It somehow involves a combination of organically determining a hierarchy of the notes, and then helping to algorithmically prune notes that are no longer useful.
- hanklazard 6y ago
  Yes, totally! I feel like this Zettelkasten technique is a step in the right direction with the idea of linking notes, but relying on these long, random looking strings to do the linking seems wrong. Human-readable tags that serve as links seem better, but I suppose that's more of just a software issue, not a technique issue. My ideal note-taking software for what you're describing would be: 1. platform independent (or at least very easy to use on multiple platforms, phone + desktop) 2. your "organically determined hierarchy of notes" idea ... a clustering map of some sort. 3. links via human-readable tags 4. FOSS I'm guessing this exists already but that I just need to look harder.
metrokoi 6y ago
I don't see how this method of note taking is better than just writing note linearly. Sure, it is good if you want to recall information for writing a book, but it doesn't seem like it would actually increase your retention and improve your ability to apply things that you have learned. If anything it would make you less efficient at learning because you have to maintain this note structure. It seems like it's only good for summarizing or collecting information for repackaging and publishing. Maybe that is all it's purporting to be, though.
mitko 6y ago
That’s kind of similar to the format I usually use for writing for my blog. I’d use the blog itself as the permanent folder, and the act of publishing it the ritual which makes it permanent. As I am writing new essays they live in emacs or notes or notion or whatever note taking app I enjoy using currently. Such notes are almost never long lived for me. If I were to write something large like a book, I would probably maintain distinctions between early drafts vs later drafts of chapters. I am imagining that most writers do have some system which captures the notion of the stage the work is in. Publishing externally is the ultimate way to make it permanent though- otherwise nothing stops the author from amending.
dang 6y ago
Soon we will need a Zettelkasten to track our Zettelkästen: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23386630 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23386630 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22085837 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22085837 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21208196 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21208196 https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=zettelkasten&sort=byDate&type=story&storyText=none https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
baxtr 6y ago
By now, I am kinda saturated with posts about the "Zettelkasten" system. It seems to be quite popular these days on HN...
distant_hat 6y ago
In my experience with note taking, any system that is easy and trivial to use is better than a fancy system that you don't.

329 points by vicek22 6y ago

praptak 6y ago

Ad-hoc Ask HN: Zettelkasten sounds a lot like a private Wiki. Is it different? How?

qznc 6y ago
I'd describe it as a certain style of private wiki. It comes with certain conventions how a wiki page should be. The article describes it as atomic, self-contained, permanent, and concise.
vicek22 6y ago
It is similar to private Wiki in how the notes are linked. My understanding simplified: Wiki - linked notes Zettelkasten - Wiki + process on how to read and work with resources, guidelines on how notes should be added, structured and tagged
x775 6y ago
It largely is. It seems as though Zettelkasten, despite being a relatively old phenomenon (e.g. see Niklas Luhmann), is experiencing a renaissance these days. Ultimately, it is just (yet) another way of keeping track of your notes and thoughts. You can think of it as cataloguing everything you write down. I reckon whether you stand to gain anything from converting your existing note-taking to a Zettelkasten operation depends entirely on how you currently take notes. What really matters is that whatever approach you employ works for you. In general, I wager the mere act of actually writing something down and approaching material in a critical, thoughtful manner as opposed to merely consuming is what drives both retention and understanding. Zettelkasten might help you attain that. It might also not.
vvillena 6y ago
The difference lies in how it's organized. An encyclopedia such as Wikipedia is organized using an encyclopedic hierarchy of knowledge. That makes no sense for a personal linked notes system: the key is to avoid hierarchy, and tag and link the notes in a way that helps them surface on the contexts you need.

DecayingOrganic 6y ago

I'm wondering: is there _any_ empirical data that shows that good old note-taking with a pen and paper is less effective when compared to Zettelkasten note-taking? (Disregarding advantages of digital note-taking such as easy to search, etc.) I personally use successive relearning, sometimes also referred to as retrieval-based learning, it's not a note-taking technique per se, but more of a framework on how to learn/study in a way that maximizes retention and meaningful learning. If anyone's interested in it, here are some resources: http://memory.psych.purdue.edu/downloads/2012_Karpicke_CDPS.pdf http://memory.psych.purdue.edu/downloads/2012_Karpicke_CDPS.... https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007/s10648-012-9202-2.pdf https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007/s10648-012-920... http://memory.psych.purdue.edu/downloads/2014_Karpicke_Lehman_Aue_PLM.pdf http://memory.psych.purdue.edu/downloads/2014_Karpicke_Lehma...

learnstats2 6y ago
I have personally always found that the act of conscious note-taking is more important than the ability to search afterwards. I generally take notes on paper and very rarely look at them afterwards.
- bosie 6y ago
  I am wondering, are you selective on what you take notes too or just take lots of notes? I.e. do you take lots of notes in meetings and every website/paper/book you are reading?
  - learnstats2 6y ago
    Personally? I note down some thoughts or tasks every day and carry a journal around for that. I usually get more value out of (work) meetings if I do take notes. I usually take notes but prefer not to if I'm chairing/leading the meeting. I rarely take notes on what I have read, unless it's something I am actively learning.
qznc 6y ago
Zettelkasten in its physical version is just a certain way of pen and paper note-taking.

ThePhysicist 6y ago

After trying so many productivtiy tools in the past I settled on having two ordinary notebooks where I keep all my ideas and notes: One for the business side, where I write down meeting minutes and insights, in chronological order. Another one for technical and creative thoughts, also organized in a linear, chronological fashion. In addition I sometimes keep lab notebooks for specific projects. If I look for some specific information (e.g. whom I talked to in a given meeting and what the take-aways were) I typically know the rough date range when I wrote that information down, so I just go through the notebook entries until I find it. Same with the lab and creative notebooks. Another advantage is that writing by hand allows you to draw diagrams and write equations with ease. In my opinion nothing beats a paper notebook in this regard. I tried the new iPads and MS Surface tablets but the note-taking experience is just not the same and the results look disappointing IMHO. Also, if I really need to record an image or computer-generated diagram I simply print it, cut it out and glue it into the notebook. My former colleagues in science used the same method of keeping lab books for decades with great success, I have never heard of anyone using a system like Zettelkasten (but maybe that's just my bubble).

dmortin 6y ago
Zettelkasten can be done on paper too. Its point is making connections between notes and being able to do discover new connections giving you new insights. Simple note taking just records what you know and think. ZH can lead to new understandings of the same set of notes.
- fsloth 6y ago
  You can use a date as a "link" in a notebook. A normal person does not create that many different entries per day. You can add a keyword to the notebook margin as well if you feel particularly systematic (then a link/reference would be 18jul23 for example).
- DelightOne 6y ago
  This sounds time-consuming, is it? I dont see myself following permanent links by timestamp. It is so time-consuming and error-prone, I would drop the whole thing immediately. I know myself this far anyway^^

BlackVanilla 6y ago

Is Zettelkasten better than 'the big .txt file'? [1] Sure, the example here is about productivity, but I know it can be used for general notes. Anything from your to do list, to notes from books, to ideas you want to remember. You want to remember what you wrote about a book on gardening? Seach gardening. This seems to be a low effort, high reward way of doing things. What extra benefit does Zettelkasten bring and is it worth the additional effort? EDIT: Another consideration is that you don't want the time you dedicate to sorting a productivity system to be especially big. You want to make stuff. The big txt file doesn't take up a lot of time to organise and allows you to spend time doing good things. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22276184 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22276184 (entitled 'My productivity app for the past 12 years has been a single .txt file')

dunefox 6y ago
I use it to 1) store ideas, concepts, etc. in a markdown format. So, if I'm studying something - say backpropagation for neural networks - I create the note, search for material online, study it, and add links, images, formulas, etc. to the note so I can merge several good sources of information that would otherwise be scattered in PDFs, stack overflow, wikipedia, ... Then afterwards I can go back and read my note and maybe visit the links I used to obtain the initial understanding. It's really great so far. 2) I can link the notes to create a sort of personal wikipedia. So far I'm pretty happy with Zettlr for this purpose. I find that even if I don't have to go back to many notes or actively walk through the graph it's really useful for distilling knowledge.
kiba 6y ago
Zettlekasten was designed as a research tool, not a productivity system(for that I use task lists and progress bar). Anyway, I used grep too, but I also navigate by following the links in my notes, which can sometime take me to different location. That can be a single file too or multiple files. That doesn't matter. What matters more is organization(or rather lack of). With Zettlekasten, you build a concept map of topics that you wouldn't otherwise get if you write your notes linearly or chronologically. So yeah, zettlekasten doesn't make sense as a productivity system, but that isn't its intended use case anyway.

randomor 6y ago

I am not disciplined enough to do the initial linking by using these timestamps, will also not break out of the flow to find the previous note in another folder and copy the timestamp around. Instead I’ve been using a stream of small auto-timestamped logs with hashtags to take and retrieve my notes and ideas. It is not a tree-based system, it’s just a text log stream and has worked extremely well for me so far. I used to do this in a private slack group but eventually created an app called ZenJournal. You may also find it useful.

m0zg 6y ago

I don't get it. Even if I write a bunch of stuff down, I still don't have the time to read it, unless it's for a specific project and I'm summarizing data specifically for that. If it's not tied to a project, I might as well not write it down at all - it won't be read.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

golly_ned 6y ago

Cool

marvinblum 6y ago

This is the fourth explanation that I've seen on HN this year. Including my own [1]. I like the more practical approach of this one, but the long numbers (timestamps) used for referencing look confusing. It's easier to remember the title of a note or a number you made up yourself. In case you're looking for a visual editor, you can take a look at Emvi [2]. We didn't build it exactly as a Zettelkasten, but you can reach that goal in pretty much any note taking app. Ours is more focused on collaboration. [1] https://emvi.com/blog/luhmanns-zettelkasten-a-productivity-tool-that-works-like-your-brain-N9Gd2G4aPv https://emvi.com/blog/luhmanns-zettelkasten-a-productivity-t... [2] https://emvi.com/ https://emvi.com/ (the UI will change quite a bit in the coming weeks, read about it here https://emvi.com/blog/a-new-experimental-user-interface-QMZgmZG1L5 https://emvi.com/blog/a-new-experimental-user-interface-QMZg...)

unicornporn 6y ago

> Use Zettlr. It’s Free and Open-Source, uses Markdown files and it’s vendor agnostic. I don't see how I could adopt a system that doesn't work on the device I always carry with me — the phone.

vincvinc 6y ago
I put my markdown files in a Dropbox folder, so I can use apps like 1writer on iOS. Syncs well and works like a charm! Whenever I have an interesting thought, I get my phone, open 1writer, it creates a new [timestamp].md file, and I just jot it down. It instantly saves to dropbox so if I open Sublime on my laptop, the file's already there. On my PC, I mostly write in Sublime Text but now experimenting with Zettlr and Obsidian. I heard heard other combinations with other cloud file services and other markdown writing apps work just as good. Having a folder with plaintext notes going back years just feels ... future-proof.

fastball 6y ago

Shameless plug: I literally just pushed a change[0] to my online note-taking app[1] last night that makes it a "full" Zettelkasten (e.g. there are backlinks now!) There are also some other cool features like multi-parent nesting that (in my opinion) make it much cooler than just a Zettelkasten. The main downside for many in the HN community is that it's online-only at the moment. [0] https://supernotes.app/changelog https://supernotes.app/changelog [1] https://supernotes.app https://supernotes.app

_def 6y ago
"Online-only" is not a deal breaker for me, but closed source and the missing possibility to self host it kinda is. But I'm gonna give it a try nonetheless!
- fastball 6y ago
  Thanks for the feedback! One of our goals is to have a robust API that anyone can build apps for so that you can integrate this with any sort of platform you want (and then obviously the client could be open source), but yes, otherwise it is closed-source.

jotm 6y ago

I've seen all these posts about this system and it still seems way too over-explained for what it is. Using Google keep with keywords at the end/start of the note, plus optional categories, seems to achieve the same thing. Everything is searchable, so if I'm thinking about something, I'll just do a few searches by keyword and see if I saved something before. No need for 2 pages of "how to use" :/

soniman 6y ago
Finally somebody makes some sense. I have an even lazier system, I type a search into bing like "bizidea - hydroponic urban farming" and save it to bookmarks and when search "bizidea" there are all the billion dollar ideas.
tennineeight 6y ago
I'll try to explain how I git where I am with this. I used the same Google keep as you for multiple years, but Keep isn't available offline on PC, it's interface doesn't help in interlinking, and it is not open source. Last one hurts especially considering its a Google project, one of the decent ones at that, and thus it can always be cancelled next quarter. I moved in to Emacs+org-mode on PC, and Orgzly/Orgro on Android. It syncs notes via syncthing, on my lan, no internet required, but can be used. This gives it a ruledundancy. Org-mode is also much Kore organic for note taking, since it allows collapsing trees, embedding code, equations. Adding links can be done inline, unlike Keep (I haven't used it in last year so that may have changed). As for search, Keep is good enough if your notes only have shopping lists and one off stuff that you require every now and then. Keep is, however, terrible for organizing any amount of knowledge. Org-rifle, for eg. gives context aware search results across my entire notes folder. The power is unmatched by Keep, where notes are mostly siloes, and interface too verbose to let you a birds eye view. And did I mention Keep takes multiple seconds to load on a good connection? And that its closed source? For some, that alone is reason enough.

zelphirkalt 6y ago

What, no Emacs org-mode comment so far? (Only searched for "org" and "org-mode" in the comments, superficially.) I guess I'll go ahead then: People have apparently implemented this workflow of note taking in their org-mode usage. Here are a few quick search results: * https://forum.zettelkasten.de/discussion/100/zettels-and-org-mode https://forum.zettelkasten.de/discussion/100/zettels-and-org... (also mentions org-brain) * https://www.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/fq54g5/using_emacss_orgmode_as_your_zettelk%C3%A4sten/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/fq54g5/using_... Org-mode is my go-to tool for any kind of notes or document, sometimes even for PDFs I want to make, via latex export and then latexmk. I find it more comfortable to use for literate programming than Jupyter notebooks too.

e19293001 6y ago
Thank you for mentioning org-mode. I was actually finding a good set-up. You're comment leads me to this blog[0] that I end-up following this set-up which is quite very simple. On the other hand, I recently saw a lot of Zettelkasten articles. I'm not sure if its been hyped but I still would like to give it a try. When I found emacs, I gave it a try (it was hard) and eventually I begin to like it because of its tons of features. When I found org-mode, I gave it a try and then I like it and use it everyday. When I found org-babel, I gave it a try and then I like it. When ... ... ... I hope more people would like to try emacs and org-mode. I know: learning at first is pretty hard. My advise it just to use it everyday. I remember I uninstalled notepad++ from my PC in order to force my self to use emacs. It took a month for my brain to be comfortable using emacs. [0] - https://dpitt.me/blog/2020/03/zettelkasten/ https://dpitt.me/blog/2020/03/zettelkasten/
- pcnix 6y ago
  You can also check out Zetteldeft, a deft based org mode extension that adds a bunch of useful shortcuts.
- jyriand 6y ago
  There us also org-roam that’s based on Roam Research app
6y ago

rcarmo 6y ago

My blog/wiki has been created somewhat along the same lines for many a year (including YYYY/mm/dd/HHMM page names), but somehow I can't get past Zettlr's default ID scheme, or the lack of hierarchy (having all my notes in a single folder is not something I'm keen on at all). (As an aside, both Zettlr and Obsidian completely freeze up on my 7000+ blog/wiki folder, but Obsidian eventually manages to parse and cross-link most of it given time)

snidane 6y ago

My problem with Zettelkasten is the granularity of notes which are supposed to be a single short concept only. I can't remember hundreds of notes I wrote in the past so that I can connect them when I write a new one. I actually prefer Martin Fowler's concept of bliki (blog+wiki) where the granularity is a blog post, instead of a singular note, which captures your understanding of a topic at that time. https://martinfowler.com/bliki/WhatIsaBliki.html https://martinfowler.com/bliki/WhatIsaBliki.html

marvinblum 6y ago
The idea behind the Zettelkasten is that you traverse it a lot. So it's not like "take a note and forget about it", it's more like write a bit and read it a lot of times. Luhmann wrote his books that way. So it's more about reading than taking the notes in the first place.
- ctietze 6y ago
  Yes, this! +1
rcarmo 6y ago
That is exactly how taoofmac.com was designed. I've hidden away the Wiki bits for the sake of uniformity, but the engine works like that.
- leephillips 6y ago
  Just want to say that I’ve been subscribed to the TofM RSS feed for many years, and thank you for sharing your interesting perspective.
  - rcarmo 6y ago
    Thanks for the kind words :)
- ctietze 6y ago
  Shoutout to you, Rui, for Tao of Mac :)

mercacona 6y ago

The most important idea I got from zettelkasten was not tagging ontologically your notes, but thinking in future actions like #havingatea, #planningahike, etc.

renw0rp 6y ago

Any idea why would Zettlr (recommended application for Zettelkasten in the article) called one of the themes "Karl-Marx-Stadt" (which is a name used for Chemnitz during division of Germany). I know it's a bit off topic - so I guess my comment fits right in HN discussions :D edit: I figured this out myself; the author of the application is described: Hendrik Erz is a research assistant at the University of Bonn. His main research focusses on the nexus between Marxist economic theory, digitalisation and violence in capitalist societies (riots and terrorism).

bachmeier 6y ago

> The linking is done by placing links like these [[20200606154308]] into notes. Most of the slip-box software allows you to click on this link and opens a note with ID 20200606154308 for you. What's the purpose of using a number to link? Why not use words, like hyperlinks have been doing for decades?

IlGrigiore 6y ago
Usually you use an ID in place of the title of the note, because you may want to change the title at a later date. If you were to change the title, then you would have to also change any of the links. Therefore, you keep the ID the same and can change the title of the note without breaking any links.
- klohto 6y ago
  So, just rename all occurrences or create a named hyperlink? Why do we keep coming up with already solved problems.
gpanders 6y ago
They're unique. Zettelkasten titles can be quite long: "Practices for nurturing healthy brain development during pregnancy" takes up a lot more space for a link than a 14 digit ID. You may say to just use a keyword of the title instead of the whole title, but then it is no longer unique and you must come up with another way of identifying which note it links to. Also, using IDs means it is very easy to visually scan a note for links. The [[##############]] format stands out vividly. I like it, it doesn't bother me. Do whatever works for you.
- 7839284023 6y ago
  Is there a way to see a title or can you only show the ID in the preview on the left? I am very confused by this software because renaming a file brakes all my links... And if every file as a date as a name I would not know where to start.
  - 6y ago

znpy 6y ago

This thing that apparently worked very well for that sociologist that mostly likely operated before the iper-connected and mostly digital world that we currently live in (he died in 1998). It's now being marketed as another holy grail solution, it reminds me of the GTD method back in the day (in terms of marketing). Index cards and custom sized drawers? lol nope. To add some constructive feedback: I'm playing with MediaWiki and i noticed this nice links on the right side of all pages: "What links here". It reminded me of this Zettelkasten thing. But without much fuss.

bloopernova 6y ago
Think of Zettlekasten as a wiki-with-a-narrow-focus. This site https://roamresearch.com/ https://roamresearch.com/ can be considered a wiki, but its features are all designed around journals, linking, tags, etc. Something like how a text editor can be configured to be a very useful IDE for a given programming language.
trms 6y ago
To your last point: there's now ZK-focused software which has exactly that: a 'what links here' button on the side, which sort of removes the fuss. (Obsidian, to name one)

odomojuli 6y ago

Every time I see a new method of note taking I file it under notes for notetaking and never get around to it. These days I do everything in pen and paper. I file it in a file cabinet. I think this is what Fermi used to do, could be wrong. It works for me. No dependencies, no installations, no updates, no latency, pretty decent storage and great portability. I make an effort not to dwell on productivity tools, which feel like spending time to save time in spurious and inconsistent amounts. Yes, I wish I could memorize and remember everything worth knowing and doing. No, sometimes it's nice to forget things and prioritize the information that's in front of me.

jonpurdy 6y ago
I keep seeing articles about Zettelkasten pop up every couple of weeks on HN lately. Notetaking and productivity articles tend to get me thinking about how my own system works (I still have a bunch of Zettelkasten articles I would like to read...) I've been using Anki as my SRS system for language recall for years. A couple of months ago I started putting in random facts and bits of information that I would normally put into a note. This sort of thing tends to get inputted, filed, and forgotten about until I do a purge of notes every few months. But since I've started using Anki for this, I now 100% remember these types of random facts. A few examples: - FQ_CODEL stands for Fair Queueing with COntrolled DELay - ADSB is to air traffic what AIS is to marine traffic - In CAP theorem, must choose between availability and consistency (For Anki nerds, I have these as cloze deletions) The biggest benefit for me (aside from actually remembering this stuff) is that the cognitive overhead of inputting and studying is super low. I can stay focused on doing important work while not having cognitive overhead of learning new things affect my output.
sorum 6y ago
Then you’re already close to the Zettelkasten method; you can use individual paper notes and never touch digital. The difference is in how your individual notes are structured into a coherent system. Instead of filing a note in your cabinet by topic / theme, you give each note a unique ID number and over time add links to others within your note.
leephillips 6y ago

7839284023 6y ago

Is there a good client for android for this system to sync with?

stewbrew 6y ago

Why can't people just recommend using personal wikis?

rhizome31 6y ago

Reading the linked article I'm very surprised that the author says they can't talk about what they read after reading it. I'm quite the opposite as I often talk about what I've read to my friends, even before finishing the book. Sure I might not remember things as well a year later, but then I can go back to the ToC or index and find the bit I've forgotten. Saying that books don't work in general doesn't ring true to me.

pedro1976 6y ago

Here is my personal experience after applying this method for more than a year. The crucial idea of the zettelkasten method is to contextualize knowledge instead of categorizig it. So its processing information instead of just storing it. Hence retrieving knowledge is much easier because its much more connected in your brain. I experienced this as extremely powerful, my thoughts became much more internalized. Cross-linking becomes the standard, which is a main driver of creativity and idea shaping.

jll29 6y ago

Niklas Luhmann collected 90,000 note cards and popularised "Zettelkasten" note-taking as a knowledge management method with paper-based hyperlinks: https://niklas-luhmann-archiv.de/projekt/beschreibung https://niklas-luhmann-archiv.de/projekt/beschreibung (archive, supports download as TIFF scans and JSON transcriptions). If you use Sublime (as I do beside Emacs), ther's a plug-in: https://zettelkasten.de/posts/sublime-text-plugin/ https://zettelkasten.de/posts/sublime-text-plugin/ During my undergraduate studies I summarized each paper or book I read in form of a single plain text file. This was very helpful when studying for oral exams that required internalizing in the order of >20 volumes. While these weren't cross-referenced, and no special tool was used, this still helped to ace the exams, mostly because the practice of summarizing/compressing the material to its essence itself is essentially the same as learning it. Main main advice is any tool or none is fine as long as the notes are in plain text so they can last - it's the most durable file format, and you can always build a full-text index to make it searchable e.g. using Lucene.

tony_codes 6y ago

I love tiddlywiki for atomic easily linkable notes

_sbrk 6y ago

I almost never take notes. My to-do lists are on post-it notes scattered on my desk, and I rarely miss a task or deadline. I tried the notebook route for a while, but I found that it was more like a diary; I never looked back until years had passed and, by then, the data was no longer relevant. Anyone else do it this way?

Maha-pudma 6y ago

There's been a few of these articles on HN recently. This method sounds to me like a personal wiki. And for that I use Zim-wiki. It has all the features the article talks about, as well as displaying pictures. It's a folder and text file structure as described, handles links, and back links, between notes and has a tagging system. Not only that it has a journal and task management. I use it at work and home. It's cross platform, but not mobile. Brilliant piece of software.

dude01 6y ago

I've been using https://github.com/vimoutliner/vimoutliner https://github.com/vimoutliner/vimoutliner for a decade now. It works well. It's so easy to backup, since it's just text files. And you can just use grep and other standard tools to look for content. I believe it's the vim-counterpart to emacs org-mode. I've been forced to use MS OneNote for one contract, since the laptop is locked-down. Works ok, but search-ability and keyboard-only usage sucks in comparison.

rcarmo 6y ago
Pro tip: OneNote supports [[WikiLink]] in most platforms. Try it.

bbx 6y ago

The linked example is very neat: https://notes.andymatuschak.org/About_these_notes https://notes.andymatuschak.org/About_these_notes The source code is not available, and each mouseover triggers a lot of Ajax calls (one for the note hovered, one for each link in the hovered note), but the experience is quite pleasant.

drcode 6y ago

There's a note-management system that can be built that's much better than all existing systems, I am certain of it, but all my attempts to design it so far have failed. It somehow involves a combination of organically determining a hierarchy of the notes, and then helping to algorithmically prune notes that are no longer useful.

hanklazard 6y ago
Yes, totally! I feel like this Zettelkasten technique is a step in the right direction with the idea of linking notes, but relying on these long, random looking strings to do the linking seems wrong. Human-readable tags that serve as links seem better, but I suppose that's more of just a software issue, not a technique issue. My ideal note-taking software for what you're describing would be: 1. platform independent (or at least very easy to use on multiple platforms, phone + desktop) 2. your "organically determined hierarchy of notes" idea ... a clustering map of some sort. 3. links via human-readable tags 4. FOSS I'm guessing this exists already but that I just need to look harder.

metrokoi 6y ago

I don't see how this method of note taking is better than just writing note linearly. Sure, it is good if you want to recall information for writing a book, but it doesn't seem like it would actually increase your retention and improve your ability to apply things that you have learned. If anything it would make you less efficient at learning because you have to maintain this note structure. It seems like it's only good for summarizing or collecting information for repackaging and publishing. Maybe that is all it's purporting to be, though.

mitko 6y ago

That’s kind of similar to the format I usually use for writing for my blog. I’d use the blog itself as the permanent folder, and the act of publishing it the ritual which makes it permanent. As I am writing new essays they live in emacs or notes or notion or whatever note taking app I enjoy using currently. Such notes are almost never long lived for me. If I were to write something large like a book, I would probably maintain distinctions between early drafts vs later drafts of chapters. I am imagining that most writers do have some system which captures the notion of the stage the work is in. Publishing externally is the ultimate way to make it permanent though- otherwise nothing stops the author from amending.

dang 6y ago

Soon we will need a Zettelkasten to track our Zettelkästen: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23386630 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23386630 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22085837 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22085837 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21208196 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21208196 https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=zettelkasten&sort=byDate&type=story&storyText=none https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

baxtr 6y ago

By now, I am kinda saturated with posts about the "Zettelkasten" system. It seems to be quite popular these days on HN...

distant_hat 6y ago

In my experience with note taking, any system that is easy and trivial to use is better than a fancy system that you don't.