5 ms·

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-taki

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.
vicek22 6y ago
Sönke Ahrens describes a scenario that got me sold: Normal notes are fighting complexity by creating smaller and smaller categories of notes Example: splitting "engineering notes" to "software notes" and "technical writing notes" and then "software notes" to "java notes" and "design notes" And this way the notes get deeper and deeper in your notebook and you stop interacting with them. This described well my personal experience. ---- Zettelkasten fights this complexity by much more up-front work when adding and linking note, instead of a tree structure, you have a network.
- kiba 6y ago
  Zettelkasten fights this complexity by much more up-front work when adding and linking note, instead of a tree structure, you have a network. I wonder if I am doing it wrong. I certainly organize my notes into tree format when I am doing intensive reading on a book. This is to keep my head straight on what topics had been touched on by that book. On occasions, I do opportunistic linking, however.
  - kd5bjo 6y ago
    > This is to keep my head straight on what topics had been touched on by that book. Most of the time, it’s more be beneficial to file notes according to the situation in which they’ll be useful rather than where they came from: If you’re going to have a tree structure, the original sources should be out at the leaves as external references rather than the root. This manifests in many forms from lots of different people giving advice: In Getting Things Done, Allen spends a lot of time on the importance of organizing your todo lists by where you’ll be able to do the actions. Luhmann used his original Zettelkasten to store passages that he could pull to make drafts of papers, and cross-referenced them to other passages that could be included together. In How to Write a Thesis, Eco recommends writing a preliminary outline of your thesis and then tagging notes with the section number they’re relevant to. In his MasterClass series, Chris Hadfield emphasizes the benefit of collecting summary notes organized by the interface you’ll see when actually performing an activity.
- dmortin 6y ago
  You can have tags instead of hierarchy and then you also have a network. So instead of "java notes" and "design notes" you add the "java" and "design" tag, etc., so you can approach your notes in any direction: you can find "java" notes and then narrow the result sets to design notes (so java+design), and vice versa. And you can add links too between the nodes, so you can also walk them in any order you define. Existing tools can do this already, it's just a matter of using them. Is there any more to zettelkasten? Its author invented the same thing on paper notes, but digital tools provide this naturally.
loopz 6y ago
Research is difficult and results don't generalize that well. People are so different. Some can remember anything they read, while others don't remember even if they do take notes. A better approach is also difficult, ie. asking yourself, do I need better note-taking and memorization of topics? Due to Dunner-Kruger effects, we rarely ponder this. Nowadays, a websearch is a very quick and accessible cop-out and, in many cases (not all), more effective. Research typically show that pencil and paper works best for memorization. In my experience, I never refer to these notes later however. Wiki was a good idea in 1995, but taking notes shouldn't require arcane knowledge and have arbitrary implementation limits. Markdown is slightly better. As a tool, I prefer WYSIWYG into an accessible format. For TODO-notes, a simple text-file serve me well. However, for note-taking that I want to refer to later, mindmaps works best digitally in my personal experience, both for memorization and reference. A free version, though a bit limited, is FreeMind. Works well enough to navigate to find what you need, provided proper node names and structure.
dunefox 6y ago
I don't think that the note taking part itself with a physical notebook can be beaten, yet a digital Zettelkasten has huge advantages that come after the note taking part: add links, images, formulas, search, etc.
kd5bjo 6y ago
As far as I can tell, the crosslinking required by the Zettelkasten approach (1) provides two main benefits: - It forces some retrieval practice of the notes you’ve taken before, which reinforces all the ideas involved. - Most of the benefit comes from the act of writing, but there’s an inevitable sense of futility that comes about if those writings are inevitably lost to time. By giving each note an ongoing purpose (to be linked to), the Zettelkasten system dodges this particular trigger to stop writing notes. (1) as used by Luhmann; not necessarily any of the electronic tools
fsloth 6y ago
There is single well known datapoint - the prodigiously productive humanist researcher Luhmann who invented the method. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niklas_Luhmann https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niklas_Luhmann The main reason it's so hip because Luhmann used it. So, if your work is similar to Luhmanns and your cognitive profile is similar to Luhmans it makes perfect sense to try it out. But I have no idea how you could test it's effectiveness in any sense that would provide results that are scientifically or statistically sane in any way. Personally I've tried a "zettelkasten light" and I've found that I can keep my personal random research findings better organized that way - so instead of having just a page in a notebook, building an actual index of the notes as well, and linking thematically identical topics together seems to keep my thoughts better together. Been doing it only for a few months, though, need to see what I think about it in few years.
- stewbrew 6y ago
  IMHO he is also the best example for why this method doesn't work that well. His books lack focus. They are collection of thoughts with no mention of the sources. I say this as a trained sociologist who once was a proponent of his ideas.
  - Zeminary 6y ago
    Can you expand on that? Everyone talks about Zettelkasten but not the products of Zettelkasten. It'd be nice to know more about your opinion on Luhmann's work.
  - marttt 6y ago
    This is anecdotal, but I recall reading somewhere (maybe in a foreword) that e.g. Luhmann's "Social Systems" (1984; English translation 1985) was composed this way in purpose. The reader was supposed to be able to start the book from any chapter without feeling that he/she is missing something. But, once more, this is anecdotal recall. A similarly structured contemporary book is David Fleming's "Lean Logic: Dictionary for the Future and How to Survive It" [1]. A true masterpiece of composition IMO, and a work that took the author 30 years. Interestingly, this work ethic also links to Luhmann's views on the time span of research relevant to him. Quoting a paper I found on the matter [2]: " In 1962 he received a scholarship to Harvard and spent a year with Talcott Parsons. In 1968, he was appointed professor of sociology at the newly established University of Bielefeld, where he worked until his retirement. Shortly before his appointment he was asked on what subject he wished to work at university. His reply was: “The theory of modern society. Duration 30 years; no costs.” He consequently realised exactly this theoretical program. At the time of his death in December 1998, at the age of 70, he had published an oeuvre of over 14,000 printed pages." [1]: https://www.amazon.com/Lean-Logic-Dictionary-Future-Survive/dp/1603586482 https://www.amazon.com/Lean-Logic-Dictionary-Future-Survive/... [2]: https://www.academia.edu/17063506/The_Legacy_of_Niklas_Luhmann https://www.academia.edu/17063506/The_Legacy_of_Niklas_Luhma... Reference: Bechmann, G., and N. Stehr. "The Legacy of Niklas Luhmann. Society, January/February 2002.
Scarblac 6y ago
It depends on the goal. Your goal is to learn things, apparently. Memorize what you wrote on the notes. Zettelkasten's isn't. Its goal is to produce great books and papers.
madballster 6y ago
Remember: Luhmann's original Zettelkasten is pen and paper, see image link https://m.westfalen-blatt.de/var/storage/images/wb/startseite/owl/bielefeld/bielefeld/3758218-universitaet-bielefeld-sammlung-besteht-aus-90.000-vom-soziologen-angefertigten-notizzetteln-luhmanns-zettelkasten-geht-online/105970150-7-ger-DE/Universitaet-Bielefeld-Sammlung-besteht-aus-90.000-vom-Soziologen-angefertigten-Notizzetteln-Luhmanns-Zettelkasten-geht-online_image_1024_width.jpg https://m.westfalen-blatt.de/var/storage/images/wb/startseit... It's only the latest hype around digital Zettelkastens that tout the supposed benefits of mass-linking notes or generating fancy graphs (which I find to be a gimmick with little practical value). Like any note taking system: Your potential output is what and how much you put into it. No note taking solution - digital or analog - magically produces results without countless hours of input.

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.

vicek22 6y ago

Sönke Ahrens describes a scenario that got me sold: Normal notes are fighting complexity by creating smaller and smaller categories of notes Example: splitting "engineering notes" to "software notes" and "technical writing notes" and then "software notes" to "java notes" and "design notes" And this way the notes get deeper and deeper in your notebook and you stop interacting with them. This described well my personal experience. ---- Zettelkasten fights this complexity by much more up-front work when adding and linking note, instead of a tree structure, you have a network.

kiba 6y ago
Zettelkasten fights this complexity by much more up-front work when adding and linking note, instead of a tree structure, you have a network. I wonder if I am doing it wrong. I certainly organize my notes into tree format when I am doing intensive reading on a book. This is to keep my head straight on what topics had been touched on by that book. On occasions, I do opportunistic linking, however.
- kd5bjo 6y ago
  > This is to keep my head straight on what topics had been touched on by that book. Most of the time, it’s more be beneficial to file notes according to the situation in which they’ll be useful rather than where they came from: If you’re going to have a tree structure, the original sources should be out at the leaves as external references rather than the root. This manifests in many forms from lots of different people giving advice: In Getting Things Done, Allen spends a lot of time on the importance of organizing your todo lists by where you’ll be able to do the actions. Luhmann used his original Zettelkasten to store passages that he could pull to make drafts of papers, and cross-referenced them to other passages that could be included together. In How to Write a Thesis, Eco recommends writing a preliminary outline of your thesis and then tagging notes with the section number they’re relevant to. In his MasterClass series, Chris Hadfield emphasizes the benefit of collecting summary notes organized by the interface you’ll see when actually performing an activity.
dmortin 6y ago
You can have tags instead of hierarchy and then you also have a network. So instead of "java notes" and "design notes" you add the "java" and "design" tag, etc., so you can approach your notes in any direction: you can find "java" notes and then narrow the result sets to design notes (so java+design), and vice versa. And you can add links too between the nodes, so you can also walk them in any order you define. Existing tools can do this already, it's just a matter of using them. Is there any more to zettelkasten? Its author invented the same thing on paper notes, but digital tools provide this naturally.

loopz 6y ago

Research is difficult and results don't generalize that well. People are so different. Some can remember anything they read, while others don't remember even if they do take notes. A better approach is also difficult, ie. asking yourself, do I need better note-taking and memorization of topics? Due to Dunner-Kruger effects, we rarely ponder this. Nowadays, a websearch is a very quick and accessible cop-out and, in many cases (not all), more effective. Research typically show that pencil and paper works best for memorization. In my experience, I never refer to these notes later however. Wiki was a good idea in 1995, but taking notes shouldn't require arcane knowledge and have arbitrary implementation limits. Markdown is slightly better. As a tool, I prefer WYSIWYG into an accessible format. For TODO-notes, a simple text-file serve me well. However, for note-taking that I want to refer to later, mindmaps works best digitally in my personal experience, both for memorization and reference. A free version, though a bit limited, is FreeMind. Works well enough to navigate to find what you need, provided proper node names and structure.

dunefox 6y ago

I don't think that the note taking part itself with a physical notebook can be beaten, yet a digital Zettelkasten has huge advantages that come after the note taking part: add links, images, formulas, search, etc.

kd5bjo 6y ago

As far as I can tell, the crosslinking required by the Zettelkasten approach (1) provides two main benefits: - It forces some retrieval practice of the notes you’ve taken before, which reinforces all the ideas involved. - Most of the benefit comes from the act of writing, but there’s an inevitable sense of futility that comes about if those writings are inevitably lost to time. By giving each note an ongoing purpose (to be linked to), the Zettelkasten system dodges this particular trigger to stop writing notes. (1) as used by Luhmann; not necessarily any of the electronic tools

fsloth 6y ago

There is single well known datapoint - the prodigiously productive humanist researcher Luhmann who invented the method. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niklas_Luhmann https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niklas_Luhmann The main reason it's so hip because Luhmann used it. So, if your work is similar to Luhmanns and your cognitive profile is similar to Luhmans it makes perfect sense to try it out. But I have no idea how you could test it's effectiveness in any sense that would provide results that are scientifically or statistically sane in any way. Personally I've tried a "zettelkasten light" and I've found that I can keep my personal random research findings better organized that way - so instead of having just a page in a notebook, building an actual index of the notes as well, and linking thematically identical topics together seems to keep my thoughts better together. Been doing it only for a few months, though, need to see what I think about it in few years.

stewbrew 6y ago
IMHO he is also the best example for why this method doesn't work that well. His books lack focus. They are collection of thoughts with no mention of the sources. I say this as a trained sociologist who once was a proponent of his ideas.
- Zeminary 6y ago
  Can you expand on that? Everyone talks about Zettelkasten but not the products of Zettelkasten. It'd be nice to know more about your opinion on Luhmann's work.
- marttt 6y ago
  This is anecdotal, but I recall reading somewhere (maybe in a foreword) that e.g. Luhmann's "Social Systems" (1984; English translation 1985) was composed this way in purpose. The reader was supposed to be able to start the book from any chapter without feeling that he/she is missing something. But, once more, this is anecdotal recall. A similarly structured contemporary book is David Fleming's "Lean Logic: Dictionary for the Future and How to Survive It" [1]. A true masterpiece of composition IMO, and a work that took the author 30 years. Interestingly, this work ethic also links to Luhmann's views on the time span of research relevant to him. Quoting a paper I found on the matter [2]: " In 1962 he received a scholarship to Harvard and spent a year with Talcott Parsons. In 1968, he was appointed professor of sociology at the newly established University of Bielefeld, where he worked until his retirement. Shortly before his appointment he was asked on what subject he wished to work at university. His reply was: “The theory of modern society. Duration 30 years; no costs.” He consequently realised exactly this theoretical program. At the time of his death in December 1998, at the age of 70, he had published an oeuvre of over 14,000 printed pages." [1]: https://www.amazon.com/Lean-Logic-Dictionary-Future-Survive/dp/1603586482 https://www.amazon.com/Lean-Logic-Dictionary-Future-Survive/... [2]: https://www.academia.edu/17063506/The_Legacy_of_Niklas_Luhmann https://www.academia.edu/17063506/The_Legacy_of_Niklas_Luhma... Reference: Bechmann, G., and N. Stehr. "The Legacy of Niklas Luhmann. Society, January/February 2002.

Scarblac 6y ago

It depends on the goal. Your goal is to learn things, apparently. Memorize what you wrote on the notes. Zettelkasten's isn't. Its goal is to produce great books and papers.

madballster 6y ago

Remember: Luhmann's original Zettelkasten is pen and paper, see image link https://m.westfalen-blatt.de/var/storage/images/wb/startseite/owl/bielefeld/bielefeld/3758218-universitaet-bielefeld-sammlung-besteht-aus-90.000-vom-soziologen-angefertigten-notizzetteln-luhmanns-zettelkasten-geht-online/105970150-7-ger-DE/Universitaet-Bielefeld-Sammlung-besteht-aus-90.000-vom-Soziologen-angefertigten-Notizzetteln-Luhmanns-Zettelkasten-geht-online_image_1024_width.jpg https://m.westfalen-blatt.de/var/storage/images/wb/startseit... It's only the latest hype around digital Zettelkastens that tout the supposed benefits of mass-linking notes or generating fancy graphs (which I find to be a gimmick with little practical value). Like any note taking system: Your potential output is what and how much you put into it. No note taking solution - digital or analog - magically produces results without countless hours of input.