19 ms·

My Second Brain – Zettelkasten

164 points by spences10 6y ago

kritiko 6y ago
I’m fascinated by the rise of the Zettelkasten concept among hackers (I don’t think I’ve seen it anywhere mainstream yet) and the fundraising that Notion & Roam have accomplished. Based on the title of the post, I assume you are inspired by Tiago Forte? I’d be interested to hear more about how your notes are organized and what they help you accomplish. The idea of moving notes across 4 platforms as described in this article makes me wince, which is why I’m on OneNote for now - maybe not quite as nice for linking stuff but included in O365 which my work uses, cross platform, etc.
- spences10 6y ago
  For me it was about getting the notes in one place where I could manage them as I would in my text editor. I always got frustrated with the implementation of Markdown and no being able to manipulate the text as I would in a .md document. I have lost some functionality that Notion had, like for Kanban boards and such but being able to manipulate the plain text is where I want to be. The only downside I have really is that I'm tied to using a VS Code now for writing notes, if I want to go mobile I can use something like GitJournal on android and make changes there, and there's now code spaces in GitHub so I could in theory use a code space in a tablet on the move, but none of us are out and about that much these days
  - vhanda 6y ago
    Disclaimer: GitJournal Author. I've started using GitJournal a bit with my tablet, though it's a really old one. I would like to make GitJournal more tablet friendly in the future. If you happen to try to it, please feel free to to tell me about the issues. I'll be happy to fix them. PS: For markdown + kanban, imdone.io looks interesting. I haven't tried it out though.
    - AdamGibbins 6y ago
      GitJournal is great, discovered it months ago and its significantly improved the way I reference my notes. Thanks for the time you've put into it, greatly appreciated.
- GekkePrutser 6y ago
  Yeah I'm kinda surprised. Most people in the hacker/maker community I know are pretty disorganised like myself.. I know for me this kind of thing will never fly, it requires too much dedication. In this sense I'm not surprised it came from Germany as they love formalising things. It's really in their nature and I imagine this is also why they're so good at technological things. But for me it'll never work, I know I'll start on it and then I have a rush project where I don't have time to keep the docs up to date and then I'll abandon it altogether :) I'm the kind of guy who fills up their desktop with everything they're working on and when it ends up being full just moves it to a folder "Old Desktop" (which is in fact a chain of "Even Older Desktop" folders :) :) :) ). Somehow it seems to work for me though, it really surprises me how I can find stuff back from 10 years ago just by seeing the icons of stuff I worked on around the time. And it's really zero effort which I like. And really, I like relying on my memory.. If I don't remember something maybe it wasn't worth remembering. And discovering it once more may lead to other interesting discoveries. But I'm glad it helps others forward in their goals! I didn't expect it at all though.
  - kritiko 6y ago
    Your comment really resonates with me. The people who seem to push and advance these systems seem to be (broad generalizations follow) -Academics like Andy Matuschak who are trying to create better technology for learning or do work on really hard problems -Productivity gurus like Nat Eliason and Tiago Forte who make money selling tutorials on how to use these systems. For “The rest of us” there could probably be some gains from using these systems... but sticky notes, texts, notes app, Slack, wherever else you jot stuff suffice, and there’s a lot of administrative overhead & habit change required. I think I am gradually implementing more “linked notes” into my work as systems like Microsoft Teams make it possible to combine a wiki and a file directory easily. But I’m skeptical that this is going to become mass market in the near term.
GekkePrutser 6y ago
Why does this keep making HN headlines? The Zettelkasten thing is really nice but it keeps coming up as a 'new discovery' every few weeks. Personally I don't have the attention to detail for it so I'll never do it.
- michaericalribo 6y ago
  Not everyone sees every post! someone in another comment literally said: “I hadn’t heard of Zettelkasten until today”.
  - GekkePrutser 6y ago
    Fair enough, I'm glad it helps people!
- michaericalribo 6y ago
  Responding to your experience: I completely agree, this type of system is too detailed / intricate / involved for me to get much use out of it...I get distracted from getting anything done by all the preparation—it’s just productivity porn I use for procrastination.
- UncleOxidant 6y ago
  I seem to notice these posts every month or so and there's some new tool recommended (Foam! Roam! Obsidian! zotero!) and I'll download said tool, try it out for a few minutes and think "Hmm, ok, that might be neat" and then promptly forget about it.
  - joegahona 6y ago
    I thought you were being silly with “Foam,” but it really is a thing...
    - _theory_ 6y ago
      I am a random crusader here to say that Foam is the greatest of all such software (every other option gets at least one such crusader, its only fair)
opticnerve 6y ago
Some times ago I started to use Obsidian.md to manage my Knowledge. Then I read Essentialism by Greg McKeown, and I suddenly realized that embracing Essentialism also means to stop having a macro-complexity to manage. I stopped using Obsidian.md and now I just have some .md file for the few essential things for me.
- oumua_don17 6y ago
  I am slowly coming to the same conclusion. This just applies to me, when my efforts are not directed towards making things and adapting on the fly, I tend to get sucked into thinking that I need a ton of knowledge to make things which leads me to find out systems which can help me manage that volume of knowledge, ironically and laughably before gaining that knowledge. Putting the cart before the horse !!! I then go back to making things and I think these systems may be useful for certain styles of learning. Does anyone here have similar experiences/thoughts? edit: fixed idiom typo!!!
lostintangent 6y ago
If folks are interested in this workflow, but want to auto-sync their changes to a GitHub repo, I’ve been maintaining a VS Code extension for managing code snippets, and notes/Roam-like wikis, and it includes full Foam interop: https://aka.ms/GistPad https://aka.ms/GistPad. https://twitter.com/lostintangent/status/1282047676377231360?s=21 https://twitter.com/lostintangent/status/1282047676377231360... https://twitter.com/lostintangent/status/1334225746751983618?s=21 https://twitter.com/lostintangent/status/1334225746751983618... https://twitter.com/lostintangent/status/1282850227695652865?s=21 https://twitter.com/lostintangent/status/1282850227695652865... I built this so that I could manage my knowledge in GitHub, but edit my notes like I would with Notion/OneNote (i.e. commit/push on save). It also supports managing code snippets via gists, since I’ve found that my personal knowledge is composed of notes and code snippets, and I wanted a single, editor-integrated solution for managing them both. Foam + GistPad recipe: https://foambubble.github.io/foam/recipes/write-your-notes-in-github-gist https://foambubble.github.io/foam/recipes/write-your-notes-i...
- tomcam 6y ago
  I want your job! Looks like you’re having way too much fun.
michaericalribo 6y ago
I’ve gone through phases of intense note taking and planning around organization. At the end of the day, I find the overhead of highly structured notes gets in my way and distracts me from actually accomplishing anything using the notes. Obviously these systems work for some people! But I’ve found detailed engineering of knowledge doesn’t work for me... What does work is a stripped down pair of tools: a) an inbox for capturing in-the-moment, which can be anything (a dedicated page in a notes app, my email inbox, a piece of paper); and b) a medium term “filing cabinet” for storing info for later (these days I use notion). These let me not lose an idea, and reference it later. The key is having one default place to dump everything.
- shakezula 6y ago
  I use a rough zettel method as well. I agree about the place to dump everything being the key. Too much structure gets in my way too, but the process of condensing and refining my notes into my zettel has been where some of my best ideas and insights have come when learning and/or creating and designing.
  - michaericalribo 6y ago
    That’s an important point! I mostly just dump in ‘facts’—my frequent flyer number, gift ideas, recipes. It’s just an external drive for my memory... But the active process of reflection and editing and synthesis based on actual notes...I completely miss out on that. It’s not a piece of tech, so much as a process. It reminds me of the Cornell notes system [1]: take raw notes in the moment, then condense and summarize them later. Reviewing and refining force you to internalize the content, not just record it. [1] http://lsc.cornell.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/Cornell-NoteTaking-System.pdf http://lsc.cornell.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/Cornell-No...
    - shakezula 6y ago
      Yes! The Cornell note method was a real game changer once i started using it. Wish I had found it earlier, honestly.
Rockjodd 6y ago
Have you tried Zettlr? https://www.zettlr.com/features https://www.zettlr.com/features
- smetj 6y ago
  I've been using it. I believe it's the most promising app of them all however it's still being heavily developed though.
abetusk 6y ago
For me, the idea is sound but the implementation always seems so cumbersome. I want something that separates the data from the display as much as possible, has an easy 'note taking' and has an easy install. One problem I always encounter is that if the interface to add notes has too much friction, I stop using it pretty quickly. Anyway, so I created something over the weekend called 'notenox' [0]. It creates a a JSON file of relevant information, one JSON file per note, with keywords and a "special" keyword prefix called a 'title' that mimics how I've actually been taking notes (email, so the 'title' mimics an email thread). For display, I consolidate all JSON files into a single JSON file and then have it loaded into the browser with some Javascript to group by title or keyword, along with doing all cross referencing and counting on the client end. Creating notes is done through the command line, because that's a common way I interact with my computer, with different options to create titles, links, keywords, etc. I'm sure there are many different Zettelkasten implementations out there but they always seem so clunky and cumbersome. It's not hard, so the simple use case should be simple, nor should it proprietary or locked behind a SaaS. You can see my personal notes in action, if you like [1] (sorry, not mobile friendly!). [0] https://github.com/abetusk/www.mechaelephant.com/tree/release/home/meow/notenox https://github.com/abetusk/www.mechaelephant.com/tree/releas... [1] https://mechaelephant.com/notenox https://mechaelephant.com/notenox
- 5cents 6y ago
  Have you heard of Tiddlywiki [0] (also mentioned above [1])? Although not command line, it is a single file and supports exporting/importing your notes as json, and offers a lot of flexibility [0] https://tiddlywiki.com https://tiddlywiki.com [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25804473 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25804473
Natales 6y ago
There have been several posts in recent weeks on this topic, and every time I have the same reaction: how can they all just ignore TiddlyWiki [0], that has been out there since 2004 and has evolved nicely over the years to deliver most of the same outcomes? Is it that folks just ignore prior art? or they just gravitate to the latest more sexy software? (honest question). I've been using TiddlyWiki on and off for many years, but 2-3 years ago I moved heavily into it (the Drift [1] distribution), and I haven't looked back. To me, it has become less about the tool and more about the information, and ensuring I have complete access to it, even 20 years from now. That includes data, metadata and even the software itself, regardless of the platform or OS. [0] https://tiddlywiki.com/ https://tiddlywiki.com/ [1] https://akhater.github.io/drift/ https://akhater.github.io/drift/
- qznc 6y ago
  You are not alone. I'm on TiddlyWiki as well: http://beza1e1.tuxen.de/tiddlywiki_notes.html http://beza1e1.tuxen.de/tiddlywiki_notes.html I love my two columns UI and seeing many notes at once. Why does Drift only show one note at once?
  - fy20 6y ago
    It seems like the important thing is not really what software you use, but what strategy you use, for taking notes.
5tefan 6y ago
Comes up more often lately. I do have an issue with organizing myself. Scheduling more than a week ahead is close to impossible. Not due to my job but due to my messy mind. Same with note taking. Has gotten worse and I even tried learning Emacs to get the famous Org Mode. I have to admit: This is so loose it seems I can get real benefit from it. No rules to follow but I manage to stay on top of a lot of things for the first rime. Still don't get Emacs though. Zettelkasten seems to require a diligent setup and well... no.
Bakary 6y ago
There's the notorious productivity swamp that is caused by the obsession with optimizing productivity without thinking about the actual purpose behind it. This is multiplied by the ease and incentive of creating and publicizing productivity software and articles that are consumed by people in a perpetual state of insatisfaction. The result is a psychologically advanced form of procrastination and a futile attempt at control that stems from fetishizing technology. To-do lists are for things that aren't a real priority, otherwise you would be giving them your full attention and the tracking would be unnecessary. At most, it's helpful to track administrative minutiae. If you give something your full attention, tracking will seem like a non-sequitur. Despite all of this, I have been finding the card system outlined here to be quite useful. The key for me however was to keep to a physical pen and paper version. Keeping notes exclusively online used to prevent me from being able to address them regularly with a clear mind. Forcing myself to synthesize ideas and refer to them again has helped me move forward in projects important to me. It's not the act of writing the note that is important, but the mindset towards having ideas that you want to develop. Ultimately, most important aspects of life are beyond any productivity hack. You can't hack meaningful relationships other than by growing as a person, nor can you hack the strength to work on things that matter every day. In a sense, the ultimate hack is to come to terms with your mortality and use this as an impulsion to focus on what really matters to you.
- kurko 6y ago
  > To-do lists are for things that aren't a real priority, otherwise you would be giving them your full attention and the tracking would be unnecessary. I disagree with this bit, but perhaps it’s because “real priority” is vague. To-do lists offload tasks from memory to ensure we don’t forget them. It’s totally possible for something to be a “real priority” (whatever definition) and someone forgetting about it. Don’t confuse priorities with memorization.
- armatav 6y ago
  This is one of the best posts I’ve seen on this forum.
- Shank 6y ago
  > To-do lists are for things that aren't a real priority, otherwise you would be giving them your full attention and the tracking would be unnecessary. I really suggest looking at the Eisenhower Matrix. Urgent and important tasks are the only types of tasks that really go into the category of "real priority." Todo lists are best used to manage tasks that are important, but either aren't as urgent as the most urgent tasks, or are blocked by some outside factor that you can't control. It's important to finalize insurance plans for the upcoming year, but waiting until it's "urgent" may result in not having enough time to find the best plan. Granted, maybe you don't have a problem keeping track of all important tasks -- in which case, that's awesome!
ungamedplayer 6y ago
I've recently had much more luck with https://johnnydecimal.com/ https://johnnydecimal.com/ , mirroring content structure across all my devices and even physically.
- codeful 6y ago
  i have built my own personal note-taking app based on this technique. This strategy just works very well at scale. Its fast to categorize input and filter content.
- 1shooner 6y ago
  This reminds me of a college summer job I had cataloging a design company's photography. I almost immediately ran into the limitations of a single taxonomy: "Is this picture of a tree, or a landscape?" Of course it could be considered either by a user, but the single hierarchy forces an exclusive organization.
- dmje 6y ago
  I’m about to implement this at home. Any tips?
  - ungamedplayer 6y ago
    Be broad with top level contacts. If you are able setup a sync to a cloud backup. Use the same structure across all devices. Dont be afraid to archive whole directories when projects are done.
  - ungamedplayer 6y ago
    I have a top level notes file in the x.y directories thst I often use to track the status of each project state.
nickthemagicman 6y ago
So the author writes their notes in mark down with a VS code extension and stores them on GitHub? Is there more to this that I'm not getting?
- marcuskaz 6y ago
  Data stored in files within a hierarchy of folders. It's the hot new thing!
- zikzak 6y ago
  I always wonder this as well, and, in my opinion, no there is never more to it than that. Interlinking notes with hyperlinks is a huge convenience that plays a role in all these "new" methods but academics (and others, of course) have always had manual systems for this. What I will say is I am in favor of anything that encourages people to write and create versus just consuming content. If fiddling with a new system encourages this, that is great.
violetgarden 6y ago
I hadn’t heard of Zettelkasten until today. I want to give it a go, but I’ll be honest, I feel a bit overwhelmed after reading about it. I’ve never catalogued my notes before or given each one a unique id.
- input_sh 6y ago
  There's basically just two things you need to know: 1. Keep your notes short. I do 10 sentences max. 2. Link them as much as possible. Find a program that does that (Obsidian, Roam, Foam, etc). It truly is a wonderful feeling when you do those two things many, many times. Instead of a YouTube rabbit hole, I can fall down a rabbit hole of my own thoughts just by clicking on a random note, following the links, and re-discovering some of my thoughts from months or years ago. Unique IDs are easy. For example, Unix timestamp or just YYYYMMDDHHMMSS. Here's a commonly shared public database to get you hooked: https://notes.andymatuschak.org/About_these_notes https://notes.andymatuschak.org/About_these_notes
  - shadre 6y ago
    How would you go about storing notes from a book/course so that they fit in this system? Would you break them into multiple notes? Group them together somehow? Have an "index" note with just hyperlinks to the rest?
    - input_sh 6y ago
      > How would you go about storing notes from a book/course so that they fit in this system? Overall, they don't. Zettelkasten is just one of the folders within my note-taking app (Obsidian), and notes from books go into a separate folder. If there are some titbits that I see being useful outside of the book, I duplicate it into a zettelkasten note. > Group them together somehow? I have an "also see" section in my template where I link every other short note that's somehow connected. That's what I meant by "linking them as much as possible". The end goal is to be able to follow the links between similar notes instead of having to search for them. My library isn't big enough at the moment, but once it becomes, I should be able to click on a random note, follow a few links, and have an entire article with sources to back it up with little to no effort, using thoughts I had months or years ago. > Have an "index" note with just hyperlinks to the rest? Yeah I also do this. I have a note titled "00 zk" that's an index note for all the zettelkasten notes. I don't fill it out automatically at the moment, but I have a plugin that can do "link all notes within this folder", and I trigger it with a hotkey from time to time. That index note helps me to see similar notes and interlink them, because I never view that folder with a file explorer.
brettwilcox 6y ago
I've been using the Zettelkasten method for a few months now and I could never go back to the way I was taking notes before. I picked "The Archive" for the app and have a Git repo located on OneDrive. It just works and there is no guessing how things get organized. I can keep my notes not only synced, but I also get version controlled markdown files. You can setup VSCode to accomplish the same tasks through extensions, but it's not 100% perfect. The Archive is great software, but they also have a fantastic community that's researching this subject. https://forum.zettelkasten.de https://forum.zettelkasten.de
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- galaxyLogic 6y ago
  So what is the organization of your notes? I would think that to collect knowledge about the world you would (ideally) need to have an ontological model of what are the categories of things we can talk about, and how those categories are connected to each other. Creating such a model even if only in your head means organizing the knowledge we have and collect, and is not a trivial thing to accomplish. Or does it not matter with Zettelkasten?
martin-adams 6y ago
For anyone who wants the gist of Zettelkasten, I've just finished reading How to Take Smart Notes by Sönke Ahrens. Here's my rather brief summary of the process: * You create fleeting notes to capture ideas as they happen. They should be short lived notes that don't become the main store of your knowledge. * You create literature notes as your read material. These should include your own thoughts on highlighted passages, not just quotes and highlights on their own. * You organise your fleeting notes as permanent notes into your 'Slip Box' (taken from the original use index cards). Each note should contain a single idea and should be understandable when reading in isolation. * You want to avoid burying knowledge in large notes as it makes it hard to glance at and link to other notes in a concise way. * Notes are linked to other notes which support your ideas. This also help the discovery of new ideas. * You use your slip box to help you do your thinking. You want to ask it questions, find the related notes that support/oppose the arguments and find gaps or newly related information. * You can create index notes that help you find your way around. * Part of the process is to help your understanding by writing. With a well maintained slip box, you'll never be starting from a blank sheet. You decide what insight/question/knowledge you want to explore, and pull together the notes that give you the body of research to get you started. You shouldn't need to start a new blog post by researching, that happens prior by taking smart notes as you naturally read what you're interested in. Hope that's somewhat helpful. I'm still experimenting with it to find out what I understand correctly and what I don't.
- anandb143 6y ago
  For your third bullet point, should that be literature notes ? doesn't sound like fleeting notes should be a permanent record.
  - martin-adams 6y ago
    Sorry, I think I poorly explained that. Both fleeting and literature notes need to be ‘organised’ into the slip box as permanent notes. By organised, this means to filter, rewrite, conclude, etc into permanent notes. You don’t want to put in book extracts, or disjointed ideas without putting it in your own words.
- 6y ago
Datagenerator 6y ago
Recently started using TiddlyWiki as personal notes archive. The automatic indexes of really work well to connect each note to others.
- 5cents 6y ago
  I agree, and there is at least three different implementations of zettelkasten in tiddlywiki: Drift (https://akhater.github.io/drift/ https://akhater.github.io/drift/): I use this one as it has many nice features without becoming overwhelming Stroll (https://giffmex.org/stroll/stroll.html https://giffmex.org/stroll/stroll.html): like Drift, but more features, including two column view TiddlyRoam (https://tiddlyroam.org/ https://tiddlyroam.org/): Have a graph showing the relation between your notes
jsteinbach 6y ago
For VSC there is also Dendron [1], which I found nicer than Foam. After lots of trial/error and at the end of the rabbit hole I found Emacs with org-roam [2]. It has a steep learning-curve and often seems outdated, but it is also very powerful, has VIM hotkeys, and allows me to create the academic workflow I want - so far I can automatically create a note from my Zotero .bib library, fill it based on a template and the insert all my annotations from the associated PDF. Afterwards I also semi-automatically extract the references from that PDF, insert them into the annotations and then start to link everything into my Zettelkasten system. Sometimes I wish I just stayed with VSCode/Markdown, but then I remember that I can now put "elisp" on my resumee :) Overall I think that the "new" note-taking/Zettelkasten-systems is very cool and useful, but I wish someone would come along and create "the next big thing" which in my opinion is multi-dimensional notes. Tiddlywiki/Tiddlyroam [4,5], TheBrain[6] and even Scrivener [7] seem like a step in the right direction, but they also make some other things overly complicated (convoluted UI, no plug/play export, bad editors, ...). I want to be able to freely take notes on my computer the same way I can do on paper, and then be able to "super-charge" them by linking, aggregating, searching them. At the moment notes are "one-dimensional", i.e. I can only write from top to bottom. Compare it to paper where I can freely change my style of writing, add drawing, annotations, change directions, ... Writing on the computer just feels very restricting. 1: https://dendron.so/ https://dendron.so/ 2: https://github.com/org-roam/org-roam https://github.com/org-roam/org-roam 3: https://github.com/inukshuk/anystyle https://github.com/inukshuk/anystyle 4: https://tiddlywiki.com/ https://tiddlywiki.com/ 5: https://tiddlyroam.org/ https://tiddlyroam.org/ 6: https://www.thebrain.com/ https://www.thebrain.com/ 7: https://www.literatureandlatte.com/scrivener/overview https://www.literatureandlatte.com/scrivener/overview
- spences10 6y ago
  Is Dendron on par with Foam for data visualization with related tags? If it works the same way then is it a case of installing the extension with little config after that? I'm not opposed to switching again
  - jsteinbach 6y ago
    As far as I know both Dendron and Foam stitch together a bunch of plug/play VSC extensions, so it should be interchangeable. I liked Dendron more, as it seemed a more curated experience - the creator has a plan and is hard at work to make his "customers" happy. "Dendron, the client, is free and will always remain free. It is also open source so anyone is free to make their own fork of Dendron. That being said, I'm all in on Dendron and this is my full time gig. I want to make sure that developing Dendron remains sustainable. To that end, I plan on introducing value add server side functionality that folks may pay for." PS: Why not switch to Emacs? It will only take a measly year to get comfortable! :)
nullandvoid 6y ago
Is foam not a regression in your flow? You mentioned the cross platform being an important feature I'd love to give it a go,but that's a bit of a necessity for me. Admittedly perhaps notion for fleeting notes, with a foam setup for managing permanent notes wheb at mt desktop may be a good compromise I'm hoping something good is going to come out of notions backlinks support. $15/m is pretty steep on roam, and I do prefer notion for most things
- spences10 6y ago
  Yeah, foam isn't a great option for cross platform (mobile). If you use an iPad and have your notes in a GitHub repository you can use code spaces which is the vscode editor (I'm not sure if the extensions will work though)
icu 6y ago
I'm looking into making my own software Zettelkasten solution. Anyone have feedback on what they like or dislike about the software they are already using?
- tziki 6y ago
  There are quite a few out there, why are you looking into building your own?
  - icu 6y ago
    I answered this briefly above, but I could flip the question by asking, if the other approaches are so great, why haven't they found product market fit and mass adoption? And that lack of mass market adoption really annoys me because I believe in the benefits of a Zettelkasten and it would really increase creativity and productivity across many fields if there was mass market adoption.
    - tziki 6y ago
      I disagree about the mass market adoption - compared to how long Zettelkasten has been trending (less than a year), the rise in its tooling and usage is quite phenomenal.
      - icu 6y ago
        Could you please help me understand the basis for your point of view? Precisely what evidence are you referring to? For example, the subreddit on it seems quite small... and many of the people I know could benefit from it have never heard of it before.
        tziki 6y ago
        The first time I really heard of it was about a year ago, and there has been an explosion in tools and articles about it. No new innovation will reach mass market adoption in that time, but Zettelkasten is well on its way.
jarnagin 6y ago
Zettlekasten: the Kubernetes of note-taking systems. I think it’s important to bear in mind the context this system grew out of (academic research) and ask yourself whether you really need such a heavyweight note-taking system. It’s also important to realize this system is not a substitute for accepted patterns of knowledge generation, such as summarizing extemporaneous notes and making time to review your notes frequently enough that the knowledge captured actually sticks. Zettlekasten is a system layered on top of that and basically serves as a database for things you already know. If you’re not already doing the former behaviors then it’s likely you’re just going to be wasting your time hacking on a system that won’t provide you enough value to justify the maintenance cost. In fact, it’s likely that the overhead will be so high that you’ll lose time to practice the foundational behaviors that really pay off in the long run.
- gexla 6y ago
  It's just sequences of notes and then inserting certain notes into other sequences. The "heavyweight" part of it disappears when you're using software which handles all this in the background. The remaining parts of it is the unexpected results for someone who hasn't used this sort of note taking system. The book "How to Take Smart Notes" explains this. You use the notes as a starting point to come up with new ideas. It's useful if you do regular writing, especially as part of work rather than for personal private stuff. For example, I use this method for jokes. Much of the value is simply having a list in one place. If I want to come up with a new joke, I look at all my material as a branching tree. I can extend a branch by going deeper. I can combine branches to come up with something completely different. I can start green branches. I can write new material all day long by doing this, rather than by waiting for inspiration to nail me. I think people get too caught up in the technical parts. It's just a branching system of ideas.
  - TeMPOraL 6y ago
    I'll add this book to my queue then. Because so far, the "heavyweight" part of Zettelkasten for me wasn't organizing notes into graphs, but fitting thoughts into index-card equivalents. I found myself cutting tightly couple prose into linked pieces, with the link forming a fixed and necessary spine, because the whole set of pieces only makes sense if taken together.
dmje 6y ago
I’m finding dokuwiki absolutely outstanding for notes and, well, all the things. I’ve avoided it for years and years because - frankly - it looks bloody awful. Then I downloaded, added a bootstrap theme, fiddled with some css, and it’s now running perfectly. I’ve got it on my Synology NAS which makes it backed up, and all my everything is now searchable using their indexing and search tools. I’ve installed a MD extension so have an exit if need be. I’ve also used some editors - Typora for example - and it’s all pretty good. Obsidian didn’t seem to like the folder structure but I didn’t try that hard, I’m guessing it could be made to work.
StavrosK 6y ago
I love that the author publishes his notes for everyone to see. I do the same (at https://notes.stavros.io/ https://notes.stavros.io/, though I have much fewer notes). Nowadays, with all the SEO going on, Google is useless for showing you things like the author's site. To combat that, I was thinking of making an open community of notes, sort of a Wikipedia/WikiHow where every user gets their personal site and publishes notes, but with search being global. You could go on the site, search for, say, "fpv airplanes" and find people's notes on the topic. It probably wouldn't have the high-level overview of Wikipedia, but it would instead be a sort of "StackOverflow for knowledge", where you could find solutions to minor annoyances like this: https://notes.stavros.io/software/monero-gui-syncing-stuck-with-ledger/ https://notes.stavros.io/software/monero-gui-syncing-stuck-w... Instead of going through the effort of writing a whole new UI, I was thinking of making the server be a synchronization backend for Joplin [0] instead, and publishing the notes every time there's a change. What does everyone think? Would you be interested in participating in an early alpha? Any other feedback? [0] https://joplinapp.org/ https://joplinapp.org/
- shatteredspace 6y ago
  I've been thinking of this recently and found that I wanted a site like Stack Overflow but for sharing rather than Q&A. I'd be interesting in participating in an alpha. I use my personal blog as my note taking location (https://forgotmynotebook.com https://forgotmynotebook.com). It uses blogger because I just wanted to get content published and available without worrying about theming.
alisausaaaaaa 6y ago
Wanna have hot-lovin' conversations? You’re on the right way! - https://adultlove.life https://adultlove.life
nextaccountic 6y ago
Here's a Zettelkasten CLI manager: https://github.com/srid/neuron https://github.com/srid/neuron "neuron is a future-proof command-line app for managing your plain-text Zettelkasten notes." Here are some sites that use it: https://neuron.zettel.page/examples.html https://neuron.zettel.page/examples.html (ps: I'm not affiliated to neuron, just found it on the web and have been following since)

164 points by spences10 6y ago

I’m fascinated by the rise of the Zettelkasten concept among hackers (I don’t think I’ve seen it anywhere mainstream yet) and the fundraising that Notion & Roam have accomplished. Based on the title of the post, I assume you are inspired by Tiago Forte? I’d be interested to hear more about how your notes are organized and what they help you accomplish. The idea of moving notes across 4 platforms as described in this article makes me wince, which is why I’m on OneNote for now - maybe not quite as nice for linking stuff but included in O365 which my work uses, cross platform, etc.

spences10 6y ago
For me it was about getting the notes in one place where I could manage them as I would in my text editor. I always got frustrated with the implementation of Markdown and no being able to manipulate the text as I would in a .md document. I have lost some functionality that Notion had, like for Kanban boards and such but being able to manipulate the plain text is where I want to be. The only downside I have really is that I'm tied to using a VS Code now for writing notes, if I want to go mobile I can use something like GitJournal on android and make changes there, and there's now code spaces in GitHub so I could in theory use a code space in a tablet on the move, but none of us are out and about that much these days
- vhanda 6y ago
  Disclaimer: GitJournal Author. I've started using GitJournal a bit with my tablet, though it's a really old one. I would like to make GitJournal more tablet friendly in the future. If you happen to try to it, please feel free to to tell me about the issues. I'll be happy to fix them. PS: For markdown + kanban, imdone.io looks interesting. I haven't tried it out though.
  - AdamGibbins 6y ago
    GitJournal is great, discovered it months ago and its significantly improved the way I reference my notes. Thanks for the time you've put into it, greatly appreciated.
GekkePrutser 6y ago
Yeah I'm kinda surprised. Most people in the hacker/maker community I know are pretty disorganised like myself.. I know for me this kind of thing will never fly, it requires too much dedication. In this sense I'm not surprised it came from Germany as they love formalising things. It's really in their nature and I imagine this is also why they're so good at technological things. But for me it'll never work, I know I'll start on it and then I have a rush project where I don't have time to keep the docs up to date and then I'll abandon it altogether :) I'm the kind of guy who fills up their desktop with everything they're working on and when it ends up being full just moves it to a folder "Old Desktop" (which is in fact a chain of "Even Older Desktop" folders :) :) :) ). Somehow it seems to work for me though, it really surprises me how I can find stuff back from 10 years ago just by seeing the icons of stuff I worked on around the time. And it's really zero effort which I like. And really, I like relying on my memory.. If I don't remember something maybe it wasn't worth remembering. And discovering it once more may lead to other interesting discoveries. But I'm glad it helps others forward in their goals! I didn't expect it at all though.
- kritiko 6y ago
  Your comment really resonates with me. The people who seem to push and advance these systems seem to be (broad generalizations follow) -Academics like Andy Matuschak who are trying to create better technology for learning or do work on really hard problems -Productivity gurus like Nat Eliason and Tiago Forte who make money selling tutorials on how to use these systems. For “The rest of us” there could probably be some gains from using these systems... but sticky notes, texts, notes app, Slack, wherever else you jot stuff suffice, and there’s a lot of administrative overhead & habit change required. I think I am gradually implementing more “linked notes” into my work as systems like Microsoft Teams make it possible to combine a wiki and a file directory easily. But I’m skeptical that this is going to become mass market in the near term.

GekkePrutser 6y ago

Why does this keep making HN headlines? The Zettelkasten thing is really nice but it keeps coming up as a 'new discovery' every few weeks. Personally I don't have the attention to detail for it so I'll never do it.

michaericalribo 6y ago
Not everyone sees every post! someone in another comment literally said: “I hadn’t heard of Zettelkasten until today”.
- GekkePrutser 6y ago
  Fair enough, I'm glad it helps people!
michaericalribo 6y ago
Responding to your experience: I completely agree, this type of system is too detailed / intricate / involved for me to get much use out of it...I get distracted from getting anything done by all the preparation—it’s just productivity porn I use for procrastination.
UncleOxidant 6y ago
I seem to notice these posts every month or so and there's some new tool recommended (Foam! Roam! Obsidian! zotero!) and I'll download said tool, try it out for a few minutes and think "Hmm, ok, that might be neat" and then promptly forget about it.
- joegahona 6y ago
  I thought you were being silly with “Foam,” but it really is a thing...
  - _theory_ 6y ago
    I am a random crusader here to say that Foam is the greatest of all such software (every other option gets at least one such crusader, its only fair)

opticnerve 6y ago

Some times ago I started to use Obsidian.md to manage my Knowledge. Then I read Essentialism by Greg McKeown, and I suddenly realized that embracing Essentialism also means to stop having a macro-complexity to manage. I stopped using Obsidian.md and now I just have some .md file for the few essential things for me.

oumua_don17 6y ago
I am slowly coming to the same conclusion. This just applies to me, when my efforts are not directed towards making things and adapting on the fly, I tend to get sucked into thinking that I need a ton of knowledge to make things which leads me to find out systems which can help me manage that volume of knowledge, ironically and laughably before gaining that knowledge. Putting the cart before the horse !!! I then go back to making things and I think these systems may be useful for certain styles of learning. Does anyone here have similar experiences/thoughts? edit: fixed idiom typo!!!

lostintangent 6y ago

If folks are interested in this workflow, but want to auto-sync their changes to a GitHub repo, I’ve been maintaining a VS Code extension for managing code snippets, and notes/Roam-like wikis, and it includes full Foam interop: https://aka.ms/GistPad https://aka.ms/GistPad. https://twitter.com/lostintangent/status/1282047676377231360?s=21 https://twitter.com/lostintangent/status/1282047676377231360... https://twitter.com/lostintangent/status/1334225746751983618?s=21 https://twitter.com/lostintangent/status/1334225746751983618... https://twitter.com/lostintangent/status/1282850227695652865?s=21 https://twitter.com/lostintangent/status/1282850227695652865... I built this so that I could manage my knowledge in GitHub, but edit my notes like I would with Notion/OneNote (i.e. commit/push on save). It also supports managing code snippets via gists, since I’ve found that my personal knowledge is composed of notes and code snippets, and I wanted a single, editor-integrated solution for managing them both. Foam + GistPad recipe: https://foambubble.github.io/foam/recipes/write-your-notes-in-github-gist https://foambubble.github.io/foam/recipes/write-your-notes-i...

tomcam 6y ago
I want your job! Looks like you’re having way too much fun.

michaericalribo 6y ago

I’ve gone through phases of intense note taking and planning around organization. At the end of the day, I find the overhead of highly structured notes gets in my way and distracts me from actually accomplishing anything using the notes. Obviously these systems work for some people! But I’ve found detailed engineering of knowledge doesn’t work for me... What does work is a stripped down pair of tools: a) an inbox for capturing in-the-moment, which can be anything (a dedicated page in a notes app, my email inbox, a piece of paper); and b) a medium term “filing cabinet” for storing info for later (these days I use notion). These let me not lose an idea, and reference it later. The key is having one default place to dump everything.

shakezula 6y ago
I use a rough zettel method as well. I agree about the place to dump everything being the key. Too much structure gets in my way too, but the process of condensing and refining my notes into my zettel has been where some of my best ideas and insights have come when learning and/or creating and designing.
- michaericalribo 6y ago
  That’s an important point! I mostly just dump in ‘facts’—my frequent flyer number, gift ideas, recipes. It’s just an external drive for my memory... But the active process of reflection and editing and synthesis based on actual notes...I completely miss out on that. It’s not a piece of tech, so much as a process. It reminds me of the Cornell notes system [1]: take raw notes in the moment, then condense and summarize them later. Reviewing and refining force you to internalize the content, not just record it. [1] http://lsc.cornell.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/Cornell-NoteTaking-System.pdf http://lsc.cornell.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/Cornell-No...
  - shakezula 6y ago
    Yes! The Cornell note method was a real game changer once i started using it. Wish I had found it earlier, honestly.

Rockjodd 6y ago

Have you tried Zettlr? https://www.zettlr.com/features https://www.zettlr.com/features

smetj 6y ago
I've been using it. I believe it's the most promising app of them all however it's still being heavily developed though.

abetusk 6y ago

For me, the idea is sound but the implementation always seems so cumbersome. I want something that separates the data from the display as much as possible, has an easy 'note taking' and has an easy install. One problem I always encounter is that if the interface to add notes has too much friction, I stop using it pretty quickly. Anyway, so I created something over the weekend called 'notenox' [0]. It creates a a JSON file of relevant information, one JSON file per note, with keywords and a "special" keyword prefix called a 'title' that mimics how I've actually been taking notes (email, so the 'title' mimics an email thread). For display, I consolidate all JSON files into a single JSON file and then have it loaded into the browser with some Javascript to group by title or keyword, along with doing all cross referencing and counting on the client end. Creating notes is done through the command line, because that's a common way I interact with my computer, with different options to create titles, links, keywords, etc. I'm sure there are many different Zettelkasten implementations out there but they always seem so clunky and cumbersome. It's not hard, so the simple use case should be simple, nor should it proprietary or locked behind a SaaS. You can see my personal notes in action, if you like [1] (sorry, not mobile friendly!). [0] https://github.com/abetusk/www.mechaelephant.com/tree/release/home/meow/notenox https://github.com/abetusk/www.mechaelephant.com/tree/releas... [1] https://mechaelephant.com/notenox https://mechaelephant.com/notenox

5cents 6y ago
Have you heard of Tiddlywiki [0] (also mentioned above [1])? Although not command line, it is a single file and supports exporting/importing your notes as json, and offers a lot of flexibility [0] https://tiddlywiki.com https://tiddlywiki.com [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25804473 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25804473

Natales 6y ago

There have been several posts in recent weeks on this topic, and every time I have the same reaction: how can they all just ignore TiddlyWiki [0], that has been out there since 2004 and has evolved nicely over the years to deliver most of the same outcomes? Is it that folks just ignore prior art? or they just gravitate to the latest more sexy software? (honest question). I've been using TiddlyWiki on and off for many years, but 2-3 years ago I moved heavily into it (the Drift [1] distribution), and I haven't looked back. To me, it has become less about the tool and more about the information, and ensuring I have complete access to it, even 20 years from now. That includes data, metadata and even the software itself, regardless of the platform or OS. [0] https://tiddlywiki.com/ https://tiddlywiki.com/ [1] https://akhater.github.io/drift/ https://akhater.github.io/drift/

qznc 6y ago
You are not alone. I'm on TiddlyWiki as well: http://beza1e1.tuxen.de/tiddlywiki_notes.html http://beza1e1.tuxen.de/tiddlywiki_notes.html I love my two columns UI and seeing many notes at once. Why does Drift only show one note at once?
- fy20 6y ago
  It seems like the important thing is not really what software you use, but what strategy you use, for taking notes.

5tefan 6y ago

Comes up more often lately. I do have an issue with organizing myself. Scheduling more than a week ahead is close to impossible. Not due to my job but due to my messy mind. Same with note taking. Has gotten worse and I even tried learning Emacs to get the famous Org Mode. I have to admit: This is so loose it seems I can get real benefit from it. No rules to follow but I manage to stay on top of a lot of things for the first rime. Still don't get Emacs though. Zettelkasten seems to require a diligent setup and well... no.

Bakary 6y ago

There's the notorious productivity swamp that is caused by the obsession with optimizing productivity without thinking about the actual purpose behind it. This is multiplied by the ease and incentive of creating and publicizing productivity software and articles that are consumed by people in a perpetual state of insatisfaction. The result is a psychologically advanced form of procrastination and a futile attempt at control that stems from fetishizing technology. To-do lists are for things that aren't a real priority, otherwise you would be giving them your full attention and the tracking would be unnecessary. At most, it's helpful to track administrative minutiae. If you give something your full attention, tracking will seem like a non-sequitur. Despite all of this, I have been finding the card system outlined here to be quite useful. The key for me however was to keep to a physical pen and paper version. Keeping notes exclusively online used to prevent me from being able to address them regularly with a clear mind. Forcing myself to synthesize ideas and refer to them again has helped me move forward in projects important to me. It's not the act of writing the note that is important, but the mindset towards having ideas that you want to develop. Ultimately, most important aspects of life are beyond any productivity hack. You can't hack meaningful relationships other than by growing as a person, nor can you hack the strength to work on things that matter every day. In a sense, the ultimate hack is to come to terms with your mortality and use this as an impulsion to focus on what really matters to you.

kurko 6y ago
> To-do lists are for things that aren't a real priority, otherwise you would be giving them your full attention and the tracking would be unnecessary. I disagree with this bit, but perhaps it’s because “real priority” is vague. To-do lists offload tasks from memory to ensure we don’t forget them. It’s totally possible for something to be a “real priority” (whatever definition) and someone forgetting about it. Don’t confuse priorities with memorization.
armatav 6y ago
This is one of the best posts I’ve seen on this forum.
Shank 6y ago
> To-do lists are for things that aren't a real priority, otherwise you would be giving them your full attention and the tracking would be unnecessary. I really suggest looking at the Eisenhower Matrix. Urgent and important tasks are the only types of tasks that really go into the category of "real priority." Todo lists are best used to manage tasks that are important, but either aren't as urgent as the most urgent tasks, or are blocked by some outside factor that you can't control. It's important to finalize insurance plans for the upcoming year, but waiting until it's "urgent" may result in not having enough time to find the best plan. Granted, maybe you don't have a problem keeping track of all important tasks -- in which case, that's awesome!

ungamedplayer 6y ago

I've recently had much more luck with https://johnnydecimal.com/ https://johnnydecimal.com/ , mirroring content structure across all my devices and even physically.

codeful 6y ago
i have built my own personal note-taking app based on this technique. This strategy just works very well at scale. Its fast to categorize input and filter content.
1shooner 6y ago
This reminds me of a college summer job I had cataloging a design company's photography. I almost immediately ran into the limitations of a single taxonomy: "Is this picture of a tree, or a landscape?" Of course it could be considered either by a user, but the single hierarchy forces an exclusive organization.
dmje 6y ago
I’m about to implement this at home. Any tips?
- ungamedplayer 6y ago
  Be broad with top level contacts. If you are able setup a sync to a cloud backup. Use the same structure across all devices. Dont be afraid to archive whole directories when projects are done.
- ungamedplayer 6y ago
  I have a top level notes file in the x.y directories thst I often use to track the status of each project state.

nickthemagicman 6y ago

So the author writes their notes in mark down with a VS code extension and stores them on GitHub? Is there more to this that I'm not getting?

marcuskaz 6y ago
Data stored in files within a hierarchy of folders. It's the hot new thing!
zikzak 6y ago
I always wonder this as well, and, in my opinion, no there is never more to it than that. Interlinking notes with hyperlinks is a huge convenience that plays a role in all these "new" methods but academics (and others, of course) have always had manual systems for this. What I will say is I am in favor of anything that encourages people to write and create versus just consuming content. If fiddling with a new system encourages this, that is great.

violetgarden 6y ago

I hadn’t heard of Zettelkasten until today. I want to give it a go, but I’ll be honest, I feel a bit overwhelmed after reading about it. I’ve never catalogued my notes before or given each one a unique id.

input_sh 6y ago
There's basically just two things you need to know: 1. Keep your notes short. I do 10 sentences max. 2. Link them as much as possible. Find a program that does that (Obsidian, Roam, Foam, etc). It truly is a wonderful feeling when you do those two things many, many times. Instead of a YouTube rabbit hole, I can fall down a rabbit hole of my own thoughts just by clicking on a random note, following the links, and re-discovering some of my thoughts from months or years ago. Unique IDs are easy. For example, Unix timestamp or just YYYYMMDDHHMMSS. Here's a commonly shared public database to get you hooked: https://notes.andymatuschak.org/About_these_notes https://notes.andymatuschak.org/About_these_notes
- shadre 6y ago
  How would you go about storing notes from a book/course so that they fit in this system? Would you break them into multiple notes? Group them together somehow? Have an "index" note with just hyperlinks to the rest?
  - input_sh 6y ago
    > How would you go about storing notes from a book/course so that they fit in this system? Overall, they don't. Zettelkasten is just one of the folders within my note-taking app (Obsidian), and notes from books go into a separate folder. If there are some titbits that I see being useful outside of the book, I duplicate it into a zettelkasten note. > Group them together somehow? I have an "also see" section in my template where I link every other short note that's somehow connected. That's what I meant by "linking them as much as possible". The end goal is to be able to follow the links between similar notes instead of having to search for them. My library isn't big enough at the moment, but once it becomes, I should be able to click on a random note, follow a few links, and have an entire article with sources to back it up with little to no effort, using thoughts I had months or years ago. > Have an "index" note with just hyperlinks to the rest? Yeah I also do this. I have a note titled "00 zk" that's an index note for all the zettelkasten notes. I don't fill it out automatically at the moment, but I have a plugin that can do "link all notes within this folder", and I trigger it with a hotkey from time to time. That index note helps me to see similar notes and interlink them, because I never view that folder with a file explorer.

brettwilcox 6y ago

I've been using the Zettelkasten method for a few months now and I could never go back to the way I was taking notes before. I picked "The Archive" for the app and have a Git repo located on OneDrive. It just works and there is no guessing how things get organized. I can keep my notes not only synced, but I also get version controlled markdown files. You can setup VSCode to accomplish the same tasks through extensions, but it's not 100% perfect. The Archive is great software, but they also have a fantastic community that's researching this subject. https://forum.zettelkasten.de https://forum.zettelkasten.de

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
galaxyLogic 6y ago
So what is the organization of your notes? I would think that to collect knowledge about the world you would (ideally) need to have an ontological model of what are the categories of things we can talk about, and how those categories are connected to each other. Creating such a model even if only in your head means organizing the knowledge we have and collect, and is not a trivial thing to accomplish. Or does it not matter with Zettelkasten?

martin-adams 6y ago

For anyone who wants the gist of Zettelkasten, I've just finished reading How to Take Smart Notes by Sönke Ahrens. Here's my rather brief summary of the process: * You create fleeting notes to capture ideas as they happen. They should be short lived notes that don't become the main store of your knowledge. * You create literature notes as your read material. These should include your own thoughts on highlighted passages, not just quotes and highlights on their own. * You organise your fleeting notes as permanent notes into your 'Slip Box' (taken from the original use index cards). Each note should contain a single idea and should be understandable when reading in isolation. * You want to avoid burying knowledge in large notes as it makes it hard to glance at and link to other notes in a concise way. * Notes are linked to other notes which support your ideas. This also help the discovery of new ideas. * You use your slip box to help you do your thinking. You want to ask it questions, find the related notes that support/oppose the arguments and find gaps or newly related information. * You can create index notes that help you find your way around. * Part of the process is to help your understanding by writing. With a well maintained slip box, you'll never be starting from a blank sheet. You decide what insight/question/knowledge you want to explore, and pull together the notes that give you the body of research to get you started. You shouldn't need to start a new blog post by researching, that happens prior by taking smart notes as you naturally read what you're interested in. Hope that's somewhat helpful. I'm still experimenting with it to find out what I understand correctly and what I don't.

anandb143 6y ago
For your third bullet point, should that be literature notes ? doesn't sound like fleeting notes should be a permanent record.
- martin-adams 6y ago
  Sorry, I think I poorly explained that. Both fleeting and literature notes need to be ‘organised’ into the slip box as permanent notes. By organised, this means to filter, rewrite, conclude, etc into permanent notes. You don’t want to put in book extracts, or disjointed ideas without putting it in your own words.
6y ago

Datagenerator 6y ago

Recently started using TiddlyWiki as personal notes archive. The automatic indexes of really work well to connect each note to others.

5cents 6y ago
I agree, and there is at least three different implementations of zettelkasten in tiddlywiki: Drift (https://akhater.github.io/drift/ https://akhater.github.io/drift/): I use this one as it has many nice features without becoming overwhelming Stroll (https://giffmex.org/stroll/stroll.html https://giffmex.org/stroll/stroll.html): like Drift, but more features, including two column view TiddlyRoam (https://tiddlyroam.org/ https://tiddlyroam.org/): Have a graph showing the relation between your notes

jsteinbach 6y ago

For VSC there is also Dendron [1], which I found nicer than Foam. After lots of trial/error and at the end of the rabbit hole I found Emacs with org-roam [2]. It has a steep learning-curve and often seems outdated, but it is also very powerful, has VIM hotkeys, and allows me to create the academic workflow I want - so far I can automatically create a note from my Zotero .bib library, fill it based on a template and the insert all my annotations from the associated PDF. Afterwards I also semi-automatically extract the references from that PDF, insert them into the annotations and then start to link everything into my Zettelkasten system. Sometimes I wish I just stayed with VSCode/Markdown, but then I remember that I can now put "elisp" on my resumee :) Overall I think that the "new" note-taking/Zettelkasten-systems is very cool and useful, but I wish someone would come along and create "the next big thing" which in my opinion is multi-dimensional notes. Tiddlywiki/Tiddlyroam [4,5], TheBrain[6] and even Scrivener [7] seem like a step in the right direction, but they also make some other things overly complicated (convoluted UI, no plug/play export, bad editors, ...). I want to be able to freely take notes on my computer the same way I can do on paper, and then be able to "super-charge" them by linking, aggregating, searching them. At the moment notes are "one-dimensional", i.e. I can only write from top to bottom. Compare it to paper where I can freely change my style of writing, add drawing, annotations, change directions, ... Writing on the computer just feels very restricting. 1: https://dendron.so/ https://dendron.so/ 2: https://github.com/org-roam/org-roam https://github.com/org-roam/org-roam 3: https://github.com/inukshuk/anystyle https://github.com/inukshuk/anystyle 4: https://tiddlywiki.com/ https://tiddlywiki.com/ 5: https://tiddlyroam.org/ https://tiddlyroam.org/ 6: https://www.thebrain.com/ https://www.thebrain.com/ 7: https://www.literatureandlatte.com/scrivener/overview https://www.literatureandlatte.com/scrivener/overview

spences10 6y ago
Is Dendron on par with Foam for data visualization with related tags? If it works the same way then is it a case of installing the extension with little config after that? I'm not opposed to switching again
- jsteinbach 6y ago
  As far as I know both Dendron and Foam stitch together a bunch of plug/play VSC extensions, so it should be interchangeable. I liked Dendron more, as it seemed a more curated experience - the creator has a plan and is hard at work to make his "customers" happy. "Dendron, the client, is free and will always remain free. It is also open source so anyone is free to make their own fork of Dendron. That being said, I'm all in on Dendron and this is my full time gig. I want to make sure that developing Dendron remains sustainable. To that end, I plan on introducing value add server side functionality that folks may pay for." PS: Why not switch to Emacs? It will only take a measly year to get comfortable! :)

nullandvoid 6y ago

Is foam not a regression in your flow? You mentioned the cross platform being an important feature I'd love to give it a go,but that's a bit of a necessity for me. Admittedly perhaps notion for fleeting notes, with a foam setup for managing permanent notes wheb at mt desktop may be a good compromise I'm hoping something good is going to come out of notions backlinks support. $15/m is pretty steep on roam, and I do prefer notion for most things

spences10 6y ago
Yeah, foam isn't a great option for cross platform (mobile). If you use an iPad and have your notes in a GitHub repository you can use code spaces which is the vscode editor (I'm not sure if the extensions will work though)

icu 6y ago

I'm looking into making my own software Zettelkasten solution. Anyone have feedback on what they like or dislike about the software they are already using?

tziki 6y ago
There are quite a few out there, why are you looking into building your own?
- icu 6y ago
  I answered this briefly above, but I could flip the question by asking, if the other approaches are so great, why haven't they found product market fit and mass adoption? And that lack of mass market adoption really annoys me because I believe in the benefits of a Zettelkasten and it would really increase creativity and productivity across many fields if there was mass market adoption.
  - tziki 6y ago
    I disagree about the mass market adoption - compared to how long Zettelkasten has been trending (less than a year), the rise in its tooling and usage is quite phenomenal.
    - icu 6y ago
      Could you please help me understand the basis for your point of view? Precisely what evidence are you referring to? For example, the subreddit on it seems quite small... and many of the people I know could benefit from it have never heard of it before.
      - tziki 6y ago
        The first time I really heard of it was about a year ago, and there has been an explosion in tools and articles about it. No new innovation will reach mass market adoption in that time, but Zettelkasten is well on its way.

jarnagin 6y ago

Zettlekasten: the Kubernetes of note-taking systems. I think it’s important to bear in mind the context this system grew out of (academic research) and ask yourself whether you really need such a heavyweight note-taking system. It’s also important to realize this system is not a substitute for accepted patterns of knowledge generation, such as summarizing extemporaneous notes and making time to review your notes frequently enough that the knowledge captured actually sticks. Zettlekasten is a system layered on top of that and basically serves as a database for things you already know. If you’re not already doing the former behaviors then it’s likely you’re just going to be wasting your time hacking on a system that won’t provide you enough value to justify the maintenance cost. In fact, it’s likely that the overhead will be so high that you’ll lose time to practice the foundational behaviors that really pay off in the long run.

gexla 6y ago
It's just sequences of notes and then inserting certain notes into other sequences. The "heavyweight" part of it disappears when you're using software which handles all this in the background. The remaining parts of it is the unexpected results for someone who hasn't used this sort of note taking system. The book "How to Take Smart Notes" explains this. You use the notes as a starting point to come up with new ideas. It's useful if you do regular writing, especially as part of work rather than for personal private stuff. For example, I use this method for jokes. Much of the value is simply having a list in one place. If I want to come up with a new joke, I look at all my material as a branching tree. I can extend a branch by going deeper. I can combine branches to come up with something completely different. I can start green branches. I can write new material all day long by doing this, rather than by waiting for inspiration to nail me. I think people get too caught up in the technical parts. It's just a branching system of ideas.
- TeMPOraL 6y ago
  I'll add this book to my queue then. Because so far, the "heavyweight" part of Zettelkasten for me wasn't organizing notes into graphs, but fitting thoughts into index-card equivalents. I found myself cutting tightly couple prose into linked pieces, with the link forming a fixed and necessary spine, because the whole set of pieces only makes sense if taken together.

dmje 6y ago

I’m finding dokuwiki absolutely outstanding for notes and, well, all the things. I’ve avoided it for years and years because - frankly - it looks bloody awful. Then I downloaded, added a bootstrap theme, fiddled with some css, and it’s now running perfectly. I’ve got it on my Synology NAS which makes it backed up, and all my everything is now searchable using their indexing and search tools. I’ve installed a MD extension so have an exit if need be. I’ve also used some editors - Typora for example - and it’s all pretty good. Obsidian didn’t seem to like the folder structure but I didn’t try that hard, I’m guessing it could be made to work.

StavrosK 6y ago

I love that the author publishes his notes for everyone to see. I do the same (at https://notes.stavros.io/ https://notes.stavros.io/, though I have much fewer notes). Nowadays, with all the SEO going on, Google is useless for showing you things like the author's site. To combat that, I was thinking of making an open community of notes, sort of a Wikipedia/WikiHow where every user gets their personal site and publishes notes, but with search being global. You could go on the site, search for, say, "fpv airplanes" and find people's notes on the topic. It probably wouldn't have the high-level overview of Wikipedia, but it would instead be a sort of "StackOverflow for knowledge", where you could find solutions to minor annoyances like this: https://notes.stavros.io/software/monero-gui-syncing-stuck-with-ledger/ https://notes.stavros.io/software/monero-gui-syncing-stuck-w... Instead of going through the effort of writing a whole new UI, I was thinking of making the server be a synchronization backend for Joplin [0] instead, and publishing the notes every time there's a change. What does everyone think? Would you be interested in participating in an early alpha? Any other feedback? [0] https://joplinapp.org/ https://joplinapp.org/

shatteredspace 6y ago
I've been thinking of this recently and found that I wanted a site like Stack Overflow but for sharing rather than Q&A. I'd be interesting in participating in an alpha. I use my personal blog as my note taking location (https://forgotmynotebook.com https://forgotmynotebook.com). It uses blogger because I just wanted to get content published and available without worrying about theming.

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nextaccountic 6y ago

Here's a Zettelkasten CLI manager: https://github.com/srid/neuron https://github.com/srid/neuron "neuron is a future-proof command-line app for managing your plain-text Zettelkasten notes." Here are some sites that use it: https://neuron.zettel.page/examples.html https://neuron.zettel.page/examples.html (ps: I'm not affiliated to neuron, just found it on the web and have been following since)