7 ms·

The Zettelkasten Method (2019)

159 points by tablet 5y ago

FrozenVoid 5y ago
Zim is what i use for notetaking, its essentially tree-like notes allowing expanding ideas and focusing on stuff without any paper limits, you can also attach images/files to notes.
- sydthrowaway 5y ago
  I tried this, but the system falls apart when I want to jot down a few notes quickly. Maybe I should give reMarkable a try.
  - Jwarder 5y ago
    I wonder how much trouble with notetaking stems from people trying a one size fits all method. Personally, I have three tiers of notes. A physical notepad for meetings, random ideas, test results, that sort of thing. My goal is to write down items when I suspect I'll forget them in the next 30 seconds. At the end of the day I'll take 10 minutes review what I've done, with the physical notes as a starting point, and log my activity and open questions per project. My goal at this point is to keep enough context to answer the inevitable "WTF was I thinking?" in a few days. Usually just taking the time to outline things means I can remember the key points. Finally there is a team wiki where I record details per project. Feature wishlist, customer requests, work with other departments, Q&A. My goal here is to make sure my replacement isn't totally lost after I get hit by a bus.
gethuen 5y ago
Roam[0] is great for it. I think they were rejected by YCombinator numerous times, and they are a Clojure company. [0]: https://roamresearch.com/ https://roamresearch.com/
- benrbray 5y ago
  Athens [1] is an even better free and open source alternative, started by someone who was rejected [2] for a Clojure job at Roam! Athens was even accepted to YC [3]. [1] https://github.com/athensresearch/athens https://github.com/athensresearch/athens [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26316793 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26316793 [3] https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/athens-research https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/athens-research
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- threatofrain 5y ago
  I'd also recommend Obsidian to anyone who doesn't like the everything-is-a-bullet-point aesthetic. https://obsidian.md https://obsidian.md
andi999 5y ago
Tried understanding Zettelkasten for a while, searched the internet, bought one/some books. But it was always too light on examples. I need full beefed out examples (like a 100 pages Zettelkasten) or let's say 10 pages. Of course you can say one doesn't need it, but isn't the value of any method to be benificial if done as designed? This article seems to be the closest of having good examples.
- __bjoernd 5y ago
  You might want to check out the Obsidian.md forums. Obviously, focusing on Obsidian as a note taking tool, but they have sections where users demonstrate their workflows: https://forum.obsidian.md https://forum.obsidian.md
- sdoering 5y ago
  If you are able to read handwritten German, the whole Zettelkasten [1] of Niklas Luhmann [2] is online available. with an additional explanation of the method [3]. [1]: https://niklas-luhmann-archiv.de/bestand/zettelkasten/zettel/ZK_1_NB_1_1_V https://niklas-luhmann-archiv.de/bestand/zettelkasten/zettel... [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niklas_Luhmann https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niklas_Luhmann [3]: https://niklas-luhmann-archiv.de/nachlass/zettelkasten https://niklas-luhmann-archiv.de/nachlass/zettelkasten
  - andi999 5y ago
    Yes, but I fear that this is actually too much Infos (and I am not interested in his field)
    - sdoering 5y ago
      I strongly believe one can't understand this method and the sheer amount of effort necessary to consistently tend to this system and keep it alive (like Luhmann) did without the deep explanations and also at least diving into the examples of Luhmann's zettelkasten as it is digitalized. Nonetheless - I also do not believe, that a lot of people would benefit from the zettelkasten system. It has in my opinion a very narrow target group that would massively benefit from this method, while for others it would only be a lot of work with limited benefit. Luhmann profited from his lifelong work on the Zettelkasten (he was an avid reader and did extracts long before his university career). But once he started his university career he was able to produce on such a deep level and with such a high frequency, because he had up front invested massive amounts of time into this system. So if one is looking for a productivity tool, I am not sure that zettelkasten is the right tool in one's belt. It needs massive investment up front and pays interest only later.
CraigJPerry 5y ago
I tried hard to like this, i still have my “second brain” collection in onenote (which worked surprisingly well across linux, Windows & mac) but i don’t add to it anymore. However PARA has just proven more ergonomic and far less time consuming for me. https://fortelabs.co/blog/para/ https://fortelabs.co/blog/para/ 1. I don’t waste time trying to eek out atomic thoughts, PARA is a more pragmatic idea - if some bit of knowledge proves useful it will get incrementally refined 2. It works exceedingly well if your productivity system is based on GTD 3. I don’t waste time trying to link things sufficiently, instead i dump the folder of reference material in the active project using it. So simple, and quite a satisfying “cheat” All this said, it’s like time management. I’m less convinced that there’s a “right” answer than i am that there is a wrong answer and the wrong answer is not to have a strategy and just let the tidal wave of digital artifacts wash over you.
- disabled 5y ago
  There is some obscenely expensive program for that (I have tried to search for traces of it online). I should do an advanced search again, using key words from the YouTube video below. The course is here: https://www.buildingasecondbrain.com/ https://www.buildingasecondbrain.com/ Anyways, there is this guy who is really good at hacking life who describes it and took the course: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OP3dA2GcAh8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OP3dA2GcAh8 Anyways, his channel is interesting for sure: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCoOae5nYA7VqaXzerajD0lg https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCoOae5nYA7VqaXzerajD0lg He was also #1 student in psychology at Cambridge as an undergrad. Anyways, chances are the course is ideas plagiarized from somewhere else. That's why I have searched for the source. I found a good written source for finding key words to do advanced search queries to find the original source: https://www.rylncoaching.com/post/why-i-have-a-second-brain-and-why-you-need-to-build-one-too https://www.rylncoaching.com/post/why-i-have-a-second-brain-... I found high quality illustrated notes on it, too, which will be really helpful for locating wherever the course material is originally from: https://maggieappleton.com/basb https://maggieappleton.com/basb For searching text of books with advanced queries, the best place is here (world's biggest online library): https://www.bookshare.org/search https://www.bookshare.org/search Google Books is best for previewing books.
WA 5y ago
The verbosity around Zettelkasten baffles me. It is a simple system, but most posts explaining it are like 5,000 words long.
- hellothere1337 5y ago
  Cant make courses that require thousands of dollars, blog posts, an entire online brand based on simple principles.
- gexla 5y ago
  Seems like we see this everywhere. Bob is highly productive and comes up with a "system" which he uses to be productive. Bob probably would have been productive with any other system, he's just a productive guy. Joe reads Bob's book and picks up this system thinking he'll be just like Bob. The story ends with Joe giving up on his dreams and taking a day job entering data into spreadsheets. Bob was smart though, he made his system look like magic and a cult developed around it. Now Bob has many fans, and the top of the ponzi-scheme is the people who have learned to speak the magic. These masters sell courses while the followers work to learn the magic, correcting and debating each other on Twitter.
  - hellothere1337 5y ago
    Seems like an underlying pattern of humanity. It happens with Agile, scientific methodology, even religion. A person reaches a truth through an earnest desire for truth and then everyone else tries to copy him as a shortcut to reach the same truth.
  - Fredvk 5y ago
    I feel like i have been Joe before and still am to some degree, are you just born as bob or are there actual fundamental things one can do to be more like bob ?
    - parkersweb 5y ago
      Absolutely. In fact I have a book that can teach you to be more Bob-like in just 7 simple steps ;-)
dang 5y ago
Past related threads: Org-roam-UI – graphical front end for exploring your org-roam Zettelkasten - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28025491 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28025491 - Aug 2021 (44 comments) My Second Brain – Zettelkasten - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25802277 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25802277 - Jan 2021 (103 comments) Introduction to the Zettelkasten Method - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24916536 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24916536 - Oct 2020 (73 comments) Luhmann's Original Zettelkasten Digitalized - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24794569 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24794569 - Oct 2020 (6 comments) Remembering what you Read: Zettelkasten vs. P.A.R.A - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24251068 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24251068 - Aug 2020 (62 comments) Zettelkasten note-taking in 10 minutes - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23445742 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23445742 - June 2020 (124 comments) Stop Taking Regular Notes; Use a Zettelkasten Instead - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23386630 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23386630 - June 2020 (300 comments) Ask HN: Thinking of using Zettelkasten , recommend software/platform - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22979257 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22979257 - April 2020 (5 comments) Luhmann's Zettelkasten - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22085837 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22085837 - Jan 2020 (83 comments) Zettelkästen? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21208196 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21208196 - Oct 2019 (90 comments)
- dSebastien 5y ago
  Awesome, thanks for sharing the list ;-)
- dredmorbius 5y ago
  Maybe the "Lists" page needs a Zettlekasten entry ;-) https://news.ycombinator.com/lists https://news.ycombinator.com/lists Hrm .... Actually, a "perennials" listing might have some value. I'm not entirely sure how to execute that, but listing keywords / topics / posts that occur with 1) some frequency and 2) high levels of engagement, limited to say, the top 30--100 entries, might be of use. There's the past related threads "past related threads" search: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=by%3Adang%20past%20related%20threads&sort=byPopularity&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...
bodge5000 5y ago
Time for the daily/weekly/monthly note taking and productivity thread! On a serious note, I actually like these threads. Earlier in the year I decided to look into better note taking and task management, and it became an entire month of me gradually becoming more and more stressed about it. HN was actually a great source for this, mostly because a lot of the people on here seem a bit less "into it" than dedicated sources, and help bring me back down to earth. In the end, my solution was simple. Stop trying. Of course, because I get a bit obsessive over this kind of thing (who could have guessed that a man who spent an entire month thinking about note taking can be obsessive), I couldn't just stop. So instead, I set myself a reminder to come back to it in a month, knowing full well that by then I'll be obsessed with the next thing and will keep putting it off. I write this in case anyone else is going through the same dilemma. Just take a break, get a notebook where you can jot down ideas for how you will jot down ideas, set a reminder, and move on with your life. Unless your enjoy this sort of thing, in which case, have fun :)
- lkois 5y ago
  I've found the perfect notebooks for me are A5 spiral bound dot grids. Fairly compact size, unintrusive binding. The dot grid forces less structure than lined, but isn't the wild west of blank. A few months ago I also looked into a bunch of note taking methods, even bought a similar A5, spiral bound, pre-formatted organizer and thought it'd be perfect for organizing my days. It remains unused except for a couple of lines where I began to note the days tasks, then crossed them out and tried to start again the next day. But a dot grid purchased around the same time is filling up very quickly with odd chicken scratchings of work notes. The only hint of structure are dates scrawled wherever I happened to be starting from that day. Any very important things get circled or marked with an asterisk
  - smarx007 5y ago
    I have since improved on a similar setup by using B5 notebooks with margins (to punch holes) and "filing stripes" [1]. It allows me to take notes of different kinds ("odd chicken scratchings of work notes") just by opening a new clean sheet (at a cost of occasionally wasting a clean page on the reverse side of a previous sheet) and then tear the sheets off and file them neatly (I use the stripes upside down so that an append "operation" is less costly). For long-running projects, I also use A5 notebooks that are pre-partitioned at a given % (I use 60-70%). The idea is that you go over your old notebook with "odd chicken scratchings", count the number of pages spent on each topic, calculate the ratios and multiply them by 70%*NUM_PaGES. Then you allocate this number of pages in the new (clean) notebook and put tab stickers on each section. I also leave around 4 pages for the TOC in the beginning of a notebook. It's just 2 sheets, but the ability to go back and put an extensive TOC later helps a lot when you refer to a finished notebook. With a bit of patience, you can but together a perfectly ordered TOC in a completely messy notebook (by doing one pass over all notes before writing down the TOC and grouping them by project). I also tried keeping notes on paper and writing down the TOC digitally in my Evernote to keep it searchable. Regarding spiral binding, I find it too flimsy. If you damage the spiral, flipping pages would cause damage to the pages. I prefer hardbound notebooks. I use fountain pens and previously used expensive paper but since the pandemic I tried Idena [2] and it simply blew me away with its high quality and ink resistance (except for some rare inks) at such a low cost (but I had to give up the dot grid). Ultimately, I am convinced that all of this has a limit and a Zettelkasten method of sorts is needed for a long-running knowledge base project. [1]: https://www.amazon.de/dp/B004F69CRC https://www.amazon.de/dp/B004F69CRC [2]: https://www.amazon.de/Idena-209281-Notizbuch-kariert-schwarz/dp/B00G44WQLW https://www.amazon.de/Idena-209281-Notizbuch-kariert-schwarz...
sorokod 5y ago
The focus on technical solutions, Roam vs. Obsidian vs... obscures the fact that regardless of the software - maintaining a useful, up-to-date, well cross referenced corpus of knowledge is a lot of effort. The effort must be constant and ongoing, few will have the stamina to keep it going.
- agos 5y ago
  this is uncomfortable but true. I see these perfectly organised Notion setups with all the bells and whistles and then I realise that it's about the same work as tending to a medium sized garden
- kaliszad 5y ago
  Yes, it requires effort - as anything that is maintenance not speaking of development of new stuff/ new insights into existing knowledge etc. At OrgPad, we find, having a nice visual and flexible way to work with information in a graph that you yourself create the way you like it but that helps you arrange stuff so that nothing overlaps etc. is very approachable and helps with remembering stuff. It is kind of like the pin boards in the criminal TV shows. :-) You can apply this approach to most stuff as seeing everything at once with the right amount of detail can not only help you find criminals but also just get your work done and perhaps even make personal bureaucracy less tedious. It is also nice for vacation photos, which I certainly wouldn't do in Roam and others.
tastyminerals2 5y ago
When someone says that they used this and that technique to increase their research productivity, I always think about TRIZ and the fact that so few ppl know about it.
- tablet 5y ago
  TRIZ is extremely hard to apply beyond engineering areas. I tried to bend it to soft.dev with no luck.
- dredmorbius 5y ago
  Helps to provide at a minimum some context: TRIZ (/ˈtriːz/; Russian: теория решения изобретательских задач, teoriya resheniya izobretatelskikh zadatch), literally: "theory of inventive problem solving " is “the next evolutionary step in creating an organized and systematic approach to problem solving. The development and improvement of products and technologies according to TRIZ are guided by the objective Laws of Engineering System Evolution. TRIZ Problem Solving Tools and Methods are based on them.”[1] In another description, TRIZ is "a problem-solving, analysis and forecasting tool derived from the study of patterns of invention in the global patent literature".[2] It was developed by the Soviet inventor and science-fiction author Genrich Altshuller (1926-1998) and his colleagues, beginning in 1946. In English the name is typically rendered as the theory of inventive problem solving,[3][4] and occasionally goes by the English acronym TIPS. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRIZ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRIZ
say_it_as_it_is 5y ago
Notes with hyperlinks.
yesenadam 5y ago
This sounds very similar to a paper version of what I do with LaTeX PDF books. I constantly am typing and pasting stuff into a notes .txt file–every idea I have, anything I don't want to forget, anything I learn, URLS, names of books/movies etc. Then every few weeks I move stuff from the notes file to a place in a LaTeX PDF book, mainly the current year's book, then others split off as they get big enough, e.g. programming languages, mathematics, my programs, my essays etc. I put lots of pictures, and the books look lovely. (I find links between stuff isn't often necessary, as the hierarchical structure is so clear, and so easy to change around. But hyperlinking any 2 things is easy.) It did take me about 3 months to master LaTeX and the common packages enough that I don't have to give it a thought these days. Before that, I spent 25 years filling notebooks with ideas, notes, diagrams, drawings, maths, etc and never looking in them again, because there was no way of organizing them. Everything was just lost and forgotten.
- aaldrick 5y ago
  This sounds right up my alley - one question: do you use this books are reference in the future to help cement your learning? I feel like I would also end up never looking in them again just like you mentioned with the physical notebooks.
  - yesenadam 5y ago
    Hi. Well..for me, it's more like reminding/relearning than cementing! Like am currently into Forth for the third time within a few years. I forgot just about everything. Rereading that chapter was the best refresher course I could imagine. And I'll add the stuff I'm learning now to the chapter. But the answer is different for each book. I guess the ones I look in least are the past year books, as I'm still adding to the other specific topic books, but still I sometimes search in them for something. Anyway, they're like gold for me, like the diary I kept 1992-recently – without it I wouldn't have a clue what I was doing or thinking in a particular year. They only increase in value, the longer you don't look in them! I've been into so many different things, and am only capable of 1 or 2 at a time, so I cycle back to them (a)periodically. Before I had to rely on my memory. (I do have a filing cabinet full of photocopied books and academic papers that I very rarely look into) I did always keep a paper diary, but I didn't put the kind of stuff that would go in notebooks in there. In the front of each book is a short contents with just chapter names, then detailed contents (thanks to shorttoc package), everything clickable. Or sometimes scrolling through looking at the pictures is faster. So, I can find stuff very quickly.
reidjs 5y ago
I write a lot and for most of my career I just used a Notes.md file synced across devices with iCloud. I forked foam https://github.com/foambubble/foam https://github.com/foambubble/foam A few months ago and have been using it as my note taking system. It works great even if you rarely backlink or tag, just every now and then you should clean out your inbox.
kkoncevicius 5y ago
I don't get these methods. So it's a note taking system with hyperlinks between them. OK. So what if we made it digital - then it would be like HTML, right? Now, since more notes is better - what if we also let other people write notes and add them into the same library. Oh look, we just invented the world wide web. What am I missing here?
- henrikeh 5y ago
  There is a big difference between writing meant for public distribution and personal notes. The point of a Zettelkasten (or any notes) is not to build a comprehensive encyclopedia, but to support and augment your work. I don’t necessarily agree either that “more notes is better” as an absolute statement.
- slightwinder 5y ago
  Don't you mean WikiWikiWeb? Because World Wide Web is a bit more than a linked library of notes. Especially today when we have youtube, social networks and webapps. But what you are missing is the cargo-cult of the youth which strife for a guide to imprison their thoughts. This method is really nothing new, not even innovativ. It originates from the same ideas which created the html and wikis later. But the last hype around hypertext was 20 years ago when wikis were new and hyped, and that didn't last long for technical reasons. And now we have a new generation who rethinks the same methods again and create new software from them, which can finally fullfill the wishes which where 20 years not possible because of limitations in hard- and software. This is good in it's own, but the hype and ignorance is really funny in it's own. Especially if you are german and know the background better than those people who throw around words which they barly understand correctly, nor know it's history.
- mongol 5y ago
  Not sure you are missing anything. It sounds like a curated and personal miniweb.
gego 5y ago
Some tools should be mentioned here, too. http://zettelkasten.danielluedecke.de/en/ http://zettelkasten.danielluedecke.de/en/ has great resources https://www.zettlr.com/ https://www.zettlr.com/ is new and also useful for a Zettelkasten like setup
qudat 5y ago
For anyone interested, Ive catalogued a list of knowledge management apps that I found for productivity: https://listifi.app/u/erock/knowledge-management-apps https://listifi.app/u/erock/knowledge-management-apps
martin-adams 5y ago
If anyone wants a visual breakdown of the Zettelkasten method, I have created two popular videos on YouTube 1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yqKspwjXu18 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yqKspwjXu18 (overview) 2. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ziE6UExsOrs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ziE6UExsOrs (step by step with examples) Sorry for the shameless plug, but reading the comments on here I see these videos might be able to help make it more tangible.
Kappa90 5y ago
We're developing Saga [0] and we have many users using it for Zettelkasten, although it's not our main value proposition. Why: Saga automatically links pages one to another, so it builds your wiki/knowledge system automatically for you. You can also group pages in "Collections", which are smart tags similar to the Zettelkasten tagging method, which allows users to easily recollect and find notes. I welcome anybody to try Saga for Zettelkasten and give us feedback on how we can make it a better tool for this use case! [0] https://saga.so https://saga.so
SMAAART 5y ago
I have been kind of doing this all along, little that I knew it has a name. Following this thread.
dsabanin 5y ago
Anyone looking for a good note taking solution, similar to Roam / Obsidian / Notion, but with a much better native macOS experience needs to check out https://www.craft.do/ https://www.craft.do/. It's incredibly well made and is being developed at a crazy pace. A real pleasure to use and they have Mac, iPad, iOS and web version with real-time collaboration. Edit: I forgot to mention the calendar sync! Really neat way to attach a note to calendar days or events. Especially nice when used with recurring events, as it keeps the note associated with them throughout their lifetime.
caser 5y ago
If anyone is interested, I'm currently starting a weekly ZK meetup on Zoom w/ a few founder friends who want to dive into the method. Format is: * 15 mins - check in on your workflow * 30 mins - work on your ZK (write notes, refactor, etc.) * 15 mins - set ZK goals for upcoming week and discuss tactics If you're interested in joining, drop me a quick note to the email in my profile with a bit about yourself and experience in the method!
- binnyva 5y ago
  I'm interested in this - and there is no email in your profile.
chrisbai 5y ago
My Zettelkasten and secure note-taking tool is Passfindr. My sketch book is a Moleskine notebook. Most of my notes are URLs, micro-notes, ideas, login credentials for online and other accounts, addresses and everything between. Lots of micro documents. Some of the notes are 20+ years old. Finding these notes and finding them fast is crucial. Passfindr does that with ease and I get information faster than anything else. Fast searching/finding matters. Once you get the idea behind the internal about: commands, you can even enhance the searching and finding capabilities and build your own Zettelkasten.

159 points by tablet 5y ago

Zim is what i use for notetaking, its essentially tree-like notes allowing expanding ideas and focusing on stuff without any paper limits, you can also attach images/files to notes.

sydthrowaway 5y ago
I tried this, but the system falls apart when I want to jot down a few notes quickly. Maybe I should give reMarkable a try.
- Jwarder 5y ago
  I wonder how much trouble with notetaking stems from people trying a one size fits all method. Personally, I have three tiers of notes. A physical notepad for meetings, random ideas, test results, that sort of thing. My goal is to write down items when I suspect I'll forget them in the next 30 seconds. At the end of the day I'll take 10 minutes review what I've done, with the physical notes as a starting point, and log my activity and open questions per project. My goal at this point is to keep enough context to answer the inevitable "WTF was I thinking?" in a few days. Usually just taking the time to outline things means I can remember the key points. Finally there is a team wiki where I record details per project. Feature wishlist, customer requests, work with other departments, Q&A. My goal here is to make sure my replacement isn't totally lost after I get hit by a bus.

gethuen 5y ago

Roam[0] is great for it. I think they were rejected by YCombinator numerous times, and they are a Clojure company. [0]: https://roamresearch.com/ https://roamresearch.com/

benrbray 5y ago
Athens [1] is an even better free and open source alternative, started by someone who was rejected [2] for a Clojure job at Roam! Athens was even accepted to YC [3]. [1] https://github.com/athensresearch/athens https://github.com/athensresearch/athens [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26316793 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26316793 [3] https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/athens-research https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/athens-research
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
threatofrain 5y ago
I'd also recommend Obsidian to anyone who doesn't like the everything-is-a-bullet-point aesthetic. https://obsidian.md https://obsidian.md

andi999 5y ago

Tried understanding Zettelkasten for a while, searched the internet, bought one/some books. But it was always too light on examples. I need full beefed out examples (like a 100 pages Zettelkasten) or let's say 10 pages. Of course you can say one doesn't need it, but isn't the value of any method to be benificial if done as designed? This article seems to be the closest of having good examples.

__bjoernd 5y ago
You might want to check out the Obsidian.md forums. Obviously, focusing on Obsidian as a note taking tool, but they have sections where users demonstrate their workflows: https://forum.obsidian.md https://forum.obsidian.md
sdoering 5y ago
If you are able to read handwritten German, the whole Zettelkasten [1] of Niklas Luhmann [2] is online available. with an additional explanation of the method [3]. [1]: https://niklas-luhmann-archiv.de/bestand/zettelkasten/zettel/ZK_1_NB_1_1_V https://niklas-luhmann-archiv.de/bestand/zettelkasten/zettel... [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niklas_Luhmann https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niklas_Luhmann [3]: https://niklas-luhmann-archiv.de/nachlass/zettelkasten https://niklas-luhmann-archiv.de/nachlass/zettelkasten
- andi999 5y ago
  Yes, but I fear that this is actually too much Infos (and I am not interested in his field)
  - sdoering 5y ago
    I strongly believe one can't understand this method and the sheer amount of effort necessary to consistently tend to this system and keep it alive (like Luhmann) did without the deep explanations and also at least diving into the examples of Luhmann's zettelkasten as it is digitalized. Nonetheless - I also do not believe, that a lot of people would benefit from the zettelkasten system. It has in my opinion a very narrow target group that would massively benefit from this method, while for others it would only be a lot of work with limited benefit. Luhmann profited from his lifelong work on the Zettelkasten (he was an avid reader and did extracts long before his university career). But once he started his university career he was able to produce on such a deep level and with such a high frequency, because he had up front invested massive amounts of time into this system. So if one is looking for a productivity tool, I am not sure that zettelkasten is the right tool in one's belt. It needs massive investment up front and pays interest only later.

CraigJPerry 5y ago

I tried hard to like this, i still have my “second brain” collection in onenote (which worked surprisingly well across linux, Windows & mac) but i don’t add to it anymore. However PARA has just proven more ergonomic and far less time consuming for me. https://fortelabs.co/blog/para/ https://fortelabs.co/blog/para/ 1. I don’t waste time trying to eek out atomic thoughts, PARA is a more pragmatic idea - if some bit of knowledge proves useful it will get incrementally refined 2. It works exceedingly well if your productivity system is based on GTD 3. I don’t waste time trying to link things sufficiently, instead i dump the folder of reference material in the active project using it. So simple, and quite a satisfying “cheat” All this said, it’s like time management. I’m less convinced that there’s a “right” answer than i am that there is a wrong answer and the wrong answer is not to have a strategy and just let the tidal wave of digital artifacts wash over you.

disabled 5y ago
There is some obscenely expensive program for that (I have tried to search for traces of it online). I should do an advanced search again, using key words from the YouTube video below. The course is here: https://www.buildingasecondbrain.com/ https://www.buildingasecondbrain.com/ Anyways, there is this guy who is really good at hacking life who describes it and took the course: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OP3dA2GcAh8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OP3dA2GcAh8 Anyways, his channel is interesting for sure: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCoOae5nYA7VqaXzerajD0lg https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCoOae5nYA7VqaXzerajD0lg He was also #1 student in psychology at Cambridge as an undergrad. Anyways, chances are the course is ideas plagiarized from somewhere else. That's why I have searched for the source. I found a good written source for finding key words to do advanced search queries to find the original source: https://www.rylncoaching.com/post/why-i-have-a-second-brain-and-why-you-need-to-build-one-too https://www.rylncoaching.com/post/why-i-have-a-second-brain-... I found high quality illustrated notes on it, too, which will be really helpful for locating wherever the course material is originally from: https://maggieappleton.com/basb https://maggieappleton.com/basb For searching text of books with advanced queries, the best place is here (world's biggest online library): https://www.bookshare.org/search https://www.bookshare.org/search Google Books is best for previewing books.

WA 5y ago

The verbosity around Zettelkasten baffles me. It is a simple system, but most posts explaining it are like 5,000 words long.

hellothere1337 5y ago
Cant make courses that require thousands of dollars, blog posts, an entire online brand based on simple principles.
gexla 5y ago
Seems like we see this everywhere. Bob is highly productive and comes up with a "system" which he uses to be productive. Bob probably would have been productive with any other system, he's just a productive guy. Joe reads Bob's book and picks up this system thinking he'll be just like Bob. The story ends with Joe giving up on his dreams and taking a day job entering data into spreadsheets. Bob was smart though, he made his system look like magic and a cult developed around it. Now Bob has many fans, and the top of the ponzi-scheme is the people who have learned to speak the magic. These masters sell courses while the followers work to learn the magic, correcting and debating each other on Twitter.
- hellothere1337 5y ago
  Seems like an underlying pattern of humanity. It happens with Agile, scientific methodology, even religion. A person reaches a truth through an earnest desire for truth and then everyone else tries to copy him as a shortcut to reach the same truth.
- Fredvk 5y ago
  I feel like i have been Joe before and still am to some degree, are you just born as bob or are there actual fundamental things one can do to be more like bob ?
  - parkersweb 5y ago
    Absolutely. In fact I have a book that can teach you to be more Bob-like in just 7 simple steps ;-)

dang 5y ago

Past related threads: Org-roam-UI – graphical front end for exploring your org-roam Zettelkasten - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28025491 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28025491 - Aug 2021 (44 comments) My Second Brain – Zettelkasten - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25802277 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25802277 - Jan 2021 (103 comments) Introduction to the Zettelkasten Method - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24916536 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24916536 - Oct 2020 (73 comments) Luhmann's Original Zettelkasten Digitalized - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24794569 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24794569 - Oct 2020 (6 comments) Remembering what you Read: Zettelkasten vs. P.A.R.A - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24251068 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24251068 - Aug 2020 (62 comments) Zettelkasten note-taking in 10 minutes - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23445742 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23445742 - June 2020 (124 comments) Stop Taking Regular Notes; Use a Zettelkasten Instead - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23386630 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23386630 - June 2020 (300 comments) Ask HN: Thinking of using Zettelkasten , recommend software/platform - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22979257 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22979257 - April 2020 (5 comments) Luhmann's Zettelkasten - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22085837 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22085837 - Jan 2020 (83 comments) Zettelkästen? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21208196 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21208196 - Oct 2019 (90 comments)

dSebastien 5y ago
Awesome, thanks for sharing the list ;-)
dredmorbius 5y ago
Maybe the "Lists" page needs a Zettlekasten entry ;-) https://news.ycombinator.com/lists https://news.ycombinator.com/lists Hrm .... Actually, a "perennials" listing might have some value. I'm not entirely sure how to execute that, but listing keywords / topics / posts that occur with 1) some frequency and 2) high levels of engagement, limited to say, the top 30--100 entries, might be of use. There's the past related threads "past related threads" search: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=by%3Adang%20past%20related%20threads&sort=byPopularity&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...

bodge5000 5y ago

Time for the daily/weekly/monthly note taking and productivity thread! On a serious note, I actually like these threads. Earlier in the year I decided to look into better note taking and task management, and it became an entire month of me gradually becoming more and more stressed about it. HN was actually a great source for this, mostly because a lot of the people on here seem a bit less "into it" than dedicated sources, and help bring me back down to earth. In the end, my solution was simple. Stop trying. Of course, because I get a bit obsessive over this kind of thing (who could have guessed that a man who spent an entire month thinking about note taking can be obsessive), I couldn't just stop. So instead, I set myself a reminder to come back to it in a month, knowing full well that by then I'll be obsessed with the next thing and will keep putting it off. I write this in case anyone else is going through the same dilemma. Just take a break, get a notebook where you can jot down ideas for how you will jot down ideas, set a reminder, and move on with your life. Unless your enjoy this sort of thing, in which case, have fun :)

lkois 5y ago
I've found the perfect notebooks for me are A5 spiral bound dot grids. Fairly compact size, unintrusive binding. The dot grid forces less structure than lined, but isn't the wild west of blank. A few months ago I also looked into a bunch of note taking methods, even bought a similar A5, spiral bound, pre-formatted organizer and thought it'd be perfect for organizing my days. It remains unused except for a couple of lines where I began to note the days tasks, then crossed them out and tried to start again the next day. But a dot grid purchased around the same time is filling up very quickly with odd chicken scratchings of work notes. The only hint of structure are dates scrawled wherever I happened to be starting from that day. Any very important things get circled or marked with an asterisk
- smarx007 5y ago
  I have since improved on a similar setup by using B5 notebooks with margins (to punch holes) and "filing stripes" [1]. It allows me to take notes of different kinds ("odd chicken scratchings of work notes") just by opening a new clean sheet (at a cost of occasionally wasting a clean page on the reverse side of a previous sheet) and then tear the sheets off and file them neatly (I use the stripes upside down so that an append "operation" is less costly). For long-running projects, I also use A5 notebooks that are pre-partitioned at a given % (I use 60-70%). The idea is that you go over your old notebook with "odd chicken scratchings", count the number of pages spent on each topic, calculate the ratios and multiply them by 70%*NUM_PaGES. Then you allocate this number of pages in the new (clean) notebook and put tab stickers on each section. I also leave around 4 pages for the TOC in the beginning of a notebook. It's just 2 sheets, but the ability to go back and put an extensive TOC later helps a lot when you refer to a finished notebook. With a bit of patience, you can but together a perfectly ordered TOC in a completely messy notebook (by doing one pass over all notes before writing down the TOC and grouping them by project). I also tried keeping notes on paper and writing down the TOC digitally in my Evernote to keep it searchable. Regarding spiral binding, I find it too flimsy. If you damage the spiral, flipping pages would cause damage to the pages. I prefer hardbound notebooks. I use fountain pens and previously used expensive paper but since the pandemic I tried Idena [2] and it simply blew me away with its high quality and ink resistance (except for some rare inks) at such a low cost (but I had to give up the dot grid). Ultimately, I am convinced that all of this has a limit and a Zettelkasten method of sorts is needed for a long-running knowledge base project. [1]: https://www.amazon.de/dp/B004F69CRC https://www.amazon.de/dp/B004F69CRC [2]: https://www.amazon.de/Idena-209281-Notizbuch-kariert-schwarz/dp/B00G44WQLW https://www.amazon.de/Idena-209281-Notizbuch-kariert-schwarz...

sorokod 5y ago

The focus on technical solutions, Roam vs. Obsidian vs... obscures the fact that regardless of the software - maintaining a useful, up-to-date, well cross referenced corpus of knowledge is a lot of effort. The effort must be constant and ongoing, few will have the stamina to keep it going.

agos 5y ago
this is uncomfortable but true. I see these perfectly organised Notion setups with all the bells and whistles and then I realise that it's about the same work as tending to a medium sized garden
kaliszad 5y ago
Yes, it requires effort - as anything that is maintenance not speaking of development of new stuff/ new insights into existing knowledge etc. At OrgPad, we find, having a nice visual and flexible way to work with information in a graph that you yourself create the way you like it but that helps you arrange stuff so that nothing overlaps etc. is very approachable and helps with remembering stuff. It is kind of like the pin boards in the criminal TV shows. :-) You can apply this approach to most stuff as seeing everything at once with the right amount of detail can not only help you find criminals but also just get your work done and perhaps even make personal bureaucracy less tedious. It is also nice for vacation photos, which I certainly wouldn't do in Roam and others.

tastyminerals2 5y ago

When someone says that they used this and that technique to increase their research productivity, I always think about TRIZ and the fact that so few ppl know about it.

tablet 5y ago
TRIZ is extremely hard to apply beyond engineering areas. I tried to bend it to soft.dev with no luck.
dredmorbius 5y ago
Helps to provide at a minimum some context: TRIZ (/ˈtriːz/; Russian: теория решения изобретательских задач, teoriya resheniya izobretatelskikh zadatch), literally: "theory of inventive problem solving " is “the next evolutionary step in creating an organized and systematic approach to problem solving. The development and improvement of products and technologies according to TRIZ are guided by the objective Laws of Engineering System Evolution. TRIZ Problem Solving Tools and Methods are based on them.”[1] In another description, TRIZ is "a problem-solving, analysis and forecasting tool derived from the study of patterns of invention in the global patent literature".[2] It was developed by the Soviet inventor and science-fiction author Genrich Altshuller (1926-1998) and his colleagues, beginning in 1946. In English the name is typically rendered as the theory of inventive problem solving,[3][4] and occasionally goes by the English acronym TIPS. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRIZ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRIZ

say_it_as_it_is 5y ago

Notes with hyperlinks.

yesenadam 5y ago

This sounds very similar to a paper version of what I do with LaTeX PDF books. I constantly am typing and pasting stuff into a notes .txt file–every idea I have, anything I don't want to forget, anything I learn, URLS, names of books/movies etc. Then every few weeks I move stuff from the notes file to a place in a LaTeX PDF book, mainly the current year's book, then others split off as they get big enough, e.g. programming languages, mathematics, my programs, my essays etc. I put lots of pictures, and the books look lovely. (I find links between stuff isn't often necessary, as the hierarchical structure is so clear, and so easy to change around. But hyperlinking any 2 things is easy.) It did take me about 3 months to master LaTeX and the common packages enough that I don't have to give it a thought these days. Before that, I spent 25 years filling notebooks with ideas, notes, diagrams, drawings, maths, etc and never looking in them again, because there was no way of organizing them. Everything was just lost and forgotten.

aaldrick 5y ago
This sounds right up my alley - one question: do you use this books are reference in the future to help cement your learning? I feel like I would also end up never looking in them again just like you mentioned with the physical notebooks.
- yesenadam 5y ago
  Hi. Well..for me, it's more like reminding/relearning than cementing! Like am currently into Forth for the third time within a few years. I forgot just about everything. Rereading that chapter was the best refresher course I could imagine. And I'll add the stuff I'm learning now to the chapter. But the answer is different for each book. I guess the ones I look in least are the past year books, as I'm still adding to the other specific topic books, but still I sometimes search in them for something. Anyway, they're like gold for me, like the diary I kept 1992-recently – without it I wouldn't have a clue what I was doing or thinking in a particular year. They only increase in value, the longer you don't look in them! I've been into so many different things, and am only capable of 1 or 2 at a time, so I cycle back to them (a)periodically. Before I had to rely on my memory. (I do have a filing cabinet full of photocopied books and academic papers that I very rarely look into) I did always keep a paper diary, but I didn't put the kind of stuff that would go in notebooks in there. In the front of each book is a short contents with just chapter names, then detailed contents (thanks to shorttoc package), everything clickable. Or sometimes scrolling through looking at the pictures is faster. So, I can find stuff very quickly.

reidjs 5y ago

I write a lot and for most of my career I just used a Notes.md file synced across devices with iCloud. I forked foam https://github.com/foambubble/foam https://github.com/foambubble/foam A few months ago and have been using it as my note taking system. It works great even if you rarely backlink or tag, just every now and then you should clean out your inbox.

kkoncevicius 5y ago

I don't get these methods. So it's a note taking system with hyperlinks between them. OK. So what if we made it digital - then it would be like HTML, right? Now, since more notes is better - what if we also let other people write notes and add them into the same library. Oh look, we just invented the world wide web. What am I missing here?

henrikeh 5y ago
There is a big difference between writing meant for public distribution and personal notes. The point of a Zettelkasten (or any notes) is not to build a comprehensive encyclopedia, but to support and augment your work. I don’t necessarily agree either that “more notes is better” as an absolute statement.
slightwinder 5y ago
Don't you mean WikiWikiWeb? Because World Wide Web is a bit more than a linked library of notes. Especially today when we have youtube, social networks and webapps. But what you are missing is the cargo-cult of the youth which strife for a guide to imprison their thoughts. This method is really nothing new, not even innovativ. It originates from the same ideas which created the html and wikis later. But the last hype around hypertext was 20 years ago when wikis were new and hyped, and that didn't last long for technical reasons. And now we have a new generation who rethinks the same methods again and create new software from them, which can finally fullfill the wishes which where 20 years not possible because of limitations in hard- and software. This is good in it's own, but the hype and ignorance is really funny in it's own. Especially if you are german and know the background better than those people who throw around words which they barly understand correctly, nor know it's history.
mongol 5y ago
Not sure you are missing anything. It sounds like a curated and personal miniweb.

gego 5y ago

Some tools should be mentioned here, too. http://zettelkasten.danielluedecke.de/en/ http://zettelkasten.danielluedecke.de/en/ has great resources https://www.zettlr.com/ https://www.zettlr.com/ is new and also useful for a Zettelkasten like setup

qudat 5y ago

For anyone interested, Ive catalogued a list of knowledge management apps that I found for productivity: https://listifi.app/u/erock/knowledge-management-apps https://listifi.app/u/erock/knowledge-management-apps

martin-adams 5y ago

If anyone wants a visual breakdown of the Zettelkasten method, I have created two popular videos on YouTube 1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yqKspwjXu18 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yqKspwjXu18 (overview) 2. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ziE6UExsOrs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ziE6UExsOrs (step by step with examples) Sorry for the shameless plug, but reading the comments on here I see these videos might be able to help make it more tangible.

Kappa90 5y ago

We're developing Saga [0] and we have many users using it for Zettelkasten, although it's not our main value proposition. Why: Saga automatically links pages one to another, so it builds your wiki/knowledge system automatically for you. You can also group pages in "Collections", which are smart tags similar to the Zettelkasten tagging method, which allows users to easily recollect and find notes. I welcome anybody to try Saga for Zettelkasten and give us feedback on how we can make it a better tool for this use case! [0] https://saga.so https://saga.so

SMAAART 5y ago

I have been kind of doing this all along, little that I knew it has a name. Following this thread.

dsabanin 5y ago

Anyone looking for a good note taking solution, similar to Roam / Obsidian / Notion, but with a much better native macOS experience needs to check out https://www.craft.do/ https://www.craft.do/. It's incredibly well made and is being developed at a crazy pace. A real pleasure to use and they have Mac, iPad, iOS and web version with real-time collaboration. Edit: I forgot to mention the calendar sync! Really neat way to attach a note to calendar days or events. Especially nice when used with recurring events, as it keeps the note associated with them throughout their lifetime.

caser 5y ago

If anyone is interested, I'm currently starting a weekly ZK meetup on Zoom w/ a few founder friends who want to dive into the method. Format is: * 15 mins - check in on your workflow * 30 mins - work on your ZK (write notes, refactor, etc.) * 15 mins - set ZK goals for upcoming week and discuss tactics If you're interested in joining, drop me a quick note to the email in my profile with a bit about yourself and experience in the method!

binnyva 5y ago
I'm interested in this - and there is no email in your profile.

chrisbai 5y ago

My Zettelkasten and secure note-taking tool is Passfindr. My sketch book is a Moleskine notebook. Most of my notes are URLs, micro-notes, ideas, login credentials for online and other accounts, addresses and everything between. Lots of micro documents. Some of the notes are 20+ years old. Finding these notes and finding them fast is crucial. Passfindr does that with ease and I get information faster than anything else. Fast searching/finding matters. Once you get the idea behind the internal about: commands, you can even enhance the searching and finding capabilities and build your own Zettelkasten.