For anyone who wants the gist of Zettelkasten, I've just finished reading How to Take Smart Notes by Sönke Ahrens.<p>Here's my rather brief summary of the process:<p>* 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.<p>* 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.<p>* 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.<p>* 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.<p>* Notes are linked to other notes which support your ideas. This also help the discovery of new ideas.<p>* 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.<p>* You can create index notes that help you find your way around.<p>* 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.<p>Hope that's somewhat helpful. I'm still experimenting with it to find out what I understand correctly and what I don't.
Zettlekasten: the Kubernetes of note-taking systems.<p>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.<p>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.
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.<p>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.<p>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.<p>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.<p>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.
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).<p>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.<p>[0] <a href="https://tiddlywiki.com/" rel="nofollow">https://tiddlywiki.com/</a><p>[1] <a href="https://akhater.github.io/drift/" rel="nofollow">https://akhater.github.io/drift/</a>
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.
I love that the author publishes his notes for everyone to see. I do the same (at <a href="https://notes.stavros.io/" rel="nofollow">https://notes.stavros.io/</a>, though I have much fewer notes).<p>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.<p>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: <a href="https://notes.stavros.io/software/monero-gui-syncing-stuck-with-ledger/" rel="nofollow">https://notes.stavros.io/software/monero-gui-syncing-stuck-w...</a><p>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.<p>What does everyone think? Would you be interested in participating in an early alpha? Any other feedback?<p>[0] <a href="https://joplinapp.org/" rel="nofollow">https://joplinapp.org/</a>
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:
<a href="https://aka.ms/GistPad" rel="nofollow">https://aka.ms/GistPad</a>.<p><a href="https://twitter.com/lostintangent/status/1282047676377231360?s=21" rel="nofollow">https://twitter.com/lostintangent/status/1282047676377231360...</a><p><a href="https://twitter.com/lostintangent/status/1334225746751983618?s=21" rel="nofollow">https://twitter.com/lostintangent/status/1334225746751983618...</a><p><a href="https://twitter.com/lostintangent/status/1282850227695652865?s=21" rel="nofollow">https://twitter.com/lostintangent/status/1282850227695652865...</a><p>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.<p>Foam + GistPad recipe: <a href="https://foambubble.github.io/foam/recipes/write-your-notes-in-github-gist" rel="nofollow">https://foambubble.github.io/foam/recipes/write-your-notes-i...</a>
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.<p>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.<p>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.<p>You can see my personal notes in action, if you like [1] (sorry, not mobile friendly!).<p>[0] <a href="https://github.com/abetusk/www.mechaelephant.com/tree/release/home/meow/notenox" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/abetusk/www.mechaelephant.com/tree/releas...</a><p>[1] <a href="https://mechaelephant.com/notenox" rel="nofollow">https://mechaelephant.com/notenox</a>
Why does this keep making HN headlines?<p>The Zettelkasten thing is really nice but it keeps coming up as a 'new discovery' every few weeks.<p>Personally I don't have the attention to detail for it so I'll never do it.
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.
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?<p>I’d be interested to hear more about how your notes are organized and what they help you accomplish.<p>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.
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.
For VSC there is also Dendron [1], which I found nicer than Foam.<p>After lots of trial/error and at the end of the rabbit hole I found Emacs with org-roam [2].<p>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.<p>Sometimes I wish I just stayed with VSCode/Markdown, but then I remember that I can now put "elisp" on my resumee :)<p>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.<p>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, ...).<p>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.<p>1: <a href="https://dendron.so/" rel="nofollow">https://dendron.so/</a>
2: <a href="https://github.com/org-roam/org-roam" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/org-roam/org-roam</a>
3: <a href="https://github.com/inukshuk/anystyle" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/inukshuk/anystyle</a>
4: <a href="https://tiddlywiki.com/" rel="nofollow">https://tiddlywiki.com/</a>
5: <a href="https://tiddlyroam.org/" rel="nofollow">https://tiddlyroam.org/</a>
6: <a href="https://www.thebrain.com/" rel="nofollow">https://www.thebrain.com/</a>
7: <a href="https://www.literatureandlatte.com/scrivener/overview" rel="nofollow">https://www.literatureandlatte.com/scrivener/overview</a>
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.<p>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.<p>The Archive is great software, but they also have a fantastic community that's researching this subject.<p><a href="https://forum.zettelkasten.de" rel="nofollow">https://forum.zettelkasten.de</a>
I've recently had much more luck with <a href="https://johnnydecimal.com/" rel="nofollow">https://johnnydecimal.com/</a> , mirroring content structure across all my devices and even physically.
Here's a Zettelkasten CLI manager:<p><a href="https://github.com/srid/neuron" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/srid/neuron</a> "neuron is a future-proof command-line app for managing your plain-text Zettelkasten notes."<p>Here are some sites that use it: <a href="https://neuron.zettel.page/examples.html" rel="nofollow">https://neuron.zettel.page/examples.html</a><p>(ps: I'm not affiliated to neuron, just found it on the web and have been following since)
Is foam not a regression in your flow? You mentioned the cross platform being an important feature<p>I'd love to give it a go,but that's a bit of a necessity for me.<p>Admittedly perhaps notion for fleeting notes, with a foam setup for managing permanent notes wheb at mt desktop may be a good compromise<p>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
I’ve gone through phases of intense note taking and planning around organization.<p>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...<p>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).<p>These let me not lose an idea, and reference it later. The key is having one default place to dump everything.
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.
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?