What started as a wild midnight dive into associative learning (which was more related to whether or not machines could actually think and learn like humans), turned into a discovery of one of the most exciting knowledge collection - or connection - techniques in my adult life. Zettelkasten.
You'll find a million resources online but very simply, a Zettelkasten is a store of information that is meaningfully connected together by the author. Famously, Niklas Luhmann used a slip-box system where he could file small index cards. Each index card had a unique identifier; a single, complete thought; and a range of other identifiers to other index cards in the slip box. His process was simple:
- Read with intention. Have questions in mind or context that relates to your current slip-box state.
- Write literature notes of key ideas that resonate with your existing writing.
- Independently, also write down fleeting notes that may come to you when you do not have the time to process that note.
- Regularly write atomic permanent notes that incorporate your literature notes and fleeting notes into your slip-box or that develop thought across different notes.
- Link permanent notes to other permanent notes to solidify connections between ideas.
- Don't enforce arbitrary categories or expected arguments. Instead, allow the focus points or arguments to emerge from the small atomic pieces of writing that you are doing and the connections that you are making.
This process takes time and requires some effort if you're moving away from a scribbled notebook or rigidly categorised knowledge that is siloed by field or domain. It requires one to embrace a level of organised chaos and also to experiment with what works best for you.
I have always been a relatively avid note taker although usually my notes are quite meaningless retrospectively. The meaning of information that we gather comes from the connections we form when we deepen our understanding of a particular idea or domain or when we make new connections between seemingly arbitrary pieces of knowledge. To build this "meaning machine", we need flexible tools that allow us to build the patterns we see in our brain. Relying on linear notebooks is futile because the management alone of linking ideas together is a pain, let alone when we want to find that information again.
With digital tools like Obsidian (my current tool of choice) or even with a paper slip-box, a Zettelkasten that empowers you to think and write (and write and think) without feeling anxious that you'll lose notes. In fact, it levels up your productivity if you're able to simply maintain the habits of reading and writing on a regular basis. As David Kadavy puts it "A Zettelkasten – especially a digital one – is a bicycle for the mind."
You can certainly expect to be limited in how much you can read given that the time it takes to process a reading will likely take longer. However, the quality of your reading and what you take from that reading will be significantly improved. I've found it to feel less like a chore and rather something that I crave and actively want to get my teeth into. For all the titbits, articles, or books that you could read but aren't as critical to your current developing thought, consider keeping an inbox of ideas to get to when you can.
I recently finished reading How to Take Smart Notes: One Simple Technique to Boost Writing, Learning and Thinking – for Students, Academics and Nonfiction Book Writers and Digital Zettelkasten: Principles, Methods, & Examples which really helped me absorb both the conceptual and practical framework of the Zettelkasten. Two other great resources that introduced me to the topic were this video by Morganeua and this Getting Started guide.