Anecdatum: I got into Zettelkasten before I knew what it was called after reading a post by Ryan Holiday circa 2013 (he recommends physical cards and slip boxes, too). It’s profoundly improved my writing, my ability to retain information, and synthesis of new ideas, even though I was doing it ‘wrong’ or sub-optimally most of that time.
In terms of systems: I always thought using paper index cards was bonkers, given we have these newfangled things called ‘computers’, but your post makes a much more compelling case than anything else I’ve read (including the Smart Notes book, which is very good). So I’m pretty curious to give it a try.
My only major reservation is around portability and security. At this point, my (digital) slip-box is literally the single most valuable thing I own. I know Ryan Holiday uses fireproof safes etc, but it seems like it would get pretty cumbersome, especially once you have tens of thousands of notes.
I’ve been helping Conor and Josh out with Roam because I’m excited about the power-user features, but I’m pretty confident that any practice of this nature would be beneficial to students, researchers, and writers. Prior to Roam, I was using a mixture of Google Docs, Evernote, etc, which wasn’t optimal, but still worked OK.
An important point you touched on which is worth stressing: the benefits of Zettelkasten accrue in a non-linear fashion over time, as the graph becomes more connected. So even if you ‘get it’ as soon as you start playing around with the cards, you could reasonably expect to reap much greater gains over a timespan of months or years (at least, that’s my experience!).
Excellent write-up!
Anecdatum: I got into Zettelkasten before I knew what it was called after reading a post by Ryan Holiday circa 2013 (he recommends physical cards and slip boxes, too). It’s profoundly improved my writing, my ability to retain information, and synthesis of new ideas, even though I was doing it ‘wrong’ or sub-optimally most of that time.
In terms of systems: I always thought using paper index cards was bonkers, given we have these newfangled things called ‘computers’, but your post makes a much more compelling case than anything else I’ve read (including the Smart Notes book, which is very good). So I’m pretty curious to give it a try.
My only major reservation is around portability and security. At this point, my (digital) slip-box is literally the single most valuable thing I own. I know Ryan Holiday uses fireproof safes etc, but it seems like it would get pretty cumbersome, especially once you have tens of thousands of notes.
I’ve been helping Conor and Josh out with Roam because I’m excited about the power-user features, but I’m pretty confident that any practice of this nature would be beneficial to students, researchers, and writers. Prior to Roam, I was using a mixture of Google Docs, Evernote, etc, which wasn’t optimal, but still worked OK.
An important point you touched on which is worth stressing: the benefits of Zettelkasten accrue in a non-linear fashion over time, as the graph becomes more connected. So even if you ‘get it’ as soon as you start playing around with the cards, you could reasonably expect to reap much greater gains over a timespan of months or years (at least, that’s my experience!).