Data point: I bounced off the physical system after making four cards, but fell in love with Roam almost immediately. It’s only been 6 days so I don’t know if it will last.
I’ve been experimenting with Roam and finding it better than most of my notetaking systems I’ve tried, although not sure it’s doing the thing that Abram was pointing at here re: improving idea-synthesis
Most of the folks who sign up for Roam right now don’t discover the workflows in it that let you actually implement a Zettelkasten practice.
This is one reason why we send a youcanbook.me link to every new user and try to schedule an onboarding call.
Unfortunately only a small % take us up on that—they try the tool, figure they have the hang of it, then go about using it like they’ve used other notes tools.
I will say most of the real great stuff that happens with Zettelkasten is not happening because of the tool you’re using—it is happening because you’re explicitly thinking about relationships between ideas, and you’re then able to explore linked ideas when you come back to them in the future. We try to make that process really seamless, but still have a long way to go if we’re going to nudge users who don’t have a Zettelkasten process already in that direction.
Hell, we have a long way to go in helping people who do have a ZKT process discover the features in Roam that support it.
Use the “block-references” feature, which you can discover in the / command, or when you type ((
In Roam, every workflowy type bullet point is a card—and you can embed them elsewhere—or like to them with an alias (that’s a sort of hidden workflow that mostly power users use rn, probably need to improve)
In the original location, you see the number of other places you’ve referenced that card (back links), and clicking that button shows you all those locations
This makes it easy to build “trails” of ideas across documents
In the Zettelkasten process, when you have an idea, you first write it down, then think about where to place it, then think about what other ideas it connects to and link those up.
In Roam, you’d probably just start writing the idea down on the day that you wrote it—maybe nested under a some links/tags that relate to the general idea (or use links inline) so you can find it again later.
If you’re using Roam for Zettelkasting, next step is to look through your notes and find other ideas that you might want to link to those blocks.
It’s still not super seamless, but a hell of a lot faster than paper index cards, especially as your zettelkasten grows
Roam might be great for writing papers etc, but is it a long-term solution for note taking? Who owns your data? What happens when the company goes away?
What makes a long term solution for notetaking for you?
The founders have said the usual right things about people owning their own data and that they will only ever raise revenue by fee-for-service, not selling ads or data, but I don’t know if there’s anything legally binding to that.
JSON export already exists, although it is only so useful when there’s nothing to read it in.
The thing I’m actually most concerned about right now is privacy; there are unfixed vulnerabilities if you share some but not all of your pages.
Data point: I bounced off the physical system after making four cards, but fell in love with Roam almost immediately. It’s only been 6 days so I don’t know if it will last.
I’ve been experimenting with Roam and finding it better than most of my notetaking systems I’ve tried, although not sure it’s doing the thing that Abram was pointing at here re: improving idea-synthesis
Most of the folks who sign up for Roam right now don’t discover the workflows in it that let you actually implement a Zettelkasten practice.
This is one reason why we send a youcanbook.me link to every new user and try to schedule an onboarding call.
Unfortunately only a small % take us up on that—they try the tool, figure they have the hang of it, then go about using it like they’ve used other notes tools.
I will say most of the real great stuff that happens with Zettelkasten is not happening because of the tool you’re using—it is happening because you’re explicitly thinking about relationships between ideas, and you’re then able to explore linked ideas when you come back to them in the future. We try to make that process really seamless, but still have a long way to go if we’re going to nudge users who don’t have a Zettelkasten process already in that direction.
Hell, we have a long way to go in helping people who do have a ZKT process discover the features in Roam that support it.
A couple things I’d suggest
Use the “block-references” feature, which you can discover in the / command, or when you type ((
In Roam, every workflowy type bullet point is a card—and you can embed them elsewhere—or like to them with an alias (that’s a sort of hidden workflow that mostly power users use rn, probably need to improve)
In the original location, you see the number of other places you’ve referenced that card (back links), and clicking that button shows you all those locations
This makes it easy to build “trails” of ideas across documents
In the Zettelkasten process, when you have an idea, you first write it down, then think about where to place it, then think about what other ideas it connects to and link those up.
In Roam, you’d probably just start writing the idea down on the day that you wrote it—maybe nested under a some links/tags that relate to the general idea (or use links inline) so you can find it again later.
If you’re using Roam for Zettelkasting, next step is to look through your notes and find other ideas that you might want to link to those blocks.
It’s still not super seamless, but a hell of a lot faster than paper index cards, especially as your zettelkasten grows
Roam might be great for writing papers etc, but is it a long-term solution for note taking? Who owns your data? What happens when the company goes away?
What makes a long term solution for notetaking for you?
The founders have said the usual right things about people owning their own data and that they will only ever raise revenue by fee-for-service, not selling ads or data, but I don’t know if there’s anything legally binding to that.
JSON export already exists, although it is only so useful when there’s nothing to read it in.
The thing I’m actually most concerned about right now is privacy; there are unfixed vulnerabilities if you share some but not all of your pages.