Not the OP, but as someone who uses both: in my mind, they’re categorically different. Anki is for memorisation of discrete chunks of knowledge, for rote responses (i.e. deliberately Cached Thoughts), and for periodic reminders of things.
Zettelkasten helps with information retention too, but that’s mostly a happy side-effect of the desired goal, which (for me) is synthesis. Every time I input a new chunk of knowledge, I have to decide where I should ‘hang’ it in my existing graph, what it rhymes with, whether it creates dissonance, and how it might be useful to current or future projects.
Once it’s hanging in the lattice somewhere, I can reference and remix it as often as I want, and effectively have a bunch of building blocks ready and waiting to stack together for writing projects or problem-solving. It’s fine if I can’t remember most of this stuff in detail; it’s much more of an ‘exo-brain’ than Anki, IMO.
Not the OP, but as someone who uses both: in my mind, they’re categorically different. Anki is for memorisation of discrete chunks of knowledge, for rote responses (i.e. deliberately Cached Thoughts), and for periodic reminders of things.
Zettelkasten helps with information retention too, but that’s mostly a happy side-effect of the desired goal, which (for me) is synthesis. Every time I input a new chunk of knowledge, I have to decide where I should ‘hang’ it in my existing graph, what it rhymes with, whether it creates dissonance, and how it might be useful to current or future projects.
Once it’s hanging in the lattice somewhere, I can reference and remix it as often as I want, and effectively have a bunch of building blocks ready and waiting to stack together for writing projects or problem-solving. It’s fine if I can’t remember most of this stuff in detail; it’s much more of an ‘exo-brain’ than Anki, IMO.
Right, I agree with this. I never managed to keep using Anki-like software for anything, but, the purpose is quite different.