When you go outside, how do you choose decks to take with you?
Small cards seem awful for writing sequences of transformations of large equations—do you sometimes do things like that and if yes then do you do that outside of Zettelkasten?
When developing an idea I use paper as an expansion of my working memory, so it becomes full of things which become useless right after I finish. Do you throw away such “working memory dumps” and only save actually useful pieces of knowledge?
Another thing you could do (which I’m considering):
Currently, when I want to start an entirely new top-level topic, I make a new card in my highest-address deck. This means that highest deck is full of top-level ideas which mostly have little or no development.
Instead, one could bias toward starting new decks for new top-level ideas. You probably don’t want to do this every time, but, it means you have a nice new deck with no distractions which you can carry around on its own. And so long as you are carrying around your latest new deck, you can add new top-level cards to it if you need to start a new topic on the go.
You don’t get access to all your older ideas, but if we compare this to carrying around a notebook, it compares favorably.
EDIT: I’ve tried this now; I think it’s quite a good solution.
I initially did everything in zk even if it was a temporary working memory dump, but recently I’ve gone back to notebooks for those kinds of temporary notes, and I put important stuff into zk later (if and only if I want to expand on parts of the temporary notes in a more permanent fashion).
Similarly, at first I tried to figure out which decks to carry with me. Now I either carry all of them (if I’m going to sit and do work in them) or just a notebook to take temporary notes in. Eventually carrying all of them will be a real problem when there are too many, but I’m not there yet; they still fit in a backpack.
I’ve done sequences of equations in my zk, but also sometimes go to notebooks. I think the situation is “ok but not great”. A possible solution would be to keep a larger-paper zk specifically for this, with cross-references between it and the smaller zk (enabled by using capital letters to name zk’s and cross-referenced, as I mentioned in the text). I don’t currently think it’s a big enough problem for that to be worth it.
When you go outside, how do you choose decks to take with you?
Small cards seem awful for writing sequences of transformations of large equations—do you sometimes do things like that and if yes then do you do that outside of Zettelkasten?
When developing an idea I use paper as an expansion of my working memory, so it becomes full of things which become useless right after I finish. Do you throw away such “working memory dumps” and only save actually useful pieces of knowledge?
Another thing you could do (which I’m considering):
Currently, when I want to start an entirely new top-level topic, I make a new card in my highest-address deck. This means that highest deck is full of top-level ideas which mostly have little or no development.
Instead, one could bias toward starting new decks for new top-level ideas. You probably don’t want to do this every time, but, it means you have a nice new deck with no distractions which you can carry around on its own. And so long as you are carrying around your latest new deck, you can add new top-level cards to it if you need to start a new topic on the go.
You don’t get access to all your older ideas, but if we compare this to carrying around a notebook, it compares favorably.
EDIT: I’ve tried this now; I think it’s quite a good solution.
I initially did everything in zk even if it was a temporary working memory dump, but recently I’ve gone back to notebooks for those kinds of temporary notes, and I put important stuff into zk later (if and only if I want to expand on parts of the temporary notes in a more permanent fashion).
Similarly, at first I tried to figure out which decks to carry with me. Now I either carry all of them (if I’m going to sit and do work in them) or just a notebook to take temporary notes in. Eventually carrying all of them will be a real problem when there are too many, but I’m not there yet; they still fit in a backpack.
I’ve done sequences of equations in my zk, but also sometimes go to notebooks. I think the situation is “ok but not great”. A possible solution would be to keep a larger-paper zk specifically for this, with cross-references between it and the smaller zk (enabled by using capital letters to name zk’s and cross-referenced, as I mentioned in the text). I don’t currently think it’s a big enough problem for that to be worth it.