I’ve read this book and tried to read it again as I thought I was missing something, but my impression of the book is that it’s somewhat sloppy, a bit preachy of ZK being a cure-all, makes much more complicated a very simple system to the point of obfuscating the main point.
To my understanding, all the Zettlekasten is is having notes with:
1. individual names (if you look for one name, one note comes up), 2. creating links between associated ideas (if you think, “wow, this reminds me of...” you may forget that connection later, so you link them), and 3. having indexes to point you to good starting points when you develop strings of thoughts / notes.
The indexes are the most complicated part. It’s just that you don’t file notes under a single folder (as it separates from the ideas that aren’t related, but also the ones that are) so instead you semantically connect ideas on an object level basis. In order to get a general sense of the full thought you developed (“when I was researching about x, what were the main conclusions I came to?”) you can look at these indexes for a nice directory of your past thoughts.
I’ve read this book and tried to read it again as I thought I was missing something, but my impression of the book is that it’s somewhat sloppy, a bit preachy of ZK being a cure-all, makes much more complicated a very simple system to the point of obfuscating the main point.
To my understanding, all the Zettlekasten is is having notes with:
1. individual names (if you look for one name, one note comes up),
2. creating links between associated ideas (if you think, “wow, this reminds me of...” you may forget that connection later, so you link them), and
3. having indexes to point you to good starting points when you develop strings of thoughts / notes.
The indexes are the most complicated part. It’s just that you don’t file notes under a single folder (as it separates from the ideas that aren’t related, but also the ones that are) so instead you semantically connect ideas on an object level basis. In order to get a general sense of the full thought you developed (“when I was researching about x, what were the main conclusions I came to?”) you can look at these indexes for a nice directory of your past thoughts.