Some free, digital Zettelkastens include, zettlr, and roamresearch. (There are many good articles on Luhmann, his Zettelkasten, and how he used it I’ve listed some for further reading at the end of this post.) How to implement your digital Zettelkasten Thankfully, we have digital alternatives that make it easier to navigate (and read otherwise illegible handwriting). Luhmann built a massive Zettelkasten of 90,000 notes with handwritten index cards and a wooden cabinet. This forces you to actively connect the dots (during note-taking) and lets you find relevant ideas with ease in future. The key is to make connections between ideas during note-taking, way before you need to review them for your work. This is oversimplifying it, but I hope you get the gist. Sort cards into broader topic boxes (idea -> topic link).Link idea cards to other relevant idea cards (idea -> idea link).Write each idea you come across on a card.He realised early that a note is only useful in its context, specifically, the other notes it is related to. How did he do accomplish this? He credits it to his Zettelkasten which focuses on connections between notes. In his 40 years of research, he published more than 70 books and 500 scholarly articles. One thing you should know about Luhmann-he was extremely productive. It originates from German sociologist Niklas Luhmann. Knowledge (by didn’t realise this was an issue until I stumbled upon the Zettelkasten, which emphasizes building connections between notes. If not, you might flip through your notebooks, or worse, not bother. If your notes are digital, you might do a free-text search. When reviewing a note, other relevant notes (i.e., ideas) don’t present themselves. In regular note-taking, connections between ideas are not made by default. Ideas and knowledge remains scattered as individual pieces. Why do I say regular note-taking doesn’t work then?īecause the notes stay as separate notes. Highlighting is… nope, highlighting doesn’t work-it’s just too passive. Making summaries of books, articles, and papers help distil the gist and review the knowledge in future. Scribbling on the margins is helpful for quickly recording insights and ideas that come while reading. What’s wrong with regular note-taking?įrom personal experience, regular note-taking doesn’t work. Note-taking is a key step that converts what you read and learn into writing. In the previous post, I shared about reading -> note-taking -> writing.
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