At its heart, zettlekasten is a german term for a box of notes. While the use of this knowledge management system dates back to the 16th century, it was the german socialogist Niklas Luhmann who famously created a zettlekasten which included some 90000 notes.
Thing is, Mr. Lewman was a very prolific writer and he feels that this method of organizing his notes played a major role in his literary accomplishments.
Others have studied and applied his methods with very good results. They find that they are able to make connections that otherwise would have eluded them. The zettlekasten allows the user to have insights into ideas that were previously thought to be unrelated.
While Luhmann built his system using physical materials, modern day zettlkastens tend to be digital.
THE DIGITAL ZETTLEKASTEN
The benefits of going digital are manifold. using a digital knowledge management system give us the power of search and hyperlinks.
But which system? The best way to go is to create notes in plain text. Text files with the extension txt or md are the most common. Using plain text allows you to create a zettlekasten that is futureproof (we hope) as plain text has been around for a very long time and will likely be around for a long time to come.
A useful tool to manage all of these notes is a markdown editor. I use zettlr (found here: https://www.zettlr.com/download) as it is fairly simple and has a few useful features such as full text search and tag management. There are other systems, you can find a review of them at this website https://www.shopify.com/partners/blog/10-of-the-best-markdown-editors.
HOW TO FORMAT YOUR NOTES
One of the biggest debates is about how to format your notes or zettles. This will differ according to your individual needs, so I hope to give you a starting point and you can modify your system from there.
Every note has a unique ID. Most markdown editors will create a unique ID for you when you create your note.
Zettlr for example uses the date and time in this format:
YYYYMMDDHHMMSS
You can extend this note by adding a descriptive title or topic such as:
YYYYMMDDHHMMSS – example note
Next your note should have a title. This title is more of a topic sentence or description of the information being discussed.
Under your title comes the tag. Note that tags relate to the general topic such as #productivity instead of “decision making techniques”. You should have as few tags in as possible but as many as needed. Every note should have at least one tag.
Then come your notes. Your notes are written in whatever style you prefer. I use Question – Evidence – Conclusion (in my own words), it seems to work for me.
At the end of your notes you’ll add links to a PREVIOUS note with a related idea if one exists. Ideas flow downhill, not up.
Finally you’ll add your references. References are made in your preferred format and can point to a book, a webpage, personal notes etc.
So what’s it all look like?
File name: 202009111130618 Eisenhower Matrix
Title: Using the Eisenhower Matrix for Determining the Most Important Next Action
Tags: #productivity
Q: How can you break down a problem to find the most important variable?
Two rows, Two Columns
Urgent, Important
.
.
Conclusion:
The EM uses quadrants labeled urgent & important, urgent & unimportant, not urgent & important, not urgent and not important.
The not urgent and not important should be discarded.
Most of my work should be in the not urgent and important category.
The others are do if you must.
Links: [[20200908071648]] Decision Making
Reference: https://www.eisenhower.me/eisenhower-matrix/#:~:text=The%20Eisenhower%20Matrix%2C%20also%20referred,or%20not%20do%20at%20all.
CONCLUSION
The Digital Zettlekasten is like a digital second brain. It is useful tool, but of course all tools are designed to do some work. It will take time and effort to create a useful collection of notes.
In time you’ll make your own tweaks to the system so it will match the way you think and the way you work. Over time you will build a rather large collection of notes, which you can use for research or writing or just to keep track of your recipes.
