
Zettelkasten note-taking in 10 minutes - vicek22
https://blog.viktomas.com/posts/slip-box/
======
ThePhysicist
After trying so many productivtiy tools in the past I settled on having two
ordinary notebooks where I keep all my ideas and notes: One for the business
side, where I write down meeting minutes and insights, in chronological order.
Another one for technical and creative thoughts, also organized in a linear,
chronological fashion. In addition I sometimes keep lab notebooks for specific
projects.

If I look for some specific information (e.g. whom I talked to in a given
meeting and what the take-aways were) I typically know the rough date range
when I wrote that information down, so I just go through the notebook entries
until I find it. Same with the lab and creative notebooks.

Another advantage is that writing by hand allows you to draw diagrams and
write equations with ease. In my opinion nothing beats a paper notebook in
this regard. I tried the new iPads and MS Surface tablets but the note-taking
experience is just not the same and the results look disappointing IMHO. Also,
if I really need to record an image or computer-generated diagram I simply
print it, cut it out and glue it into the notebook.

My former colleagues in science used the same method of keeping lab books for
decades with great success, I have never heard of anyone using a system like
Zettelkasten (but maybe that's just my bubble).

~~~
dmortin
Zettelkasten can be done on paper too. Its point is making connections between
notes and being able to do discover new connections giving you new insights.

Simple note taking just records what you know and think. ZH can lead to new
understandings of the same set of notes.

~~~
DelightOne
This sounds time-consuming, is it?

I dont see myself following permanent links by timestamp. It is so time-
consuming and error-prone, I would drop the whole thing immediately. I know
myself this far anyway^^

~~~
Scarblac
The idea is that it is a _good thing_ that it is time consuming, as thinking
about the connections between the notes _is_ the actual productive work that
you have the system for.

------
zelphirkalt
What, no Emacs org-mode comment so far? (Only searched for "org" and "org-
mode" in the comments, superficially.) I guess I'll go ahead then:

People have apparently implemented this workflow of note taking in their org-
mode usage. Here are a few quick search results:

* [https://forum.zettelkasten.de/discussion/100/zettels-and-org...](https://forum.zettelkasten.de/discussion/100/zettels-and-org-mode) (also mentions org-brain) * [https://www.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/fq54g5/using_...](https://www.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/fq54g5/using_emacss_orgmode_as_your_zettelk%C3%A4sten/)

Org-mode is my go-to tool for any kind of notes or document, sometimes even
for PDFs I want to make, via latex export and then latexmk. I find it more
comfortable to use for literate programming than Jupyter notebooks too.

~~~
e19293001
Thank you for mentioning org-mode. I was actually finding a good set-up.
You're comment leads me to this blog[0] that I end-up following this set-up
which is quite very simple.

On the other hand, I recently saw a lot of Zettelkasten articles. I'm not sure
if its been hyped but I still would like to give it a try. When I found emacs,
I gave it a try (it was hard) and eventually I begin to like it because of its
tons of features. When I found org-mode, I gave it a try and then I like it
and use it everyday. When I found org-babel, I gave it a try and then I like
it. When ... ... ...

I hope more people would like to try emacs and org-mode. I know: learning at
first is pretty hard. My advise it just to use it everyday. I remember I
uninstalled notepad++ from my PC in order to force my self to use emacs. It
took a month for my brain to be comfortable using emacs.

[0] -
[https://dpitt.me/blog/2020/03/zettelkasten/](https://dpitt.me/blog/2020/03/zettelkasten/)

~~~
pcnix
You can also check out Zetteldeft, a deft based org mode extension that adds a
bunch of useful shortcuts.

------
DecayingOrganic
I'm wondering: is there _any_ empirical data that shows that good old note-
taking with a pen and paper is less effective when compared to Zettelkasten
note-taking? (Disregarding advantages of digital note-taking such as easy to
search, etc.)

I personally use successive relearning, sometimes also referred to as
retrieval-based learning, it's not a note-taking technique per se, but more of
a framework on how to learn/study in a way that maximizes retention and
meaningful learning.

If anyone's interested in it, here are some resources:

[http://memory.psych.purdue.edu/downloads/2012_Karpicke_CDPS....](http://memory.psych.purdue.edu/downloads/2012_Karpicke_CDPS.pdf)

[https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007/s10648-012-920...](https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007/s10648-012-9202-2.pdf)

[http://memory.psych.purdue.edu/downloads/2014_Karpicke_Lehma...](http://memory.psych.purdue.edu/downloads/2014_Karpicke_Lehman_Aue_PLM.pdf)

~~~
vicek22
Sönke Ahrens describes a scenario that got me sold:

Normal notes are fighting complexity by creating smaller and smaller
categories of notes

Example:

splitting "engineering notes" to "software notes" and "technical writing
notes"

and then "software notes" to "java notes" and "design notes"

And this way the notes get deeper and deeper in your notebook and you stop
interacting with them.

This described well my personal experience.

\----

Zettelkasten fights this complexity by much more up-front work when adding and
linking note, instead of a tree structure, you have a network.

~~~
dmortin
You can have tags instead of hierarchy and then you also have a network.

So instead of "java notes" and "design notes" you add the "java" and "design"
tag, etc., so you can approach your notes in any direction: you can find
"java" notes and then narrow the result sets to design notes (so java+design),
and vice versa.

And you can add links too between the nodes, so you can also walk them in any
order you define.

Existing tools can do this already, it's just a matter of using them.

Is there any more to zettelkasten? Its author invented the same thing on paper
notes, but digital tools provide this naturally.

~~~
henrikeh
What more do you want?

Zettelkasten is very simple and that is the point: You create small and
connected notes. This constraint turns out to be useful for research and
writing for some people.

There is no trick or secret to it.

~~~
bosie
hm, now that i am reading this, would that basically be the equivalent of
paragraph tagging/paragraph connections in a longer document?

i.e. you use one note document for 1 specific book and it might be 1500 words.
but instead of linking the documents, you link specific words/paragraphs to
other notes/paragraphs?

~~~
henrikeh
Yes, you could easily create a Zettelkasten in a single file. Or with pen and
paper.

The gist is focused and self-contained notes, linked together to form
structure and connections. A personal wiki with attention of
recontextualization.

~~~
bosie
That wasn't necessarily my point. I cannot visiualise how you use self-
contained notes for something like book notes or meeting notes, browsing
random links just seems completely inefficient and not transporting the actual
meaning/context of the notes

~~~
henrikeh
You are not browsing the notes at “random”. You read your notes because you
are working on something and what to see how your collection of notes might
help you.

It takes effort to support this workflow. Notes have to be self-contained and
of a somewhat permanent relevance. You don’t put raw reading and meeting notes
there.

~~~
bosie
Thanks, that helped. Very different from my current workflow indeed.

------
dang
Soon we will need a Zettelkasten to track our Zettelkästen:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23386630](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23386630)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22085837](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22085837)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21208196](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21208196)

[https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...](https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=zettelkasten&sort=byDate&type=story&storyText=none)

------
BlackVanilla
Is Zettelkasten better than 'the big .txt file'? [1] Sure, the example here is
about productivity, but I know it can be used for general notes. Anything from
your to do list, to notes from books, to ideas you want to remember. You want
to remember what you wrote about a book on gardening? Seach gardening.

This seems to be a low effort, high reward way of doing things. What extra
benefit does Zettelkasten bring and is it worth the additional effort?

EDIT: Another consideration is that you don't want the time you dedicate to
sorting a productivity system to be especially big. You want to make stuff.
The big txt file doesn't take up a lot of time to organise and allows you to
spend time doing good things.

[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22276184](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22276184)
(entitled 'My productivity app for the past 12 years has been a single .txt
file')

~~~
galfarragem
>> Is Zettelkasten better than 'the big .txt file'?

Might be but the ROI certainly isn't. That's why I use one large text file
also. One relevant detail is not to consider that file _read only_ , you must
tree shake it regularly. Noise will be less and relevant stuff will be easier
to find.

~~~
BlackVanilla
How have you found yourself organising your big text file? Do you use tags to
make searching easier? Do you date things?

What's the best way to go about it in your eyes?

~~~
galfarragem
I use sections (materialised as markdown titles so I can easily navigate
through them in a text editor) for recurrent subjects (so in some way this is
my tagging) and never date anything unless is relevant to do so.

I don't dive into "implementation details" but you might find something here:
[https://github.com/slowernews/hamster-system#hamster-
flow](https://github.com/slowernews/hamster-system#hamster-flow)

------
fastball
Shameless plug: I literally just pushed a change[0] to my online note-taking
app[1] last night that makes it a "full" Zettelkasten (e.g. there are
backlinks now!) There are also some other cool features like multi-parent
nesting that (in my opinion) make it much cooler than just a Zettelkasten. The
main downside for many in the HN community is that it's online-only at the
moment.

[0] [https://supernotes.app/changelog](https://supernotes.app/changelog)

[1] [https://supernotes.app](https://supernotes.app)

~~~
_def
"Online-only" is not a deal breaker for me, but closed source and the missing
possibility to self host it kinda is. But I'm gonna give it a try nonetheless!

~~~
fastball
Thanks for the feedback! One of our goals is to have a robust API that anyone
can build apps for so that you can integrate this with any sort of platform
you want (and then obviously the client could be open source), but yes,
otherwise it is closed-source.

------
bbx
The linked example is very neat:
[https://notes.andymatuschak.org/About_these_notes](https://notes.andymatuschak.org/About_these_notes)

The source code is not available, and each mouseover triggers a lot of Ajax
calls (one for the note hovered, one for each link in the hovered note), but
the experience is quite pleasant.

------
snidane
My problem with Zettelkasten is the granularity of notes which are supposed to
be a single short concept only. I can't remember hundreds of notes I wrote in
the past so that I can connect them when I write a new one.

I actually prefer Martin Fowler's concept of bliki (blog+wiki) where the
granularity is a blog post, instead of a singular note, which captures your
understanding of a topic at that time.

[https://martinfowler.com/bliki/WhatIsaBliki.html](https://martinfowler.com/bliki/WhatIsaBliki.html)

~~~
rcarmo
That is exactly how taoofmac.com was designed. I've hidden away the Wiki bits
for the sake of uniformity, but the engine works like that.

~~~
leephillips
Just want to say that I’ve been subscribed to the TofM RSS feed for many
years, and thank you for sharing your interesting perspective.

~~~
rcarmo
Thanks for the kind words :)

------
znpy
This thing that apparently worked very well for that sociologist that mostly
likely operated before the iper-connected and mostly digital world that we
currently live in (he died in 1998).

It's now being marketed as another holy grail solution, it reminds me of the
GTD method back in the day (in terms of marketing).

Index cards and custom sized drawers? lol nope.

To add some constructive feedback: I'm playing with MediaWiki and i noticed
this nice links on the right side of all pages: "What links here". It reminded
me of this Zettelkasten thing. But without much fuss.

~~~
bloopernova
Think of Zettlekasten as a wiki-with-a-narrow-focus. This site
[https://roamresearch.com/](https://roamresearch.com/) can be considered a
wiki, but its features are all designed around journals, linking, tags, etc.

Something like how a text editor can be configured to be a very useful IDE for
a given programming language.

------
pedro1976
Here is my personal experience after applying this method for more than a
year. The crucial idea of the zettelkasten method is to contextualize
knowledge instead of categorizig it. So its processing information instead of
just storing it. Hence retrieving knowledge is much easier because its much
more connected in your brain. I experienced this as extremely powerful, my
thoughts became much more internalized. Cross-linking becomes the standard,
which is a main driver of creativity and idea shaping.

------
rhizome31
Reading the linked article I'm very surprised that the author says they can't
talk about what they read after reading it. I'm quite the opposite as I often
talk about what I've read to my friends, even before finishing the book. Sure
I might not remember things as well a year later, but then I can go back to
the ToC or index and find the bit I've forgotten. Saying that books don't work
in general doesn't ring true to me.

------
marvinblum
This is the fourth explanation that I've seen on HN this year. Including my
own [1]. I like the more practical approach of this one, but the long numbers
(timestamps) used for referencing look confusing. It's easier to remember the
title of a note or a number you made up yourself.

In case you're looking for a visual editor, you can take a look at Emvi [2].
We didn't build it exactly as a Zettelkasten, but you can reach that goal in
pretty much any note taking app. Ours is more focused on collaboration.

[1] [https://emvi.com/blog/luhmanns-zettelkasten-a-
productivity-t...](https://emvi.com/blog/luhmanns-zettelkasten-a-productivity-
tool-that-works-like-your-brain-N9Gd2G4aPv)

[2] [https://emvi.com/](https://emvi.com/) (the UI will change quite a bit in
the coming weeks, read about it here [https://emvi.com/blog/a-new-
experimental-user-interface-QMZg...](https://emvi.com/blog/a-new-experimental-
user-interface-QMZgmZG1L5))

------
unicornporn
> Use Zettlr. It’s Free and Open-Source, uses Markdown files and it’s vendor
> agnostic.

I don't see how I could adopt a system that doesn't work on the device I
always carry with me — the phone.

~~~
vincvinc
I put my markdown files in a Dropbox folder, so I can use apps like 1writer on
iOS. Syncs well and works like a charm!

Whenever I have an interesting thought, I get my phone, open 1writer, it
creates a new [timestamp].md file, and I just jot it down. It instantly saves
to dropbox so if I open Sublime on my laptop, the file's already there.

On my PC, I mostly write in Sublime Text but now experimenting with Zettlr and
Obsidian.

I heard heard other combinations with other cloud file services and other
markdown writing apps work just as good.

Having a folder with plaintext notes going back years just feels ... future-
proof.

------
odomojuli
Every time I see a new method of note taking I file it under notes for
notetaking and never get around to it.

These days I do everything in pen and paper. I file it in a file cabinet. I
think this is what Fermi used to do, could be wrong. It works for me. No
dependencies, no installations, no updates, no latency, pretty decent storage
and great portability.

I make an effort not to dwell on productivity tools, which feel like spending
time to save time in spurious and inconsistent amounts. Yes, I wish I could
memorize and remember everything worth knowing and doing. No, sometimes it's
nice to forget things and prioritize the information that's in front of me.

~~~
jonpurdy
I keep seeing articles about Zettelkasten pop up every couple of weeks on HN
lately. Notetaking and productivity articles tend to get me thinking about how
my own system works (I still have a bunch of Zettelkasten articles I would
like to read...)

I've been using Anki as my SRS system for language recall for years. A couple
of months ago I started putting in random facts and bits of information that I
would normally put into a note. This sort of thing tends to get inputted,
filed, and forgotten about until I do a purge of notes every few months. But
since I've started using Anki for this, I now 100% remember these types of
random facts. A few examples: \- FQ_CODEL stands for Fair Queueing with
COntrolled DELay \- ADSB is to air traffic what AIS is to marine traffic \- In
CAP theorem, must choose between availability and consistency (For Anki nerds,
I have these as cloze deletions)

The biggest benefit for me (aside from actually remembering this stuff) is
that the cognitive overhead of inputting and studying is super low. I can stay
focused on doing important work while not having cognitive overhead of
learning new things affect my output.

------
praptak
Ad-hoc Ask HN: Zettelkasten sounds a lot like a private Wiki. Is it different?
How?

~~~
x775
It largely is.

It seems as though Zettelkasten, despite being a relatively old phenomenon
(e.g. see Niklas Luhmann), is experiencing a renaissance these days.
Ultimately, it is just (yet) another way of keeping track of your notes and
thoughts. You can think of it as cataloguing everything you write down. I
reckon whether you stand to gain anything from converting your existing note-
taking to a Zettelkasten operation depends entirely on how you currently take
notes. What really matters is that whatever approach you employ works for you.
In general, I wager the mere act of actually writing something down and
approaching material in a critical, thoughtful manner as opposed to merely
consuming is what drives both retention and understanding. Zettelkasten might
help you attain that. It might also not.

------
randomor
I am not disciplined enough to do the initial linking by using these
timestamps, will also not break out of the flow to find the previous note in
another folder and copy the timestamp around.

Instead I’ve been using a stream of small auto-timestamped logs with hashtags
to take and retrieve my notes and ideas. It is not a tree-based system, it’s
just a text log stream and has worked extremely well for me so far.

I used to do this in a private slack group but eventually created an app
called ZenJournal. You may also find it useful.

------
jll29
Niklas Luhmann collected 90,000 note cards and popularised "Zettelkasten"
note-taking as a knowledge management method with paper-based hyperlinks:
[https://niklas-luhmann-archiv.de/projekt/beschreibung](https://niklas-
luhmann-archiv.de/projekt/beschreibung) (archive, supports download as TIFF
scans and JSON transcriptions).

If you use Sublime (as I do beside Emacs), ther's a plug-in:
[https://zettelkasten.de/posts/sublime-text-
plugin/](https://zettelkasten.de/posts/sublime-text-plugin/)

During my undergraduate studies I summarized each paper or book I read in form
of a single plain text file. This was very helpful when studying for oral
exams that required internalizing in the order of >20 volumes. While these
weren't cross-referenced, and no special tool was used, this still helped to
ace the exams, mostly because the practice of summarizing/compressing the
material to its essence itself is essentially the same as learning it.

Main main advice is any tool or none is fine as long as the notes are in plain
text so they can last - it's the most durable file format, and you can always
build a full-text index to make it searchable e.g. using Lucene.

------
distant_hat
In my experience with note taking, any system that is easy and trivial to use
is better than a fancy system that you don't.

------
_sbrk
I almost never take notes. My to-do lists are on post-it notes scattered on my
desk, and I rarely miss a task or deadline. I tried the notebook route for a
while, but I found that it was more like a diary; I never looked back until
years had passed and, by then, the data was no longer relevant.

Anyone else do it this way?

------
m0zg
I don't get it. Even if I write a bunch of stuff down, I still don't have the
time to read it, unless it's for a specific project and I'm summarizing data
specifically for that. If it's not tied to a project, I might as well not
write it down at all - it won't be read.

------
bachmeier
> The linking is done by placing links like these [[20200606154308]] into
> notes. Most of the slip-box software allows you to click on this link and
> opens a note with ID 20200606154308 for you.

What's the purpose of using a number to link? Why not use words, like
hyperlinks have been doing for decades?

~~~
IlGrigiore
Usually you use an ID in place of the title of the note, because you may want
to change the title at a later date. If you were to change the title, then you
would have to also change any of the links. Therefore, you keep the ID the
same and can change the title of the note without breaking any links.

~~~
klohto
So, just rename all occurrences or create a named hyperlink? Why do we keep
coming up with already solved problems.

------
stewbrew
Why can't people just recommend using personal wikis?

------
mitko
That’s kind of similar to the format I usually use for writing for my blog.
I’d use the blog itself as the permanent folder, and the act of publishing it
the ritual which makes it permanent. As I am writing new essays they live in
emacs or notes or notion or whatever note taking app I enjoy using currently.
Such notes are almost never long lived for me.

If I were to write something large like a book, I would probably maintain
distinctions between early drafts vs later drafts of chapters. I am imagining
that most writers do have some system which captures the notion of the stage
the work is in.

Publishing externally is the ultimate way to make it permanent though-
otherwise nothing stops the author from amending.

------
tony_codes
I love tiddlywiki for atomic easily linkable notes

------
dude01
I've been using
[https://github.com/vimoutliner/vimoutliner](https://github.com/vimoutliner/vimoutliner)
for a decade now. It works well. It's _so easy_ to backup, since it's just
text files. And you can just use grep and other standard tools to look for
content. I believe it's the vim-counterpart to emacs org-mode.

I've been forced to use MS OneNote for one contract, since the laptop is
locked-down. Works ok, but search-ability and keyboard-only usage sucks in
comparison.

~~~
rcarmo
Pro tip: OneNote supports [[WikiLink]] in most platforms. Try it.

------
metrokoi
I don't see how this method of note taking is better than just writing note
linearly. Sure, it is good if you want to recall information for writing a
book, but it doesn't seem like it would actually increase your retention and
improve your ability to apply things that you have learned. If anything it
would make you less efficient at learning because you have to maintain this
note structure.

It seems like it's only good for summarizing or collecting information for
repackaging and publishing. Maybe that is all it's purporting to be, though.

------
Maha-pudma
There's been a few of these articles on HN recently. This method sounds to me
like a personal wiki. And for that I use Zim-wiki. It has all the features the
article talks about, as well as displaying pictures. It's a folder and text
file structure as described, handles links, and back links, between notes and
has a tagging system. Not only that it has a journal and task management. I
use it at work and home. It's cross platform, but not mobile. Brilliant piece
of software.

------
rcarmo
My blog/wiki has been created somewhat along the same lines for many a year
(including YYYY/mm/dd/HHMM page names), but somehow I can't get past Zettlr's
default ID scheme, or the lack of hierarchy (having all my notes in a single
folder is not something I'm keen on at all).

(As an aside, both Zettlr and Obsidian completely freeze up on my 7000+
blog/wiki folder, but Obsidian eventually manages to parse and cross-link most
of it given time)

------
jotm
I've seen all these posts about this system and it still seems way too over-
explained for what it is.

Using Google keep with keywords at the end/start of the note, plus optional
categories, seems to achieve the same thing.

Everything is searchable, so if I'm thinking about something, I'll just do a
few searches by keyword and see if I saved something before.

No need for 2 pages of "how to use" :/

~~~
soniman
Finally somebody makes some sense. I have an even lazier system, I type a
search into bing like "bizidea - hydroponic urban farming" and save it to
bookmarks and when search "bizidea" there are all the billion dollar ideas.

------
drcode
There's a note-management system that can be built that's much better than all
existing systems, I am certain of it, but all my attempts to design it so far
have failed.

It somehow involves a combination of organically determining a hierarchy of
the notes, and then helping to algorithmically prune notes that are no longer
useful.

~~~
hanklazard
Yes, totally! I feel like this Zettelkasten technique is a step in the right
direction with the idea of linking notes, but relying on these long, random
looking strings to do the linking seems wrong. Human-readable tags that serve
as links seem better, but I suppose that's more of just a software issue, not
a technique issue. My ideal note-taking software for what you're describing
would be: 1\. platform independent (or at least very easy to use on multiple
platforms, phone + desktop) 2\. your "organically determined hierarchy of
notes" idea ... a clustering map of some sort. 3\. links via human-readable
tags 4\. FOSS

I'm guessing this exists already but that I just need to look harder.

------
mercacona
The most important idea I got from zettelkasten was not tagging ontologically
_your_ notes, but thinking in future actions like #havingatea, #planningahike,
etc.

------
baxtr
By now, I am kinda saturated with posts about the "Zettelkasten" system. It
seems to be quite popular these days on HN...

------
renw0rp
Any idea why would Zettlr (recommended application for Zettelkasten in the
article) called one of the themes "Karl-Marx-Stadt" (which is a name used for
Chemnitz during division of Germany).

I know it's a bit off topic - so I guess my comment fits right in HN
discussions :D

edit: I figured this out myself; the author of the application is described:

 _Hendrik Erz is a research assistant at the University of Bonn. His main
research focusses on the nexus between Marxist economic theory, digitalisation
and violence in capitalist societies (riots and terrorism)._

------
7839284023
Is there a good client for android for this system to sync with?

------
golly_ned
Cool

