
Remembering what you Read: Zettelkasten vs. P.A.R.A - stanulilic
https://www.zainrizvi.io/blog/remembering-what-you-read-zettelkasten-vs-para/
======
bloopernova
My takeaway from the recent trend in articles talking about how great the
Zettelkasten method is:

Document what you do, as if you were describing your work and/or learning to a
stranger. That stranger is you, in 6 months to 5 years time.

Maintaining that enthusiasm and finding the time to document is difficult, but
the results are very valuable because you are building a "second brain". That
extra brain can be indexed, searched, tagged, analyzed, and edited using many
powerful tools.

Don't waste energy chasing fancy tools and methodologies without already
having a simple workflow in place. In other words, don't go all out learning
Emacs+org-mode+org-roam when you already have a directory of text file notes.
Once you have a good idea of what works for you, then introduce tools designed
to make your life easier. (I say this as someone who uses Emacs+org-mode+org-
roam every day)

Oh and read "The Checklist Manifesto" and "How to take Smart Notes".

~~~
stanulilic
> How to take Smart Notes

I have read over 100 pages of the book but to be honest, I am disappointed
with it. I learn best by examples, the book is failing short of examples on
how to use Zettelkasten. My expectation was the book was going to walk me
through the process of implementing Zettelkasten like a tutorial, but instead
it keeps going back in circles, talking about why I should use Zettelkasten. I
am about to finish the book but I still have a lot of questions.

~~~
ZainRiz
OP here

Yeah, that book was pretty light on practical advice. I didn't find much in
there that I hadn't already discovered by reading blog posts about it

One thing that was unique though, was a set of questions to ask yourself while
reading to get extract the most insights out of the material.

I posted them here if you're interested:

[https://twitter.com/ZainRzv/status/1195038683461611521](https://twitter.com/ZainRzv/status/1195038683461611521)

~~~
komali2
Genuine curiosity: why do you take the extra effort to choose and then add an
emoji at the end of most of the sentences in these tweets?

~~~
ZainRiz
It doesn't take much effort. Win + '.' opens up the emoji selector, and just
start typing a word to search the emojis.

Why bother? Sometimes they help to convey emotion that would otherwise be
missing. Other times it helps to break up dryer blocks of text.

That, plus it's fun :)

------
lefstathiou
I love reading and have a frustratingly limited memory. I spoke to my brother
about it (who was the better student between us) and he highlighted similar
issues for himself which surprised me. His advice was as follows: “accept the
fact that your memory sucks and figure out an annotation and note taking
system that helps you recall things faster”. You don’t need to remember the
notes about a particular topic if you can remember that you took a note about
it.

How we implement it:

1- he and I annotate almost everything we read worth annotating (I wont do it
for escape reading)

2- our annotations have similar systems across books. Underlines may be
something fun or interesting, stars highlight significant points, “Qs” pose
thoughtful questions, top left corner is location in plot top right is general
theme of the scene etc

One and two allow us to get up to speed on a book we previously read very
quickly or find particular sections in an instant.

For teachable items - books or notes I don’t want to forget that are nuanced -
I transcribe my annotations to OneNote (my favorite note taking app).

For example I read a book about Japanese death poems. There were a few that
really resonated to me. I don’t need to ever pick this book up again nor do I
need to remember any of them, I just have to remember I wrote them down. Here
is one of my favorites:

My heart

is a bottomless river,

a raging torrent.

(Written by a woman who took her husbands life, for taking the life of her
brother, moments before she took her own.

Anyway this system works for me and thought I would share.

~~~
ZainRiz
Wow, I really like how you reserve the corners of the page for specific
content.

I also really like writing notes in the book, but I take a picture of each
page and stick it into Evernote. On each note I'll write down the book and
page number that the note came from in case I want to see it in more context.

That way the notes are all searchable and it really helps when I don't
remember which book I read something in

------
danparsonson
Shout out for Joplin [1] for digital note-taking - coupled with Nextcloud, I
have a self-hosted note repository that syncs across my mobile, laptop and
desktop. Interface is clean, notes are in Markdown format, and notes can be
cross-linked and organised into notebooks. And it's OSS.

Not affiliated, just a fan!

[1][https://joplinapp.org/](https://joplinapp.org/)

~~~
Apotheos
I could be wrong, but I think as long as you have access to the same Dropbox
account, you can sync up as many devices as you want. No nextcloud integration
required.

~~~
danparsonson
Yes, Nextcloud is not required - I'm saying that having that gives me self-
hosted synchronisation. You can indeed use Dropbox; there are other options
too.

------
dang
Zettelkasten for our Zettelkästen:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23445742](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23445742)

[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)

------
bergheim
Queue org-mode namedrop in 3.. 2..

Actually, I can just be that guy as I use it myself, and it is great. However
I do find myself spending energy I wish I didn’t on meta-things like how to
organize it all (files, tags, hierarchy etc). I think it could benefit from
having preconfigured setups like doom-emacs or ruby on rails or whatever
(«convention over configuration»). One for a hardcore GTD, one for
zettelkasten, one that is bare bones, etc..

I realize the agenda should make this less important, but I still get caught
up in it from time to time (tags? Properties?)..

I haven’t tried org-roam though. I just feel like theres so many moving parts
to my setup already. Anyone had any good/bad experiences integrating it into
your workflow?

Speaking of org-mode, maybe I should start looking at those scheduled items in
my agenda that are now some 600 days+ past its due date...

~~~
Arubis
Totally anecdotal: I've been an org-mode user for years, and have spent some
time using RoamResearch directly as my primary notetaking tool.

I _still_ haven't figured out how to use org-agenda properly, and it feels
like I'm missing a lot of core functionality as a result.

I tried to get into org-brain for a while. It never stuck for me.

RoamResearch was a lot stickier; I may end up back in it at some point because
of the mindshare and effort being poured into it. It's a really great product
--my threshold for being willing to do my thinking work inside a program
that's finely tuned to distract me (the browser) is high, so this is saying
something.

In the meantime, though, I've been giving org-roam some love, more than
anything else because it's _not_ in the browser distraction machine (to wit,
here I am commenting on HN when I should be billing time...). Getting spun up
and fully in the habit of using org-roam took me a couple days of background
effort. I find it easy enough to forget it's there, which is good enough for
me.

------
ZainRiz
OP here

I wrote this article last May and back then it was unclear whether or not I'd
stick with PARA

Here's the update three months later:

 _The Bad_ : I’m kinda getting falling behind on some of the proactive
archiving/organizing parts of it, especially for my personal notes

 _The Good_ : Falling behind where PARA's Just In Time aspects really shine. I
can organize just the notes that I’m about to use

 _The Great_ : BASB made a night and day difference to my project management
style

In the past I organized my notes and todos in a completely different way. I
was constantly struggling to find the important bits or would miss important
tasks. I'd always be feeling overwhelmed and lost

I still feel like that today, but it's no longer because of my notes. My
system is no where near perfect now, but it's waaaaaaay better than what it
used to be

I shared more of my thoughts in this tweet thread [1] describing the advice
I've been giving to my friends who asked if they should sign up for the
Building a Second Brain class (where I learned PARA)

[1]
[https://twitter.com/ZainRzv/status/1296532147096834048](https://twitter.com/ZainRzv/status/1296532147096834048)

~~~
peterlk
> I hated the idea of wasting all that time I spent reading

Personally, I've come to the conclusion that I read in order to draw broad
patterns, not necessarily to remember all the things in every book - my brain
has limited space.

What are your thoughts on optimizing retention at the expense of remembering
to see the forest?

~~~
ZainRiz
100% agreed. It's been a journey for me to get to this point, but Tiago
Forte's thoughts were really influential for me here.

Now I try to only save notes that I found particularly surprising or
insightful, I'm definitely not trying to save everything in the book. I don't
put it in:

* If the fact didn't make me think

* If it doesn't trigger an "aha" moment

* If it was something I already knew,

For example, I'm currently taking notes as I read The Art of Doing Science and
Engineering. If you looked at my notes[1] then you could barely tell that it's
a book about engineering.

[1]
[https://twitter.com/ZainRzv/status/1289964671563214848](https://twitter.com/ZainRzv/status/1289964671563214848)

------
inetsee
>>> "... Farnam Street’s tips on remembering what you read. ... writing your
notes on the book itself ..."

Almost all of what I read is not on paper. If I'm reading something that I'm
serious about remembering, I'll create a precis ("a concise summary of
essential points, statements, or facts" [1]). My goal is to reduce the size of
the content by 90% or more (10 page article becomes a 1 page precis, 200 page
book becomes 20 page (or smaller) precis. The process of creating the precis
seems to enhance my recall of the important information, and if I need to
refresh my memory of the material, I can do it in a tenth of the time.

[1] [https://www.merriam-
webster.com/dictionary/pr%C3%A9cis](https://www.merriam-
webster.com/dictionary/pr%C3%A9cis)

~~~
input_sh
I do something similar but I keep shortening and shortening my summary until I
reach the point in which I have a couple of key points at the top of the note,
with everything longer than that somewhere underneath.

That way I can quickly catch a glimpse of what the note offers as soon as I
open it, and in case I need to understand the arguments behind those points,
all I have to do is to scroll down.

This has proven to be quite effective when I want to reference something I've
read about years prior.

------
Jeff_Brown
The issue at the heart of both the Zettelkasten and the PARA methods seem to
be that a person wants their notes to be connected in useful ways. To an
extent, "ordinary" knowledge graphs permit this -- where by "ordinary" I mean
that the edges are unlabeled. Things are related to other things, but you have
to infer the relationship yourself after looking at both of its members.

Graphs with labeled edges seem clearly better. But then what if you want a
relationship with more than two members? (Or less! "Not" and "maybe" are two
important unary relationships.)

And what if you want a relationship's members to themselves be relationships?
This is the nature, after all, of most information. Any but the simplest
sentence is a relationship between relationships. "Children ask for cookies
because cookies have sugar", for instance, is a "because" relationship bewteen
an "ask for" relationship and a "have" relationship.

Once you've reified your relationships that way, you'd like to be able to
search intelligently through them. "Ordinary" knowledge graphs let you see all
of a thing's children, or parents, or maybe in some cases all it's descendents
and ancestors up to some level of recursion. Better would be something that
lets you ask targeted questions, like "Show me everything Sally has asked me
to do that does not require a computer."

To my knowledge there's only one program that lets you reify your data and
query it in the ways I've described. It's called Hode, for Higher Order Data
Editor. I wrote it.

[https://github.com/JeffreyBenjaminBrown/hode](https://github.com/JeffreyBenjaminBrown/hode)

~~~
ZainRiz
That's pretty cool Jeff! Those insights are probably used a lot by researchers
working on general AI.

How much work does it take you to add your notes to it? I'm curious about it
on two dimensions:

* The time it takes to add a note

* What decisions you need to make to add a note (what to link it to, what not to)

~~~
Jeff_Brown
Thanks!

You've zeroed in on the weakest point of the program. Adding notes is
mechanically easy but conceptually hard. That's because there are many ways
you could choose to represent the same concept.

For instance, suppose "harry gave sally a book" is in your graph. One way you
could represent that is "Harry #gave Sally #object a book". Another is "Harry
#did (give #object a book) #to Sally". Another is "Harry #did (give #object a
book #to Sally)". And actually maybe you'd prefer to represent "a book" as "#a
book", so that you can just search for "book".

They're all plausible representations, and all have different implications for
how you would run searches. You've got to be consistent in how you represent
those relationships, and the program can't help you because I mean it's a
database, not a general artificial intelligence.

The strength of the program is that the structure of your index is entirely up
to you. But soon that freedom gives way to being bound by the decisions of
your former self. And your future self will inevitably understand the space
you're representing better than your former self did when it bound you.

~~~
ZainRiz
Got it. Yeah, this is one of those instances where the paradox of choice can
kill you.

Just a thought: if I were interested in adopting a tool like that, my chances
of successfully sticking with it would go up 100x if there was a set of
"default recommended practices" to follow when saving a new note, to cut down
on the decision I would need to make.

Then over time, as I got more familiar with the tool, I could always tweak
those default recommendations to fit into my own style

And who better to offer those default practices than the tool's creator? :)

------
poorman
The thing I can't wrap my head around is how come Amazon does not have an API
where I can pull my Kindle highlights. I know there are services out there
like readwise.io but they require me to manually go in and "sync" things using
my browser.

I would pay money for a service that was able to grab these highlights and put
them into a Zettlekasten or P.A.R.A. style repository. Even Toi Lutke made
something to help accomplish this...
[https://github.com/tobi/highlights](https://github.com/tobi/highlights)

~~~
Arubis
I agree that automation would help out here--could you just hit Readwise's
'sync' page with `curl` and a cronjob?

------
cytrus
Contrary to OPs opinion, I believe tooling is relevant to the learning
process, because an inconvenient system will put you off from taking notes and
from coming back to them in the future. The catch is, there is no single tool
that will fit everyone, you have to find your own method. My own tooling
choices have changed a lot across the years.

When I began to apply a structured method to my studies, my first choice was
to use mind maps. You can structure a mind map to resemble the associations
you have in your own (duh) mental model of any body of knowledge you might be
studying, and then it's easy to navigate a map with your eyes to recall stuff
and fill the gaps when things get cloudy in your head. The first digital tool
I recall using was CmapTools, and it's still pretty good.

Nowadays I use mostly LiquidText for reading notes, on books and articles (but
there are other similar products). It lets you build something similar to a
mind map, and it's really convenient to select a piece of text or image on a
pdf and make it a node in a map. It's especially convenient if you have an
iPad Pro with a Pencil. However, I could still not find any single tool that
encompasses all my "learning modes". For instance, if I am playing with some
OSS project and want to take note on something interesting, I have to use a
different product.

~~~
ZainRiz
OP here, if the article seemed to imply that tooling is irrelevant, that was
not my intent. The most important part of any system is that it be something
you'll stick with. I 100% agree with you that if a system puts you off from
taking notes than it's bad for you. (I'd add the nuance that what's off-
putting for one person might work well for another)

That said, it's dangerous to let the perfect be the enemy of the good. I'm
trying not to spend too much time researching new systems and instead focus on
benefiting from the good-enough system I currently have. I moved to my current
system when I was feeling the scaling pains of my old one, and when I feel
those pains from this system it'll be time to search for an upgrade!

Speaking of upgrades, I don't have a good way to take notes from pdfs. Looking
at their site, LiquidText seems like it's optimized for the pdf use case. I'm
going to dig deeper into it to see if I can read pdfs and take notes in there,
and then export those notes into Evernote. Thanks for the tip!

------
keiferski
Admittedly I haven’t tried either of these methods, but just from reading this
post, they both seem prohibitively over-complex. There’s also no mention of
Spaced Repetition, which is unquestionably the best method for remembering
things.

Instead of complex note systems, try this: write down quotes, paragraphs,
summaries and other related information, add them to Anki / another SRS, and
do the cards everyday. That’s it. Simplicity is key to building habits and I’d
bet any money that SRS works better anyway.

~~~
ZainRiz
(OP here) The philosophy behind PARA is different from spaced repetition.

Spaced repetition is super valuable when you want to keep _all_ the
information inside your head. PARA is more geared at when you want all the
information _available when you need it_ , and requires much less time/effort
than Anki (I've tried both).

Not to say that one is better than the other. Sometimes you need to access the
information and cannot use the note taking system (e.g. you're a student and
have a final exam coming up). But if memorization is not a requirement, then I
find these other systems easier to use.

~~~
keiferski
Ah okay, that makes sense. I can see the use case.

------
marvinblum
A note on folders: I think grouping is a good thing alongside linking notes. I
like to combine both methods, but instead of sorting notes into folders, I tag
them. For personal knowledge bases it's probably fine to "silo" everything,
but I found it really useful to add tags to notes when collaborating on the
same knowledge base with multiple contributors. That way I don't need to rely
on someone elses judgement and can group them from my perspective without
colliding with the author. So instead of having folder -> articles, I have
article -> tags and an can query by tags.

Emvi [1] has a tag overview page to allow just that, in case you're
interested. I'm using it alongside 7 other people, where 3-4 are actively
contributing to it (writing).

[1] [https://emvi.com/](https://emvi.com/)

~~~
ZainRiz
Do you have private tags visible just to you? Otherwise it seems like the
system would get pretty cluttered with everyone's tags

For my work notes I've been copying links to the team docs into my personal
note taking system and organizing _those_ as I wished

~~~
marvinblum
Also a good way to handle it.

No, Emvi does not support private tags. But usually you won't need many tags
to identify it for everyone. I was looking for the fixed IP addresses of our
local network recently and couldn't find them by searching for "IP", because
it was tagged as "network". Adding IP as a new tag is beneficial for everyone.

You can bookmark, watch, or create a (private) list for stuff you look up
frequently.

------
falcolas
It seems like the only real difference is where you put the effort. With
Zettelkasten (Z), it's while reading, with PARA, it's before and after a
project which might need those notes.

The Z method seems more scalable to me, since if I'm reading, I have time to
spare.

~~~
ZainRiz
(OP here) The argument I tried make in the article was twofold:

1) You read waaaay more than you use. So only summarizing what you're about to
use in a project takes less time total. (and even then, it's just highlighting
passages)

2) The best system is the one you stick with. Yeah, in an ideal world I'd be
summarizing my readings right as I'm reading it (clearly I have time to spare
in those moments). I tried to do that for a while. But I just couldn't stick
with it. It felt too much like homework. It was a chore. The motivation wasn't
there. This PARA based system is one I can actually stick with

------
sanderjd
It is hard enough for me to find the time to do the reading, let alone to also
do a ton of writing about it. It especially takes me a long time to write by
hand, and is just logistically difficult - where do I put the notebook? do I
have to do all my reading at a desk? I can type fast, but this has even worse
logistical challenges - do I have to do my reading next to a computer? oh,
I'll just go check my email real quick while I'm at the computer...

I sometimes daydream about a dedicated writing machine, something small, but
with a full-sized keyboard so I can type quickly, and supporting nothing else
but text. Sometimes I honestly think about just getting a typewriter, but it
seems silly.

~~~
jamiek88
Me too. I looked into electronic typewriters that export to rtf or something
but never pulled the trigger. Would be interested in hearing if people do use
specialist devices like that.

~~~
sanderjd
After writing this comment, I've started wondering about tablets with nice
keyboard attachments and only using it with an app like Joplin. Seems like it
might be a similar solution. You can install email apps on tablets, but you
don't _have_ to.

------
wenc
I'm curious about something. To those who have used advanced note-taking
methods over a period of say a few years:

 _Has the method itself helped you in producing work that, without said
method, would not have been possible or would have been much more difficult?_

For zettelkasten, the one person for which the method demonstrably led to
tangible results was Niklas Luhmann himself. Outside of that one data point,
I'm hard pressed to find any other real-life examples.

How does Rich Hickey approach note-taking? Or John Carmack?

~~~
bloopernova
Before I moved to a Zettelkasten style of "second brain", I used to dump
interesting things I've done or learned into my personal wiki page at work.
Stuff like "awk that extracts this from that" or "3 different ways of doing X
in Puppet and Ansible".

The problems I had with that was that it was located at work, so I couldn't
access it easily off-line. Nor could I search and location a particular nugget
of information particularly quickly. It was also separate from my daily
journal.

In my current setup, my "3 different ways of doing X in Puppet and Ansible"
has links to an Ansible page, a Puppet page, and more. Each of those Ansible
and Puppet pages have a list of backlinks, so I now have a list of all the
tickets that used Puppet or Ansible, and all the daily notes that involved
those tickets. So I can spider through my second brain fairly quickly without
searching. Which doesn't sound that important but if you don't know quite what
you are looking for, then you can remind yourself by walking through the stuff
associated with it.

Not the greatest example, sorry. But my "second brain" is still evolving and
getting more useful. I'm excited to see what researchers come up with in this
problem space!

------
brianhorakh
I use zettr app for note taking. A private slack (with friends) for para. Took
the udemy superblearning course a few years ago and picked up a lot of great
tips from that too.

~~~
ZainRiz
How do you use slack for para?

------
dustingetz
someone who has done this over a period of years, as compared just reading a
lot of books, what is the result?

------
hyko
The only time it’s acceptable to write notes directly into a book is when
you’re taking it into an exam. Otherwise, it’s just an act of vandalism!

~~~
ickelbawd
Can you expound more on why you think this? Do you think it’s okay to write in
a book you own and don’t plan to get rid of?

Saying it’s vandalism seems a bit extreme to me—-unless we’re talking about a
book borrowed from a friend or a library.

I don’t really write notes in margins much anyway. It never seemed useful to
me to bind my notes directly to the pages that they come from. They become too
hard to find.

~~~
hyko
I think it stems from an unreasonable reverence for the printed word. You
never own a book, you’re just its custodian for a period of time!

I’m only really calling it vandalism with my tongue firmly in cheek–obviously
anyone can do what they like with their own books :)

------
dkarl
I think it's important to be specific about the different purposes of taking
notes. I tend to split it into two spectrums, the reference spectrum and the
recall spectrum.

The reference spectrum ranges from looking up a small, discrete nugget of
information to restoring a complex mental context. At the "small nugget" end
of the spectrum could be a command line invocation for a specific task, or
your mother's birthday. In my experience, search works fine for this if you
put in minimal effort when recording the information.

At the "complex mental context" end of the spectrum could be a project that
you were immersed in six months ago and had to set aside. Documentation for
this purpose takes a lot of care; it's essentially writing for another person.
If you're not careful and systematic, you can end up accidentally taking a
crucial aspect of context for granted and leaving it out. To choose how to
structure notes for this purpose, I think of myself as a consumer. I have a
lot of experience with consuming information, and I know what I like. I don't
like mind maps. I like complete sentences of clear, well-structured prose,
with an occasional diagram, lightly hyperlinked where it's helpful. All I need
is links, basic formatting, and occasionally embedded media.

The recall spectrum ranges from memorizing specific factoids to trying to
cement more complex ideas so they're available for thought later. At the
factoid end is anything that could fit on a flash card, such as the definition
of a word or, whoops, my mother's birthday, which probably belongs here under
recall instead of under reference! At the complex end of the recall spectrum
is where I would like to put the best books I read.

Again, when taking notes for recall, I think of what helps me in my
experience. I like studying Anki cards for factoid recall. For the complex
end, I find the effort that is best rewarded is the work of writing
straightforward, well-structured prose. It's very easy to sketch graphs and
diagrams that _feel_ meaningful, but the ease is a giveaway that you aren't
really mentally engaging. Writing is much harder work, because it forces you
to engage with the subject in a deeper way than just splashing a vague
intuition down on the page. The value is reflected in consumption: well-
written prose is invaluable, while most of the images that feel like they
capture part of the mental context when I have it are no help in restoring it
when I don't. (Technical subjects are an outlier; diagrams are often helpful.)
To be clear, since recall is the object, consumption is secondary; what is
most important for me is that the act of _writing_ well-structured prose helps
cement the knowledge in my mind. It's just a nice bonus that if it doesn't
stick the first time, I'll have exactly the kind of notes that are good for
refreshing myself later.

Maybe it's just me, but I think discussions of note-taking techniques and
structures are skewed by the desire to create something visually impressive.
Nobody who is a professional at communicating information to others is using
these techniques. I've never heard anybody say, I need to find a mind map to
improve my understanding of the French Revolution, or Franz Kafka, or Apache
Kafka. Mind maps and similar techniques have been around for many decades and
have yet to prove themselves as a medium for teaching or communication. I'm
_very_ skeptical of the idea that they have some great yet-to-be-exploited
utility for communication, and I'm also skeptical of the idea that their value
for personal use vastly exceeds their value for interpersonal use. But this is
subjective, and perhaps not everybody is the same as me.

~~~
ZainRiz
I really like how you distinguish saving nuggets from complex mental
constructs. That's a super valuable call out.

Regarding mind maps: I've personally found them useful for thinking in the
moment and brainstorming. They were also helpful for studying for a test back
when I was in school (and the concepts it had to include were limited to a
single chapter)

They're definitely less useful as a way to transmit information to other
people though.

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john4534243
emacs users check org-roam its quite nice

