Thx Rik,
already following Nickmilo.
Thx for the hint.
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Youāre more than welcome!
For years I worked on a workflow that once start in ORG-Modeā¦
Zettelkasten is very nice and I am a big fan of Niklas Luhmanās work and achievements.
We need to consider that Mr. Luhmansā work was coined in a time where no access to computers (let alone desktop computers) was possibleā¦
That being said:
In todayās day and age the influx of information to process is huge if you have a few Body of Knowledges to follow (like myself and many others).
My āMental Modelā as @nickmilo calls it in regard to my workflow to collect knowledge is very (very) similar to Nickās approach.
I use ādropsā (atomic notes), ācloudsā (connected notes - Nickās equivalent of MOCs), āconceptsā (collections of ācloudsā) and āknowledge modelsā (collections of concepts).
#drops, #clouds,#concepts and #knowledgemodel are the tags I use to indicate the type of note.
On top of that there is a #permafrost (tag) that is used to indicate that the content of the note is rather fixed and believed āfirmā.
My motehertongue is Dutch and my whole note system is written in Dutch (also the tags which I translated). This to prevent copy and pasting stuff in English from the internet. I always (literally) proces a note when it come into my Obsidian Inbox which together with my Vault directory is the only place were I store Markdown-files (Daily Notes and Templates are stored seperately but thatās just for clearness), and of coarse the attachments are also stored seperatly allthough I am not realy convinced they should be?.
My notenames are readable text which directly show whatās in the note (not really what Zettelkasten does).
The Graph View is my index. My Python scripts generate TODO-lists and lexical analysis of the Vault.
I used Zettlr (before Obsidian) -> Only thing I liked in their system was the fact that everything was stored in UUID-note (kind of). The system was not able to handle big amounts of notes but it worked for including literally everything in your vault.
This āKnowledge Systemā works for me until it doesnāt anymore. Then Iāll have to go and search for other ways in order to keep it going. With this community and this great piece of software I am convinced I will keep on going until I am retired (which is still some 10 years to go).
Hope this has helped for you
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@RikD this is interesting as always.
I like your approach of always taking notes in your own words.
In my various experiments Iāve tried saving full articles, copying and pasting bullet points, and writing my own summaries/reactions - all as daily predecessor actions to writing a report length analysis on a given topic that would arise from a collection of notes. While there are merits to one or both of the first two approaches, taking down notes in my own words is more productive in working towards that end goal of producing a proper, full length analysis.
Iām curious - how long are your typical atomic notes? Are you strict about linking back to original sources/citations, or do you not worry as much about that?
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Atomic notes start in the Inbox as just a few words (manner of speaking), a few lines which gradually develop into full blown content notes of about an A4-page (should you want to print them out).
Longer means I probably am not on an atomic level.
I do care about original source material. Mostly mentioned in the āresearchā part of the note. In the āInteresting Linksā part I make links to other ādropletsā, ācloudsā, āconceptsā and āMental Modelsā.
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If my Google Translate is write this means āThx for sharingāā¦
My response: Youāre more than welcome!
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Iāve a few questions and comments if you donāt mind, just curious.
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Does your Inbox get cluttered with these atomic notes or do you usually have a small number of them at a time inside the folder?
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Is your inbox the folder where all of your new notes are created?
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Have you read this thread yet: What A Seedbox Is and Why It Has Been Valuable to Me ? Your description of your workflow seems to be based on it, your workflow either IS based on it or would be a helpful extension from your current workflow if you havenāt read it yet. (Your comment reminded me of this thread, which reminded me of the value of inboxes/seedbox, so thanks
)
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- My Obsidian Inbox is kept deliberately āsmallā, this to enable keeping the focus on the things we are working at in the workflow.
- Indeed: suppose a mail comes in the Inbox with a link to Feedly RSS I received (sent from within the Feedly App btw). That article is read, if interesting the template is loaded and in own words an new note is made. This could spark other things and links to existing connections (for example)
- Whatās in a name? I coined the drop, cloud, concept, mental model long before Obsidian and other stuff existed. Itās just a way I spin out ideas from zero. Surely there is tons of ālikewiseā material to find. I am not the only one in the world thinking about how to grow knowledge
Thanks for the remarks and thoughts.
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Perfectly. Thanks for the visualization!
The little I have done to get started, your info graphic makes the most sense so far.
I am using ZK only because I tend to remember dates approximately better than a term I may have been comfortable with using at the time, but have since refined it.
Book reviews and synopses is not my goal, although I may just quote books, but I want Obsidian to collect my Obsidian thoughts over my life ending in autobiography.
I like the idea of a some templates for structure, but is there some suggested template layout that could be more suited to my use case?
Sorry if these come off as dumb questions, but they nevertheless are things I want to establish before pulling all my ideas collected over years, into one place.
Sorry for the later reply.
Holiday season tends me to re-focus on things that are really important in life
Little remark on your date question:
I started using the daily note add-on which is fantastic.
Not only it saves all your daily notes in one place (whatever your choice). The calendar view is great too.
If youāre purpose is to make an autobiopgraphy using daily notes and mentioning(linking) the notes you have worked on in your daily notes gives you the link to the date.
My five cents (itās how I decoupled dates from filenames for this moment).
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Thanks for your 5 cents worth of sage advice. I did not consider the calendar.
Hi! Thank you for sharing your workflowāI find this to be really helpful for thinking about my own system. I have a couple questions though:
- What is your process for processing a resource like a book or lecture?
- How do you process notes in your inbox and know when they are ready to āgraduateā to the next phase (i.e., from a drop to a cloud, cloud to concept, etc)?
If you could share any examples, that would help immensely! Thank you!
Many thanks for thisā¦ I tried them all, settled on IMF and changed it a little for my way of work. Without your input it would have taken a lot longer. Actuallyā¦ I would not call my way IMF anymore, but it was a very helpful starting point. 
@mediapathic Thanks for sharing! Without some good ideas itās quite overwhelming if you have to start on a clean state and really donāt know how to begin.
@RikD Thanks for the info on how you work. I found the drops/clouds/concepts/models structuring very interesting and logical for me. The image also helped a lot!
Both: Your explanations gave me some more insight. Iāll now start collecting (atomic) notes, settle for IMF and see what comes out of it.
Anyone got a good suggestion for bilingual people? Iām half Brit, half German, and recognise that I constantly write (and think) in both languages, sometimes even within the same note.
This of course leads to all kinds of mixtures, searching problems and different tags. My everyday communication and work is about 50:50, so I canāt really decide on one languageāand Iām too lazy to translate everything.
How do others handle this?
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Rik, I love your metaphors of drops and clouds. It made me immediately think of philosopher Peter Sloterdijk using metaphor of spheres: bubble (self), globe (world), and foam (plurality). I havenāt read the book yet, but itās on my list. More here Bubbles
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Did you come up with a rule for your language problem? Iām having a hard time to choose what language to use for different contexts. Itās all a big mess in my head.
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I find that certain aspects of my life tend to utilize one language more than others. So for example my personal Projects and media input are often English while other parts of my life are in my native language. Apart from languages I just use for thought there are also notes in my vault for languages Iām learning.
So to juggle all of these I have made English the official language for my vault meaning MOCs are in English and generally notes that help my organizational structure as well as tags. If a topic doesnāt really fit any language specifically I will also give it an English title. Any notes that do have a language associated with them get name in that language and I will define aliases in the other languages. So far I have had almost no issues with this approach. Hope this is helpful
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I second this! I absorbed most of his playlists on Linking Your Thinking in about a day. Heās relatable and makes everything very easy to follow.
And as a noob (I installed it yesterday), Iām also finding @nickmiloās LYT Kit Vault *VERY HELPFUL!!!
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