That would be a bad idea in my mind. The whole point of a zettelkasten is centralizing your note taking such that notes can contribute to each other and mix. Luhmann called this multiple storage.
As @jreinier said, what is important is being able to still link between folders, which goes away when you create separate vault
For me is just resources. I think it’s ok to have a section from non hierarchical notes. And it’s natural that from those you derive other annotations with more order/hierarchy. You don’t have to turn the former into the latter. You can have both, i think.
Some years ago i worked on an area that does optimization based with evolutionary inspiration, and there is this balance called Exploration vs Exploitation. I think zettelkasten promotes more exploration, whereas having a hierarchy means you are more likely exploiting the data. The way i see it, if you have a section within Resources to do zettelkasten, you promote the emergence of new connections and ideas that can potentially form part of the hierarchy, which you can exploit to your benefit, and in turn, once those ideas are established and successful/useful you can reflect on them or have random insight that can turn into a zettel.
Would love to join the ADHD telegram!
Ah, sorry, it’s in Farsi.
Hi, could you elaborate on how you use Zotero and Obsidian?
I started using Obsidian yesterday and I have been using Zotero for 6 years.
For now, I highlight pdf and annotate them in Foxit pdf reader, then I extract the highlights in zotero. In Obsidian, once I finished reading a paper (or while reading it), I copy the most relevant ideas/highlights into a note, link them to different concepts that have their own notes.
At the top of their pages, they have an embedded ![[menu]] file. I find the “Red Graphite” theme most useful here - because it hides the name of the embedded files. It becomes more like a real menu, not an embed. The menu page links to each other. So it’s fast to jump between them. Then, below them, I start making internal links for every project, area and resource. The reason I haven’t added 4. Archive, is that I just remove the link from these pages when I’m done with them. They are all still there, I can reach them through search Ctrl + O or File Explorer if I ever need them again. Or just internal link them again to get them back.
Mimicing a brain, I just disconnect the wire and it merges into the forgetable ooze part of my digital head - which is the archive.
To really move around fast in this system of links, I made some hotkey changes with Autohotkey. You can check that out here.
I think it is important to understand that:
1. PARA is part of Tiago’s Larger “Second Brain” System
2. The “Second Brain” and Zettelkasten serve two different but somewhat overlapping purposes.
Tiago’s “Building a Second Brain” (BASB) is primarily focused on the goals of those Sonke Ahrens calls “Librarians” (as opposed to “writers”). It is all about collecting and curating resources, distilling those resources to what might be useful to your future self, and then integrating those distilled resources into project-specific action (any action, not just writing or publishing).
PARA is simply the hierarchical structure in which these collected and distilled resources are organized (the course covers some project management stuff based loosely on GTD as well as some workflow strategies for creative work but its strength is in its approach to the collecting and curation of digital resources).
What is interesting about PARA is that it is a hierarchy based on action as opposed to more traditional metadata categories.
Notes shift from one level to the next and are distilled depending on opportunistic needs.
The overlap between Zettelkasten and the “Second Brain” happens during the distillation process which Tiago calls “Progressive Summarization”. In actuality, it is only at the end of progressive summarization (stages 4 and 5) that the Zettelkasten system might start to be useful.
This is when you start to shift from curating information through highlights and bolding (you can tell the BASB system was designed around Evernote and its limitations) and start to actually summarize in your own words. The final step is where you produce some artifact (what he calls remixing).
Only a very small amount of resources gets to the point of “remix” which is where a Zettelkasten system could start to take over.
One weakness of the BASB system for creative output is that there is little to no linking between notes beyond being temporarily put in a project folder or in a categorized “Resource Folder”. You have to know (or guess) what you might need ahead of time for a project instead of having notes, ideas, resources, etc. present themselves in useful but unanticipated ways.
I tend to think of my “Second Brain” system as my library or archive and my Zettelkasten as my studio or workshop.
I am just getting started with Zettelkasten and Obsidian but am hoping that it will supplement my way too big and complicated “Second Brain” and provide a better outlet for actually creating instead of just collecting.
In practical terms, I am keeping my “Second Brain” system pretty separate from my Zettelkasten (the root directory is technically in my “Resources” Folder in Dropbox but I have very little second brain stuff in Dropbox).
After completing the BASB Course, my understanding of the “Archive” is to get stuff out of the way of your active work. Conceptually, in Evernote that makes sense since it turns into long lists of folder and notes within. Tiago has used Evernote for many years, and has had to manually move things to the Archive often. The new tools such as Obsidian/Roam/Zettlr/etc completely remove that manual process from information handling.
I guess you could simplify the PARA concept down to just PAR and still get all the benefits from the original implementation.
This conversation is very interesting, I think I can benefit from a mixed system (very new to both and I don’t know what I’m doing). I have to have at least two vaults because I can’t mix my job-y job notes anywhere – no pure Zettelkasten for me ever. But I still want to the benefits of long-term thinking in the job vault while maintaining a structure of what it is that I’m currently working one. From what I gathered here mixing these two approaches could work.
Now I’m not sure if I’d do the same on my “personal”/everything-else vault, it isn’t as deadline oriented as the work one.
I think there’s a lot to be said for ‘destroying’ everything on a regular basis and then having to go back through archives to rescue stuff from archives back into the present.
How’s about simply putting every file that hasn’t been accessed in 12 months into an archive?
I think that PARA, being based on actionability, is very helpful in organizing notes undestood as evergreennotes and it is especially easy in Obsidian. Intellectual work can be organized by actionability because you always work on specific ideas, you write specific papers, you teach specific things. And I want to have my recent important notes I work on marked somehow, highlighted, available, easy to find and at the same time being part of the larger scaffolding I build over time. So…
When I want to write a note (evergreen/zettlekasten note) I simply hit ctrl+n and write it and link it to whatever is appropriate. And this in my main vault folder. So my notes roam my vault freely with no folder structure, but…
In order to save myself time and to ease finding the relevant notes, e.g. this week, I keep a MOC or a project note in the folder “01 Projects” in my vault. And this MOC/project note points to notes created during working on that project or somehow relevant to it. It sometimes contains project’s todo’s too. MOCs is how I organise my “02 Areas” folder as well.
When the project ends, I move the file(s) to “04 Archive” folder or where appropriate. And while it disappears from my “01 Projects” it is still connected to everything as it was before because folders do not matter for linking in Obsidian! And you can move files around and Obsidian will take care of the links.
My “03 Resources” contains literature notes which are linked to evergreen notes spawned by it.
If you tag project notes #projectnote and literature notes #sources or something, and you want to view the note graph or search notes without this layer of information (i.e. to which project(s) a particular note belonged), you can exclude these files with “-tag:#projectnote” etc.
This is what works for me these days. Obsidian is great. 
(I sometimes don’t even care where a particular evergreen note lands, so they often end up in “01 Projects”. What matters is to drain “01 Projects” when done with a project not to get confused in daily work)
Same curious guy here. I’ve been experimenting trying to synthesize these two organizational systems together for at least a while now. Not much to share but I’ve just noticed that the PARA system is good in classifying and categorizing notes through folders and tagging, while Zettelkasten system is good for making different types of notes. What I’m planning to do is that I’ll use Zettelkasten notes and then put them to appropriate folders according to their use to me. I’ve never seen much result since I’d been jiggling recently from obsidian to notion, and now notion to obsidian again.
I think Zettelkasten and PARA can be united in the concept of a “project-based” organization. PARA is essentially a method of organizing based on time-scales, from future to past. I’ve extended the PARA approach by having a top-level organization of my vault like this:
_config // for templates etc.
0 Daily/ //my daily notes, for transient journalling and random tasks, also linking to anything I'm currently working on
1 Future/ // to-read, to-do, ideas for future projects
2 Now/ // any projects which are currently open and top-of-mind)
3 Sometimes/ // My version of "areas"—things that stick around but which are more general or on the back-burner
4 Always/ // "Resources"—things which aren't going away
5 Past/ // "Archive," for projects that I've finished and used
6 Never/ // "Archive," for projects I've discarded
My Zettelkasten is spread across these vaults and notes are organized entirely by PROJECT, not by topic necessarily. This is really important to me because it’s an organization system based on purpose, so I know that I’m turning my notes into active work. It undercuts the tendency to collect without using your ideas for work. It also causes emergent organization really well because the projects are how I naturally organize information in my mind anyway. There’s a good video which inspired me to adopt this transient approach (after years of stressing about the folder structure). He talks about having project and purpose-based organization to focus on the work itself. Stop Procrastinating With Note-Taking Apps Like Obsidian, Roam, Logseq - YouTube
I also use a system of nested tags which function as the index of topics. The Tag Wrangler plugin lets you add “Tag Pages,” which is a page that is connected to a tag and lets you link to specific files, MOC-style.
Interesting approach! There is enormous value in using a “Johnny Decimal” approach to filenames (see an earlier post about this below, and much that @EleanorKonik has also posted about this, for example here: Increasingly Atomic Folders: A Workflow). But my sense is that filename conventions works best for knowing where to find my stuff, and that tags work best for what has status X? – which this seems to fall under. I may try using #0daily, #4always as part of a nest of tags, but I wonder what the decimal adds in that context.
I was reading this thread with some interest and was moving down your route of make the Para Resources my zettelkasten, when I ground to a halt. Let me try out my thinking:
| Comparison | BASB / PARA | Zettelkasten |
|---|---|---|
| Hierarchy | E.g. Folders & Tags | Anti-Hierachy, Anti-Structure, Pro links |
| Purpose | Action Orientated | Knowledge Orientated |
| Knowledge | Source Material and / or Original Thought | Atomic Thoughts (Only) |
| Tag Type | Topic | Object or Keywords |
| Links | Not Intrinsic to the methodology | Intrinsic |
In addition:
PARA Resources consist of a combination of distilled source material and original thought for the purposes of re-surfacing the information to support some current or future project.
Zettelkasten Method on the other hand consists purely of ‘original’ ideas, discussions or perspectives stored in a 3D network of connected thoughts designed to generate new connections and ideas. In this methodology, distilled ‘source material’ are permanent ‘Literature Notes’, which are stored outside the Zettelkasten itself.
So now I am of the opinion that PARA and Zettelkasten are like oil and water. Any thoughts?
zettel has never translated for me as a specific methodology mostly because my first exposure to it was through the date-time stamps offered by Obsidian v0… whereas I started taking digital notes to streamline project management, so PARA made more sense to how I was already organizing things.
I’ve since tried to readapt according to @Calhistorian’s organization (Resources folder as slipbox), and though its messy, it seems to be generating (at least some of) the originality expressed by zk advocates. I essentially break source material into individual notes stored in Resources and put the source in a general topic folder in the Archive. The only advantage I see to this is in sharing source material with colleagues/collaborators.
Perhaps more like oil and vinegar but with a little mayonnaise thrown in and shook real hard so it creates a nice emulsion.
PWF
In the Obsidian Starter Kit, I’ve combined the Johnny Decimal system, PARA and Zettelkasten.
Johnny decimal keeps everything organized at the top level with numbered folders. By design, it also limits the depth of the structure.
The second logical hierarchy is based on PARA, helping to separate projects, areas, resources & archives.
Finally, within the areas part of PARA, I have folders for fleeting notes, literature notes and permanent notes. Within those, the organization is intentionally very limited.
All put together, it makes for a very structured, but very light folder structure. Combined with automation (e.g., Auto Note Mover plugin), it’s a breeze to maintain.
To me, creating a folder for each topic doesn’t make sense. It just adds a ton of friction, is unmaintainble, and breaks as soon as a note touches on two or more topics.
For reference, here’s an overview of the structure used by the Obsidian Starter Kit:
10. Meta
20. Projects
30. Areas
31. Fleeting notes
32. Literature notes
33. Permanent notes
34. MOCs
35. Contacts
36. People
37. Meeting notes
40. Journal
50 Resources
60. Archives
Hope this helps!
Thanks #dSebastien, agreed, I am not keen on setting up a folder for each project either. Further, my folder structure is not too different from yours with one exception. Using your notation:
00. Inbox
10. Meta
20. Projects
31. Daily notes (incl. Fleeting)
32. Literature notes
33. Permanent notes
34. Atlas (MOCs and Indexes(Dataview queries))
35. Contacts
36. People
37. Meeting notes (included in Daily notes)
40. Journal (I have this in a separate vault as it includes rather a lot of photos)
50 Resources (incl. Glossary)
60. Archives
As you can see, our main point of difference is that I do not have ‘Areas’. Areas from what I have read, is based on David Allen’s 20,000ft Horizon in GTD, which is used for ‘ongoing’ areas of responsibility (without end date) or maintenance. Given that definition I am unable to use Areas as an umbrella.
There is also a difference in the purpose of PARA when compared to the Zettelkasten methodology.
So at the structural level, PARA can be accommodated, but their overall purpose appears to me at odds.
A couple thoughts prompted by the discussion above:
PARA as action-oriented vs zettel as creatively oriented: I do not personally make a distinction between activity and creativity, though I see how it might be understood that way. My best ideas tend to occur in the midst of doing something, the challenge was always how to capture them. To me it seems that the perceived opposition between these two systems actually illustrates creative tension, so idea generation occurs between the relative rigidness of a directory structure and the relative openness of a zk workspace.
“Friction” seems to be commonly mentioned as undesirable in pkm discussions. I think friction is good. It holds things together like tires on the road and keeps my sweaters from unraveling. Every time my notemaking/keeping system causes me to pause is another moment where I look at the information and reevaluate or reinterpret it.
I’m of the opinion that the best system is the one that works, not advocating for one over another.