How do you use tags?

[rigmarole]

I agree, they tend to pollute and get messy. I don’t use tags as ways of categorizing things. I use a small number of curated tags to act more like special status indicators. For example, I have a tag to indicate that I am still processing the notes for a book. Once I’m done, I would delete that tag.

I wrote some ideas about tags here. I use more than these, but that is the general idea I use for tags.

Other sources of Slipbox ideas (Robert M. Pirsig)

The first time I read about a Slipbox was in Robert M. Pirsig’s book Lila: An Inquiry into Morals, and Ryan Holiday’s “Commonplace Book”. Both of their systems are centered more around categories, and random access, and less about linking ideas, like Luhmann’s Zettlekasten. All three systems feature atomicity. Lila was essentially a sequel to Zen & The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. In this book, Pirsig describes his slipbox system, which he kept on cards in drawers aboard his sailboat. His top…

I do a lot of project management in Notion as well. And there too, I only use the tiniest handful of tags for special purposes. Usually to flag things in a specific and temporary way.