I’ve just finished reading the amazing book from Sönke Ahrens about “How to take Smart Notes”[1]. As a visual thinker and sketchnoter my first idea was to use this method to combine visual thinking with networked thinking. Taking smart notes is great, but taking smart sketchnotes would be even greater.
To summarize the content of a book like this within one sketchnote is not that easy. So I started to summarize one main aspect witch is important for a reader of Ahrens’ book to work with the Zettelkasten method. It’s the major workflow starting with filling the inbox till using the content of the growing slip-box to produce an output of higher value. I added the tools I’m using in this process and also the page numbers from the book as a reference for further reading and understanding the underlying method.
You are also working with Obsidian and Zettelkasten? Do you see any differences between your own and the workflow described by Sönke Ahrens?
[1] Ahrens, Sönke. How to Take Smart Notes: One Simple Technique to Boost Writing, Learning and Thinking, 2022.
Using Note-taking methods could be the first step to extend your mind. Using Zettelkasten as a tool for Personal Knowledge Management may be the next. But there you will have some more dimensions to keep in mind. Here are the four cornerstones of Zettelkasten:
Notes - to capture single ideas Links - to show connections between ideas Tags - to build clusters of ideas with similar attributes. Used for filtering & searching of ideas Folders - to group processes for managing different types of notes
For me it was hard to learn how to use tags efficiently as well as to un-learn my „classic“ use of folders. Folders are not for structuring ideas but a concept to manage the process and workflow for different types of notes.
Tell me about your own experiences? I want to learn more about Zettelkasten and it‘s amazing insights.
5 Mistakes to Avoid When Starting Your First Zettelkasten:zap:
My Zettelkasten is now more than 9 months old. When I started to write my first notes with Obsidian I followed the rule “Start early and learn by experiment.”
But I also learned: Experiments took a lot of my precious time. Here are my top mistakes to avoid when starting your first Zettelkasten:
Starting without templates - so that it was hard to build up a consistent note structure I needed later for effective searching.
Using tags without rules for tagging - so that building clusters for searching was not very effective.
No use of frontmatter - so that meta data and content of notes became inconsistent and confusing.
No use of time stamps like “created” and “modified” within frontmatter - so that using backups and changing cloud spaces caused a loss of time information connected with my notes.
No use of DataView plugin as a tool for gardening - so that inconsistencies in my Zettelkasten were growing and growing.
All these mistakes lead to intensive re-work of my notes later on.
Wouldn’t it be cool if the new Canvas plugin could allow us sketchnoters the ability to do these types of drawings. Maybe not freehand, but at least a palette of shapes (typical flowchart or UML).
I’ve just stumbled across this forum post and am happy I did. This resonated with me:
For me it was hard to learn how to use tags efficiently as well as to un-learn my „classic“ use of folders. Folders are not for structuring ideas but a concept to manage the process and workflow for different types of notes.
I started using Obsidian about two weeks ago and have just gotten to a place where my primary vault has a set of processes, templates, and is usable on a day-to-day. But I’ve noticed now that some of my habits and behaviors don’t lend to the power of a PKM system like Obsidian has to offer. After having recently discovered Zettelkasten, it’s become clear that I do need a complete re-work of my notes in the near future!
How does the process looks like, when all my notes are already in my Zettelkasten? Atomic notes with a hairball of links and other connections. What are the steps to publish a post, an article or a book?
With Obsidian we now have the new Canvas plugin available. It‘s a tool to create concept maps from notes of our Zettelkasten.
My sketchnote shows the integration in my workflow. It was never that easy to organize my notes visually.
This might not be exactly related but I am hoping someone could help me figure out how to structure my notes so that I can have parent and child nodes in graph view.
For example, I want to create a PKM system for neuroanatomy and I want to be able to indicate that some brain areas are sub-regions of larger areas. For example, CA1, CA2, and CA3 are all sub-regions of the hippocampus. Is there a way to build different “levels” into the graph view such that when I click on the “hippocampus” node, the 3 CA nodes appear?
You can not change the behavior of the GraphView, but you can adapt the structure of your notes. One idea for your example may be the use of the local graph. It always starts from the selected note and offers a filter the extend the Depth of the graph. Give it a try.
Quite detailed and overwhelming for me. Is it possible that you can walk through a detailed example depicting how each template gets filled at every step? I want to get started and worry about nice things later.
It is easy to start with a detailed example if you use a given workflow:
Create a new note in Obsidian on top level of your vault.
Title your note.
Choose an appropriate template from your templates folder.
Fill in the text of your idea with your own words.
Add links to the back of your note by using the given categories.
Add tags to the frontmatter of your note according your tagging architecture.
Move your note to the „Permanent Notes“ folder.
It is also easy to extend this workflow. But you always need some rules to keep your Zettelkasten consistent for later use. Good news: It‘s always easy to revisit and revise your notes.
5 Mistakes to Avoid When Starting Your First Zettelkasten:zap: