In today’s flourishing digital note-taking tools, we have unprecedented freedom to record and organize our thoughts. However, this freedom also brings confusion in choices—should we follow the traditional Zettelkasten (slip-box) method using concise atomic notes, or can we confidently record lengthy content? This question has troubled many note-taking enthusiasts. Today, I’d like to share some thoughts on note length based on my personal practice over the past five years.
From Paper Notes to Digital Notes
Looking back at the history of note-taking media development, the popularity of short notes may largely stem from the limitations of physical media. Professor Luhmann’s Zettelkasten method used small cards largely because of the physical characteristics of paper cards—if a note spans several pages, how would it be maintained in a slip box? Using uniformly sized cards facilitated storage and management, which was probably the optimal solution under the conditions at that time.
During a recent meeting where I was taking notes, I pondered this question again: since modern tools have made our recording and management methods so flexible, why should we still limit ourselves? If Professor Luhmann could use electronic notes, would he still choose atomic notes? This is unknown, but worth considering.
In fact, I began thinking about this issue as early as 2020 when I first implemented the Zettelkasten method in Obsidian. I wrote in a note: “Perhaps the name and length of notes aren’t important; what’s more important is how to connect a note with other notes through tags, backlinks, and other methods.” This thought has deepened with my note-taking practice.
At that time, I believed that good tools should clearly display note names in the graph view, so the length of note names wasn’t crucial. Some Zettelkasten method tutorials even use dates to name notes, which to some extent also indicates that note names might not be the most critical factor. What’s more important is how to connect notes through tags, backlinks, and other methods.
Today, we use electronic note-taking tools such as Obsidian, Logseq, Roam Research, etc. These tools break through the limitations of physical media, allowing us to:
- Create any number of notes
- Record content of any length
- Use multiple formats and styles
- Quickly find any content through search, tags, links, folders, etc.
This transformation raises a fundamental question: since digital tools have eliminated physical limitations, do we still need to follow the recording methods originally designed for paper notes?
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