145 - Zettelkasten for Undergraduate Students
Undergraduate students are not developing new knowledge but instead developing an understanding of existing knowledge. What does that look like?
You are creating an understanding of a set of ideas and the relationships between them. How the ideas connect to each other and the wider picture (e.g. the field you are studying) is the context.
With a zettelkasten , you have two options.
- You can create notes out of what you are studying and then use them as a basis for further development, because all knowledge builds off each other. But this is not always necessary, more of a personal preference, usually depending on how well you know the material. You typically don’t have notes for material that is so well ingrained in you because there is no need for them. You can just rely on your memory instead.
- You can creates notes out of what you are studying as a way to facilitate understanding. Often times explicitly writing down concepts and their connections forces you to really understand what you are learning, so creating notes can serve as a elaboration tool for learning. See “processing a textbook for understanding” below for how this would look pratically.
When taking notes to facilitate understanding (option 2 above) it is important to keep in my that you are engaging in a trade off. By choosing to take notes on a topic, you are giving up precious time to the universe and that may not be worth it. For example, I’m not going to create notes for every word in the english language because that would be a waste of time. Instead I might create notes for words I find very important and am actively writing about. You want to do the same thing with textbooks.
Think of it as a spectrum. One one end, it is a waste of time when you are creating notes around concepts you are extremely familiar with because you already have mental notes. On the opposite end, you are wasting time by taking notes on concepts you’ll never use or write about. You want to be in the middle, where you are taking notes on concepts that you don’t know so well but will still use in your working life.