#250

250 - Zettelkasten Frequently Asked Questions

  • Autonomous Notes: why do you want to keep notes autonomous? Why is it important?
  • Atomic Notes: why do you want to keep atomic? What purpose does this serve?
  • Linked Notes: why do you want to link notes to each other? What purpose does this serve?
    • Allows you to create connections between many notes (Themes)
    • Allows you to create connections between two notes (Unique Connections)
  • Understanding Luhmann: what made Luhmann’s Zettelkasten different from other note systems?
  • Reformulate Ideas - Why do you want to reformulate ideas.
  • Notes - Why do you want to take notes in the first place? What purpose do they serve?
  • What makes a Zettelkasten?
  • What are alternatives to Zettelkasten? - Wiki, Note Card System
    • What are the limitations of a Wiki that a Zettelkasten does not face?
    • What are the limitations of a General Card System (Ryan Holiday) that a Zettelkasten does not face?
    • What re the limitations of a common place notebook
  • What is the key principle? - Principle of development?
  • Zettelkasten and the Four Note Functions
    • Storing
    • Sorting
    • Selecting
    • Summarizing
    • Developing

My Zettelkasten Approach

We use digital systems instead of paper based ones, so a zettelkasten isn’t going to be a recreation of Luhmann’s system or similar ones. Instead we want to understand the principles behind what Luhmann was doing and understand how his system differentiated from other common note taking methods at the time. Using that knowledge, we can then apply it to digital tools and think up future tools that haven’t been created.

Why take notes?

Memory

  • Long Term Memory - Traditional Notes
  • Short Term Memory - Literature Notes
  • Working Memory - Notes as Sketchpad

Historical Contexts

Modern Contexts

Question of Note Organization

One of the more important questions, which the zettelkasten system is answering, is how should you organize your notes? The primary purpose of organization is to make note retrieval easier in the future, so that you don’t have to go through every single note to find the one you are looking for. Organization can serve the secondary purpose of connecting information. It can help show you thematic connections between notes you’ve forgotten about and help you build a mental map/structure of topics represented by your notes, in the same way that you have a mental map of your family structure (parents, siblings, grandparents, etc).

Organizing Notes to serve the Core Note Functions

What, Why?

Storing

Sorting

Selecting

Summarizing

Developing

Note Systems

Wiki

Note Card Boxes

Common Place Notebook

Folder Based Note Taking

Luhmann’s Zettelkasten

Zettelkasten Principles

Principle of Atomicity

Principle of Autonomy

Principle of Reformulation

Principle of Connectivity

The Key Principle of Development

How should I think about Note Titles?

What to take Notes on?

What information is worth taking notes on?

What is the purpose of Linking?

And how should it inform our note taking process?

How to Process Information

  • Look for existing notes
  • Create a single note on the information
  • Create a small network of notes on the information
  • Reformulate the Information
  • Link the Note to other Related Notes
2 Likes
#251

251 - Network Analysis is a set of integrated techniques to depict relations among actors and to analyze the social structures that emerge from the recurrence of these relations (Science Direct).

Alt: Breaking down a topic into a network of smaller parts in order to gain a better understanding of it.

How can Graph View help one better understand their notes collection?

My current issues with graph view is that I don’t feel it really tells me anything new about my note collection or helps me understand it better. This could be user error, as I just don’t know how to do such analysis. It could also be the tools aren’t well developed well enough yet to gain meaningful (new & surprising) insights about my notes.

Network Analysis Examples

  • Netbase Quid specializes in text-based data analysis. Quid software can read millions of documents (e.g. news articles, blog posts, company profiles, and patents) and offers insight by organizing that content visually.
  • Kumu is a powerful visualization platform for mapping systems and better understanding relationships.

Visual Cues

  • Vary Link Thickness
  • Vary Node Size
  • Vary Node Colors
  • Vary Node Proximity (Forces)
  • Vary Link Shapes
  • Vary Node Shapes

Relationships to Map

  • Tags
  • Types of Tags
    • Visualize Thematic Relationships
    • Visualize Relationships between Keywords
  • Connections between Notes
  • Number of connections a note has
  • Direct Links (Wiki Links)
  • Indirect Links (Unmentioned Links, Backlinks, Tags)
  • Metadata I’m unaware of

Future Visualizations for Obsidian

  • Heatmap for Tags
  • Timeline for Zettelkasten Notes
  • Arc Diagram - nodes on timeline, arc links are hyperlinks to other notes
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#252

My comment that you quoted was in relationship to other zettelkasten besides Luhmanns. I was well aware of Luhmanns online, but don’t know of any other online ones to compare it against. If you come across any, let me know.

#253

253 - Link as Search vs. Link as Direct

Came across this Zettelkasten De forum post that put something to words that has been on my mind lately. I’m still not sure what I want to do for file naming.

[[202005091413]] Name of file - is considered link-as-search, as it searches for just the Time ID. It is what is used by The Archive.

[[202005091413 Name of file]] - is considered link-as-direct. Where it searches for both the Time ID and filename.

[[ Name of file ]] - is the removal of the time ID, preferring just the title. This has the advantage of being able to support free-linking and unmentioned links. The disadvantage of this is if name of file somehow gets changed and doesn’t properly update in the other files. Or if you program of choice doesn’t update linked files with new name.

Related Zettelkasten De discussion “Future proofing my Zettelkasten – file names and linking”.

Also my previous thoughts on UIDs and perhaps Folgzettel debate note

#254

(Sarcasm Alert) Well, that doesn’t leave much hope for me. I’m looking to YOU for the answer. No pressure though. For me, The Archive (forum.zettelkasten.de) and Obsidian are two planets in the same solar system. (Roam is Roam, a Galaxy far away). Each are in orbit around the same sun, Zettelkasten. And there seem to be as many understandings, interpretations and definitions of things (Titles, Links) as there are posters to threads. So if you’re not sure, I’m really…F’ed! So, do me a favor. Pick something! So I can move on. Until you change your mind…:wink:

#255

255 - Direct vs. Multistep Linking

This is fundamentally a question of structure and asking how does one build a model. When linking information (note to note) it is good to ask whether information should be a single step away (direct link) or multiple steps away (multiple notes between two notes).

The way I think about it is to ask “in what context would I be using this current note and what other information could further enrich it”. For example, when looking at my psychology note I don’t really need to have a link to a study on memory I found interesting. It is beyond the immediate context even though it fall in the realm of psychology. Instead I’d want information that directly relates to the concept of psychology itself, such as:

  • the structure of the field
  • major themes of the field
  • most influential thinkers
  • how the field emerged
  • how the field relates to other fields

Instead the note I have for a study on memory would be linked to the note I have on memory, which would be linked to a note on major themes in psychology, which in turn would be linked to my note on psychology.

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#256

The reason why I’ve never seen the point of a UID is that I want the name of file, the unique ID, and the wikilink all to be human-readable and intelligible. In addition, the more I use Obsidian, the more I realize how much power there is in its [[autocompletion]] of bidirectional links, because it introduces linking at the point of composition – not just when searching afterwards. It’s changing the way I think while writing, as I reach for distinctive, complex concepts that I’ve already been developing. This might seem as though it stifles creativity, but I find that it actually helps me to probe deeper, building on thoughts I’ve already had, if only by using the same phrases. If I’m stuck while writing, I just hit [[ and type a few key words, and I’ll often be reminded of a related idea that I can integrate into what I’m writing.

3 Likes
#257

So I like the thought of UID other than standard titles is because they provide secondary features that can be useful (see below). But how it is structured in Obsidian, means I lose out on the utility of autocompletion and backlinks. I’m working on an Obsidian Publish site in a separate vault, implementing just straight titles, and I’m starting to like it more.

The main issue with titles is you lose that redundancy and sometimes you don’t always know what to title a note. I am still processing and trying to decide on what I’d like to do long term.

Here is my writing on UIDs so far

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Nested vaults - usage and risks
#258

@lizardmenfromspace

May I ask what happens to this project ? Did you find the ROI to be not worth it ? Just wondering about the reasons.

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#259

@minhthanh3145 it is still happening. I’m currently transitioning all the notes over to Obsidian Publish. It is just taking a very long time because I’m busy with life and reprocessing all the notes. Whereby I rewrite some of them, expand on the notes that are just bullet points, and better interconnect all of them. On the website index, if you look at department 8 - knowledge work, it has how many notes of the roughly 250 here that I’ve processed.

I do work on it every week though, so it is happening!

6 Likes
#260

Thank-you for sharing not just your ideas, but the thought process that went into it.

I do have a Mac, so I am now toying with the idea of trying ZK3 and using Mac’s advanced multiple file renaming. But after checking my file count I am over 2 million created records on it, so it may not be practical.

I would like to hear mac users’ experience with practicalities and usefulness of file renaming.

Also, I wonder if macOS has
any file management features that assist in converting to a quasi ZK document management system.

You really got my brain working after reading this thread.

1 Like
#261

Yes, think most of us are using Obsidian on a Mac :slight_smile:
For renaming files in a batch, and with more advanced granular renaming features, I use Adobe Bridge app for MacOS.
What is ZK3 by the way? Cheers

#262

https://sourceforge.net/p/zettelkasten3/activity/?page=0&limit=100#560c3b4734309d1cf8473c80

1 Like
#263

263 - Linking for Navigation vs. Visualization

Linking for Navigation is where you include forward and back links in your notes such that it makes it easy to navigate your notes collection and pull up all the related notes. This is in contrast to Linking for Visualization, which involves being very deliberate in how you link information, such that a graph of your notes can illustrate the structure. Often times if you link for navigation it creates [[Network Diagram Hairballs]].

I’m not sure at the moment if there is a good solution to the problem. I’d love to be able to create different types of links in my notes. Have structure links and navigation links. One way to do this might be to use the tag system and network graph for visualizing structure.

Side Note: It is interesting to think about how actually the brain is built for navigation linking and the retrieval of information. Consider that each of the 10^11 (one hundred billion) neurons has on average 7,000 synaptic connections to other neurons.

2 Likes
#264

Hi @lizardmenfromspace,

I believe one way of linking for visualization without hairballs is to use views with few nodes each.

  1. Your nodes can appear in many views.
  2. You can define several views that share nodes and arcs.

Example: The world’s map view (many countries) and the continent’s map view (few countries). You rename a country in the tool, and it renames it in both the map view and the continent view

#265

Ideally, we’d be able to use link types to distinguish between links of different nature. That way, we could clearly specify that a particular link points to the next / previous note in a note sequence. For example, like this:

[[followed by::Next note in note sequence]]

I’ve given an example in another thread:

#266

266 - Unknown Errors (wicked errors)

Part of the problem with learning and knowledge work is knowing that you made an error or are doing something wrong because the field and tasks aren’t clearly defined or understood. This also leads to a lot of somewhat vague forum posting, where people feel as if they aren’t doing knowledge work correctly, but have no clue how to fix the problem.

2 Likes
#267

I hope you keep up the great work.
Thanks a lot.

= )

#268

@Wet thanks for the encouragement, I’m very slowly porting this over to Obsidian Publish and reworking all the notes. It is titled /obzk.

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#269

Good Day,

Getting started with my Zettelkasten workflow and trying to wrap my head around everything. Would you recommend formatting your Daily note with the Zettlelkasten date/time format?

Thanks

Rob