my main goal with obsidian is to create a digital garden/second brain kind of deal. i’ve been canibalizing elements from a lot of different schools of thought on learning, productivity, etc. in order to make my current vault easy to use and an accurate representation of my thinking. of all of the information management methods i think i have the least personal connection to zettelkasten and i’m not sure why because it’s relatively simple. for the sake of inspiration, what are some features of this method that drew some of you to it and how do these features represent or quantify major pieces of your learning style?
Zettelkasten has not many principles, but they are really effective when they are used in a combined way.
A selection of what has become strategical for me:
- don’t simply collect, deeply process your content; collecting is a false learning. Don’t copy: rewrite and reframe instead
- make atomic notes; atomic ideas and concepts are easy to reuse and combine and they develop new ideas and concepts
- decontextualize concepts from the sources and recontextualize them according to your mind and your goals, so you can use them in your contexts.
- connect your thoughts making links or building structures, so they aren’t lost over time and they build bigger ideas, theories, chain of thoughts
- don’t build a bunch of notes for the purpose of having a bunch of notes; use them for something (not just writing, zettelkasten has much more uses)
- write your notes so they can be useful and relevant for your present or your future
- don’t mimic zettelkasten model of another guy, build your own way. Take other’s models as an inspiration, not as “you should do this”.
- make your system simple and engaging. If become hard and boring, you’ll not use it
- don’t consider principles as rules you have to follow blindly. You are carrying out a human process, not an algorithm. Learn, for every principle, why exists, its benefits and its drawbacks. Use it by default when it’s useful, but learn to derogate when it causes an issue. You don’t need to have all of your notes atomic. When it is useful copy and collect.
They are only few words, but behind this summary there is a lot of theory, evidences, examples, arguments, and my own deep study and field observation in the last two years, having taken many notes.
Each of that items can be explained in a dozen of pages
As you may notice, I have not build a list made of software, tools, tricks, techniques, implementation details. The essence of Zettelkasten is in its principles and how you internalize them. Once you understand them, you can use even pen and paper, too.
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