Procrastination and Zettelkasten
I have realized that I have a tendency to use my zettelkasten as a form of procrastination. Its more productive procrastination than say, checking my email for the 10th time this hour, but I have noticed that oftentimes I sit down with the intent to write, but instead convince myself that writing could mean any one of the following:
- Processing a book
- Editing and linking zettels
- Adding citations and quotes
- Searching for connections
- Convincing myself that I don't know enough about the topic I want to write about and that I need to research and read more
- ... and then just researching and reading more
This kind of procrastination is true of any note-taking system, but I feel as though the zettelkasten lends itself to wool gathering and pondering more than others because of its structure. The creative induction process (something else I will write about) within the zettelkasten is fantastic, but its not writing. It's a productive sort of procrastination, just as reading can be productive procrastination, but if you sat down to write, I'm not sure that all of those other activities qualify. It feels like confusing motion with action. Instead of keeping a real beehive, you're still reading and making zettels about how to keep a beehive.
I'm wondering if anyone else has noticed this about themselves, and what sort of tactics they've used to defeat it. I can think of a few:
- Walking off somewhere with a notebook away from your zettelkasten to just write
- Setting separate writing and noting targets (750 words of writing that is not zettels, 2 completely distinct zettles)
- free writing with a timer then extracting notes
- separating the acts of processing, linking and editing as distinct from writing
- truly time-boxing all of these separate activities into separate buckets
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I have had a similar experience. It can be easy to keep yourself busy doing ZK-related things and feel a sense of productivity, but have nothing tangible to show for it. I have tried time-boxing and also writing word targets (1,000 or 2,000 words a day).
Lately, I have found that word targets that focus on a modular sub-topic seem to work the best; e.g. write 2,000 words on Atomicity.
The good news, is that even though I spend most of the time reading, writing cards, looking for new references, when I do get around to writing, I feel like I have a decent amount of material to draw from.
But Luhmann said this as well, that he spent almost ALL of his time zettelkasting, but when it came time to write a book he could write it as fast as he could type once he arranged the extracted ideas to answer the question at hand.
Don't confuse procrastination with incubation. Ideas need time to evolve and themes must have time to expand. I much agree with JasperMcFlys quote about Luhmann: When it comes to write about a topic all that "procrastination" time put into your ZK will bounce back and make things quicker, rounder, smoother, more poignant and spicy.
Nevertheless, there remains that need to practice writing.
@TRumnell
I empathize with your "problem" of getting distracted from writing in your Zettelkasten by the very mechanics of creating and maintaining your Zettelkasten.
I like @Martin 's advice, both in allowing time for incubation (during which, by all means, tinker with your Zettelkasten), and time for writing.
Having practiced writing for the past 55 years and written probably a few thousand engineering reports, memos and technical papers, I can attest to the fact that successful writing requires both development of skills and practice. I can honestly say now that if I want to write something - anything from a short note to a memo to technical paper to a long report - I just sit down and write it. I may need to think for a while about the overall topic, how to tell the story or develop the thesis, and what my main points will be, but after that it's simply write, write, write. I stop for short breaks, food, and sleep but otherwise can go on for days like that. You do get into the "zone" - my spouse and kids (now grown up) and even grandkids know there is no use trying to talk to me until I come up for sustenance.
I don't think I'm unusual - I know many other people just like me who do the same, including many friends, colleagues and a few of my kids, (one is a successful author of fiction books, another is a teacher - they both have the capacity to do that). You can learn to do the same!
This is actually more important than it seems. There is a very intimate relationship between Deep Work and the Zettelkasten Method.
As opposed to the common advertised misconception, the Zettelkasten is not a tool for writing. It is for thinking. Sure, you can write with it with great success, but this is a by-product of your thinking work being done in written form.
So, the benefit of the Zettelkasten is directly proportional to the need for thinking for your work. Some ideas need a lot of thinking because they are either complex or you can't accept their simplicity.
Some anecdote related to that: When Luhmann felt the need to focus more on writing, he abandoned his ZK (near the end of his life).
I am a Zettler
Indeed - and came back to the method of writing in manuscripts. A high state of reflection on ressources, as I understand it.
It is true that sometimes zettelkasten is like a time-consuming maze.
I don't think anyway that this is a waste of time. Just as Sasha wrote, zettelksten is thinking. It's a long term investment.
I feel I can say that zettelasten is training, too.
I'm preparing these days a certification exam. I don't have a lot of time, so I can't apply my workflow in a time-unbounded manner. I'm not applying a "complete" process.
In this try, anyway, I feel that the workflow principles and the training in these months trying to apply zettelkasten (deeper reading, deeper thinking, force myself to atomize and rewrite) are helping me a lot to learn from a book more effective that in the past.
I don't create my "usual notes" (no time for that) and I don't explore the terrain of ideas in this work, but even just the early stages of the method create an effective learning phase.
Having a goal-oriented and time-bounded task simply has induced me to adapt the method, including these constraints in these days.
Just wanted to chime in as well how important that "playful" time is for any kind of creative endeavor (in the sense that you need to produce something new and thought out). It may look like you're shaving yaks, but you are playing with your ideas at a fundamental level, and this is crucial as well as fun as hell. What needs to be done is to carve out genuine "play time" with your Zettelkasten so that there is no guilt involved. The best ideas I had came to me during those sessions. It's like having ideas under the shower, supercharged 😆
"A writer should write what he has to say and not speak it." - Ernest Hemingway
Zettelkasten: Bear + DEVONthink, GTD: OmniFocus, production: Scrivener / Ableton Live.
Yes, and pretty telling that he was conscious that his ZK was not to produce text, but to help to improve his cognitive conditioning.
I am a Zettler
Granting the recurring theme of productivity in the forum, my Zettelkasten is a sunk cost and a deadweight loss. It's an autopoietic system, self-evolving and independent, uninterested in optimization, either of itself or others. To the mutually antagonistic forces of industrial capitalism and religious fundamentalism, my Zettelkasten is like dark matter: utterly useless to them, and not subject to their influence. The more it encourages "procrastination"--whatever that is, the better.
GitHub. Erdős #2. CC BY-SA 4.0. Problems worthy of attack / prove their worth by hitting back. -- Piet Hein.