How do you "find" the proper index note?
I had been following this guide on YT about using Obsidian for Zettelkastens and it mentions the use of an "index note" as an index for other Zettels so that they can be found. I have been following it since.
However, as my Zettelkasten grows, I'm starting to have trouble finding each index note. How do you solve this problem of being unable to find the first note? How do you "enter" the Zettel, per se?
Howdy, Stranger!
Comments
The idea of an "Index Note" is foundational and a goliath of a topic. To answer your specific question, place a tag on your index notes. When looking for an index to hang your note on, search for
#index 'the ideas in my new note'. The results should present all the indexes where you have mentioned 'the ideas in my new note' before and this should give a good starting place to consider which index to adhere the note to. Indexes will grow, birthing sub-indexes in the future. This works.Will Simpson
I must keep doing my best even though I'm a failure. My peak cognition is behind me. One day soon I will read my last book, write my last note, eat my last meal, and kiss my sweetie for the last time.
kestrelcreek.com
Judicious use of structure notes, and even higher level "hub" notes. I also use my list of tags as an index to access my zettels. This works as long as you keep your tags very specific and not use a specific tag for more than about 5 to 10 zettels. For example, instead of using the tag "#dam", I might use the tags "#dam-seepage", "#dam-stability", "#dam-piping", "#dam-overtopping", etc. Even those might be broken down more. But if you follow this practice, then your list of tags becomes a very handy index.
My idea is to use a special tag like #index/area_of_knowledge. In Obsidian this kind of nested tags are very common.
Edmund Gröpl
Writing is your voice. Make it easy to listen.
You can tag your index notes with a tag or a metadata property (I use type::"#moc" in all my index notes, moc stands for 'map of content', ) , so you can simply retrieve your index notes using the tag or searching feature of your software.
I've also all my "index of index" notes prefixed by 00, so typing 00 i can quickly reach most top-level index notes.
Are all of your zettels tagged? So far I've avoided tagging Zettels except for high-level index Zettels to make sure I don't oversaturate the tags.
Tagging the structure notes is definitely a good option, as others have suggested. Personally, I am not much of a “tagger”, I prefer to use structure notes for this.
I have one main entry note to the whole of my Zettelkasten, with a somewhat corny name of “my life”. Here I keep links to often used notes, notes I need to finish, etc, as well as links to the top level structure notes for my main topics. This note is in constant flux as I’m adding things, pruning and refining.
I do -- in the worst case, a very short, budding overview of a topic I have nothing for, yet, starts with 1 tag for the topic.
What's oversaturation, exactly? Having many matches per tag, while making good and/or 'correct' use of tags -- and not using the wrong tags in the wrong places to inflate results?
Sure, with 100's of notes per tag, you could talk about "oversaturation". But tagging doesn't scale anyway. So navigation via tags alone won't work forever. You're more or less being pushed towards manual organization as your Zettelkasten grows. In consequence, "oversaturation" of tags (as in: there's too many results for your human brain to handle) can only be delayed, not prevented. If you tag ever 10th note on average, it takes you 10x as long to reach a similar point of overwhelm, but it'll still come.
Author at Zettelkasten.de • https://christiantietze.de/
My suspicion is that the problem is not in the correct application of the method, but it lies in the motivation of incorporating notes. Right now, I have more than 1600 structure notes. So, I am pretty confident that I don't have any proper overview of the structural layer of my Zettelkasten.
However, when I create a note, my problem is the surplus of possibilities that come to my mind, not the scarcity. The reason is that each note contains an idea that might be food for some project, some area of my research, some interest. Even the very act of creating the note and working on the idea is enough to pull structure notes into my mind to connect. But I don't think about the structure notes. I think about my past lines of thoughts and the construction sides in my Zettelkasten. I think about feeding very hungry beasts in my complex, half-feral permaculture.
At least, this is my intuition based on my experience.
I am a Zettler
Yes, all my zettels are tagged. I don't consider a zettel "finished" until a) I accept the text as being reasonably mature, pithy, and representing my thoughts, b) it is connected to at least 2 other zettels, and c) it contains at least 3 tags.
I have a lot of tags (for a Zettelkasten with 500 zettels, there are 400 tags). To prevent "saturation" I keep track of how many zettels are attached to each tag. As mentioned in an earlier response to your question, if I'm starting to get too many zettels attached to one tag, I "split" the tag and redistribute the tagged zettels.
For example, I started with a tag:
"#Spiritual_principles"
which quickly became overloaded, so that one tag evolved into three tags:
"#Spiritual_principles"
"#Spiritual_priorities"
"#Spiritual_yearnings"
Also as mentioned before, if you look at a list of your tags, that becomes an index to all of your zettels (see next paragraph). If you don't follow the above practice, and some tags are attached to too many zettels, then the index is not that useful. But if you do follow the above practice, the index is totally functional and useful.
If you are using The Archive, @Will has a Keyboard Maestro macro that will automatically update one file with your list of tags (and with a zettel count for each tag). If that file is in your Zettelkasten directory, then it will appear at the top of your list of zettels in The Archive, and you can look at the list of tags/index any time you want. If you find a topic you want to pursue, click on that tag and The Archive displays all the zettels with that tag.