Principles to improve your Zettelkasten
One of my favorite questions: How can I improve my Zettelkasten?
As an expert in our field, we are likely to find an answer. However, why not consider a different perspective on potential solutions? Here's a concept for thinking outside the box, beyond the confines of one's own thoughts. The key to a wide array of solutions lies in adapting well-known principles or frameworks from established sciences or schools of thought.
Can you re-find your own solutions to improve your Zettelkasten?
Reference
- SimpleMind. Cross-platform Mind Mapping tools. 2024. https://simplemind.eu/.
- Zhao, Vicky. Getting Started with Framework Thinking. YouTube, 2022.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U5xskQVA-2c
p.s.
I would like to share a PDF version. Unfortunately it‘s not allowed in this forum. :-(
Post edited by Edmund on
Edmund Gröpl
Writing is your voice. Make it easy to listen.
Howdy, Stranger!
Comments
Very cool. Thank you for sharing. I like the interdisciplinary nature of the first level hubs.
This ties in nicely with your recent post on housekeeping tasks based on word count:
https://forum.zettelkasten.de/discussion/comment/19631/#Comment_19631
These two stand out to me;
and
They sound like a sensible thing to do at times, but hard to execute: how do you approach this? What could a homeostasis-ensuring cleanup session entail, for example?
Author at Zettelkasten.de • https://christiantietze.de/
I've started with a simple concept:
But there is always room for improvement ;-)
Edmund Gröpl
Writing is your voice. Make it easy to listen.
This is why I continue to hang around. My ZK is my thinking machine. Anything that improves my Zk improve my thinking.
Thank Edmund!
What I'd like you to share is the .smmx file. This would allow collaboration and expansion of these comet-like, mind-fracturing ideas. You can do this by putting it on DropBox or Google Drive and sharing a public link to the file.
Will Simpson
My zettelkasten is for my ideas, not the ideas of others. I don’t want to waste my time tinkering with my ZK; I’d rather dive into the work itself. 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
Here are my links:
Edmund Gröpl
Writing is your voice. Make it easy to listen.
OMG, I need to read carefully here :-)
I'm considering to integrate in my model something about systems theory/systems thinking. But I need to learn about them a bit, first.
I've taken something from my recent study for passing ITIL exam. I see that you are already placed one of its principle, continual improvement, under agile.
Your question leads me to a connected question:
I've found several balancing loops we are dealing with. You can find them in a Causal Loop Diagram:
If you do not spend time to "Review & Revise" your notes, one important loop is missing. The Zettelkasten then will react by using the two balancing loops which are closed by "Time needed to create output" and "Time needed to search & retrieve notes". But that's not the best option.
Edmund Gröpl
Writing is your voice. Make it easy to listen.
@Edmund This is 100% the style how I try to improve my Zettelkasten and the method in general. So, powered by my confirmation bias, I think this is awesome.
I am a Zettler
I've split off the ChatGPT feedback usage that spawned because it sounds like that can be discussed in more detail:
https://forum.zettelkasten.de/discussion/2837/gpt4-dialectic-critique-assistant-robo-zettel-feedback
Author at Zettelkasten.de • https://christiantietze.de/
@ctietze Many thanks for doing this. I renamed the GPT to "Zettel Critique Assistant," which is more specific, and worked with ChatGPT4 to refine the instructions. ChatGPT made suggestions to improve the GPT instructions, which I added. We went through a few iterations.
GitHub. Erdős #2. Problems worthy of attack / prove their worth by hitting back. -- Piet Hein. Alter ego: Erel Dogg (not the first). CC BY-SA 4.0.
And here is another principle from ITIL Service Design applied to Zettelkasten:
Edmund Gröpl
Writing is your voice. Make it easy to listen.
Thank you for your motivational feedback. Dopamin welcome. :-)
And thank you for your warning: Confirmation bias! I'll first read your new book to proof if it's true. ;-)
Edmund Gröpl
Writing is your voice. Make it easy to listen.
Balanced Feedback Loop
Our discussion leads me to some more basic insights about Zettelkasten by using causal loop diagrams [1]. Let me start with a simple diagram about quality improvement:
Reading the diagram:
Triple Loop Model: Input-Notes-Output
Understanding the use of feedback loops helped me to see the missing loops for input and output. When I was working with Zettelkasten on the lower note level, this loops were not visible for me.
The new triple loop model from bird's eye view now is a good starting point for further exploration.
Note Quality also depends on Process Quality
In this extended model:
Both loops interact to ensure that the Zettelkasten maintains high-quality content while avoiding oversimplified or overcomplicated tasks or workflows that could dilute the overall quality and utility of the knowledge repository.
Reference:
[1] Barbrook-Johnson, Pete, und Alexandra S. Penn. Systems Mapping: How to Build and Use Causal Models of Systems. Springer International Publishing, 2022. DOI.org (Crossref), https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-01919-7.
Edmund Gröpl
Writing is your voice. Make it easy to listen.
@Edmund, I love the first graphic above that shows the wide variety of fields from which Zettelkasten or personal-knowledge-base principles can be adapted. The economics branch reminds me of Nicholas Rescher's book Cognitive Economy: The Economic Dimension of the Theory of Knowledge (University of Pittsburgh Press, 1989) and related publications.
The most recent causal loop diagram does not speak to me as much, because I don't do much revision of notes, so the note quality improvement loop doesn't seem so relevant to me. For me, the process improvement loop has been much more important, but I wouldn't describe it as you do as "a balance between spending time for notes and spending time for process"; instead, for me it's just the long-term process of learning about, experimenting with, and implementing new methods. Such process improvement doesn't take much time in a typical week. Still, it's a helpful conceptual distinction.
Perhaps it would be good to indicate that note quality improvement measures include link quality improvement measures, perhaps by changing the name to note/link quality instead of only note quality?
Thank you for this positive feedback and your link to a related source of value.
My question of understanding: Without revision of your notes you mostly focus on quality of your input and improved quality of your process? Is it there a rule like: “Never change an existing note”?
Good description for a complex process.
Yes, link quality is an important quality dimension. My goal is to define “Note Quality” including “Link Quality” and others. I got a perfect description for that from @Sascha: https://forum.zettelkasten.de/discussion/comment/18998/#Comment_18998
As you can see, the link quality is included.
Edmund Gröpl
Writing is your voice. Make it easy to listen.
@Edmund said:
Yes. I don't change a note after I have finished drafting it, although I may add to it later. I don't think of "adding to a note" as revision (because often the addition is just to link to another note), but if that is revision, then you could say I do revise notes. My notes that are still "in draft" do not have titles. But after I have given titles to the notes, I do not change what I have already written except to add to the end of them.
That's great, thanks.
Soooo, apropos note changes @Andy, does your notion of "evergreen" notes apply to more than just the attributes you have enumerated for a single evergreen note? Does the notion of evergreen also apply to the collective batch of notes and the overall workflow of writing notes as also an evergreen process (note collection being added to with new notes, new links and associations forged, yada, yada)?
@JasperMcFly, I don't use the term "evergreen", and I would say my system is very different from the systems of people who use that term. My system is organized by a discourse schema: it is basically a conversation. The different notes represent various questions, positions/claims, arguments/reasons, evidence, etc. advanced in the conversation. As in a conversation, one can't change what one has said once one has said it. One can mark a discourse unit/note as deprecated later, as in: I retract that statement; this other statement is a better answer to the question or a better argument. But in a conversation one can't undo the fact that one has said something. Likewise, in my note system, I don't like to delete anything except perhaps in rare circumstances: deletion or rewriting destroys information about the conversation.
EDIT: Oh, @JasperMcFly, it just occurred to me that you might have thought that I'm Andy Matuschak—I'm not him!
Ok, thank you for the detailed response. Very interesting to see the holistic description of your system as conversation. I also like the use of the term deprecation; archived and replaced, but not deleted. Thank you.
Ha, Yes @Andy I did mistake you for Evergreen Andy. Honest mistake tho. I mean the number of smart guys named Andy doing Zettelkasten-ish work has to be a small pool. lol. apologies.
So different to my own approach. - I didn't expect so many and so great and usefull differences in all these Zettelkasten implementations. :-)
Today I refined my own causal loop for notes:
It uses three different paths to improve note quality:
Content Quality
Structural Quality
Communication Quality
Edmund Gröpl
Writing is your voice. Make it easy to listen.
Reference:
Edmund Gröpl
Writing is your voice. Make it easy to listen.
Today I updated the “12 Principles for Using Zettelkasten”. Here’s the reason why:
References:
Edmund Gröpl
Writing is your voice. Make it easy to listen.
If you want to simplify the model choose 3 principles (yellow lines):
Or as I started some years ago with 2 principles:
Edmund Gröpl
Writing is your voice. Make it easy to listen.
@Will: Here are my links:
.pdf: https://github.com/groepl/Take-Useful-Notes/blob/main/Visuals/Simplifiy_Zettelkasten.pdf
.opml: https://github.com/groepl/Take-Useful-Notes/blob/main/Visuals/Simplifiy_Zettelkasten.opml
.smmx: https://github.com/groepl/Take-Useful-Notes/blob/main/Visuals/Simplifiy_Zettelkasten.smmx
Edmund Gröpl
Writing is your voice. Make it easy to listen.
Fascinated from @Sascha 's "Zettelkasten Iceberg Model" I've played arround with this tool for Systems Thinking. Here is my first result:
Surprisingly (or not?) the Zettelkasten is largely invisible. Outside "Zettelkasten.de" people are discussing about note-taking or about using various note-taking tools. They talk about feature requests or ask for help for using a specific tool or feature. The methods of note-taking (patterns, structures and mental models) are almost invisible or hidden in the discussion.
References
Edmund Gröpl
Writing is your voice. Make it easy to listen.
Today's update.
Edmund Gröpl
Writing is your voice. Make it easy to listen.
Can you elucidate1 the "Events" part a bit more? I expected more observations (in the sense of a lab notebook) but it's actually something else entirely.
I recently learned that usage of this term is paramount to signal big brain power. ↩︎
Author at Zettelkasten.de • https://christiantietze.de/
@ctietze, so sophisticated!
I, too, found this graphic elucidating, but I would like more. This is a great example of using the "Iceberg Method" from systems thinking to delve into a clearer understanding of an idea (or elucidate the idea).
The mindset node is incomplete without a "Mental Mindset" to counterbalance the "Visual Mindset." @Edmund, your bias towards the visual is showing. I'd like to see more on the "Growth Mindset."
In the Mindset node, you have a set of beliefs that are really traits of a mental mindset.
Thanks for the references. I have them captured in Zotero and plan on delving more into "How The Iceberg Model of Systems Thinking Can Help You Solve Problems?"
I love this wordplay.
Will Simpson
My zettelkasten is for my ideas, not the ideas of others. I don’t want to waste my time tinkering with my ZK; I’d rather dive into the work itself. 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
But I'm not sure if the "Tools" are visible for others. I'd better put them on a lower level beneath the surface.
How does your iceberg looks like?
Edmund Gröpl
Writing is your voice. Make it easy to listen.