Do I take literature or permanent notes in my case?
Hello! I am new to this forum and Zettelkasten. Do I take literature notes on permanent notes in my case? If not, how to convert literature notes into permanent notes?
Today I was reading the book Atomic Habits on my iPad in the kindle app and there was an option to take notes on a specific line/word in the book. I read about 20-25 pages and marked a lot of information (there is an option - I can mark lines and words in blue, red, orange and yellow colors). So, as I was reading I took a lot of literature notes in the app (in total 15-20) and it was not one note that contained all the literature notes. I wrote all these notes with my own words and I noticed that I was describing some ideas very differently but the essence remained the same and I referred to what the author wanted to convey, but in different words. And sometimes I even supplemented these ideas with my own thoughts.
Now I am using Obsidian and wrote down these ideas from my iPad to my computer in Obsidian as literature notes. Some of them were similar, so I filtered them out. But I do not think these are literature notes. They seem like permanent notes. In my case, when I make such notes, are they permanent or literature notes? And sorry for my bad English. If I made any mistakes, please correct me. I will be very grateful for any answer!
Howdy, Stranger!
Comments
Hi,
I try to write my personal "rule of thumb".
I don't know if it could be clear enough for others, anyway.
If the note describes a concept, thought or idea "as if you felt it was mine", if it forms with other notes the network of MY thinking and knowledge, if it is linked into MY context, if it behaves like a puzzle tile of MY knowledge and thought, it is a permanent note/zettel/main note.
If the note taken from a source still continues to describe the point of view of the author and belongs to the context of the theories of the author or the source, it doesn't fit like a puzzle tile of my knowledge and thought but continues to be "a part of the source", is a literature note (I call them source notes, not literature notes).
Sometimes I have the feeling of having still a content of a literature note even if I've already written the concept in my own words.
Othe times I feel that a sentence can form the body of a literature note even it is a simple paraphrase of the source. When the concept of the author "still remain the same" for my thinking.
Permanent note is a tile of my knowledge and thinking that I will use for something tomorrow, Literature note is what I use today, the learning support, for building permanent tiles.
I can use just this example to spot my difference about permanent and literature note
I can consider the text I've just written above as the content of my permanent note "how do I distinguish a permanent note from a literature note" (more or less). It is a permanent note in its purest form. It is really "what I think about this", decontextualized from any source, and I can use it as a puzzle tile for "my theory of zettelkasten".
I can take a zettelkasten book, for example ahrens book, extract his view of "his" concept of literature note and put is as draft into the source note of the book. This is a literature notes.
Starting from this source note, I can actually write at least two permanent notes, not only one:
My literature notes are part of my google drive slip box (a folder that is separate from my zettels). I also read on Kindle. I download my notes from Kindle via the web and then do two things to make them into a usable literature note. First I do an alternate index. I make a list at the top with key words and the page number. Then I write what I think are the most important things I learned from reading this article/book.
Think of it as writing notes in two steps.
1) Step 1: short notes about what you are reading; can be keywords, short summary, short excerpt, your impression, thought or comment. These are literature notes.
2) Step 2: Of all the literature notes you took while reading, select SOME of them to write as short, one idea notes that will be permanent.
Here the same discussion:
https://forum.zettelkasten.de/discussion/2879/literature-notes-vs-permanent-notes#latest
Hi! Thank you for your replies! I really appreciate it. I apologize for the late reply. I have not had a chance to look at the messages, sorry about that.
@andang76:
Yes, I sometimes feel like some of the notes I make on literature are "mine".
However, some notes do not feel that way - I don't think they are "my thoughts".
As I understand it, you can take some thoughts from the source note and write them down in permanent notes.
But you can also make notes at the same time that will be written from the author's point of view.
@mlbrandt:
I will try your method with indexes and a list, making a literature note from it.
I think that's what I need.
@JasperMcFly:
So, I've made the first step. By the way, I noticed that, as in the second step, I very often want to write down
some notes as permanent - some ideas seem very important to me, and I agree with the author's point of view.
I would like to ask one more thing: does it make sense to distinguish between permanent and literature notes,
if they are still a knowledge base. Theoretically, I can convert all literature notes
to permanent, deleting literature ones, but keeping literature ones somewhere in case
they come in handy.
Don't get lost in the trap of how to name notes.
Step 1: Engage with the book in any way you want: no notes, highlights, keyword notes, excerpts, summarization, short notes, long notes, underlining, marginalia, skimming, voice notes, diagrams, commonplace notes, Obsidian notes, analytical, syntopical, dialectical. Whatever.
Step 2: Pick the best of the best to write short, impactful notes about things that will help you think or write.
You can save, store, organize these book notes and second step notes any way you want. Ideally your second step notes will be linked or placed next to notes they are related to.
My "rule" is that permanent notes and literature notes are distinct and remain distinct, and the network of the real knowledge implemented into my zettelkasten is made only by the connections (relations) between permanent notes.
This happens because even if they seem to contain same or similar ideas and thoughts, they have very distinct goals, and their structure enable these goals:
I use Permanent notes for represent the acquired pieces of knowledge, ideas and thoughts decontextualized from the source and recontextualized and connected into my own network
Permanent notes relates together.
Some weeks ago I thought to a metaphor of my idea of zettelkasten. Bread and cake making.
my zettelkasten is having my pantry full of baked goods
floor and bread are very different products with very different purposes, the result of very different processes, even they both contains "carbohydrates".
I eat baked goods during my day (the final purpose of the zettelkasten), rather than directly wheat or flour.
I have a question. In obsidian, my note names are timestamps,
and that makes things easier for me.
So, it turns out that I do not have to write the name of the note.
I can just write the title at the beginning of the note,
and change it at any time.
However, there are times when
I do not know what the title of the note should be, so I leave the title at the beginning of the note blank.
I also do not know if I should make literature notes with timestamps or just name them whatever I want,
like "author, book name, publication date".
I also have a question about how I should link to other permanent notes?
I generally link like this:
If there is a mention of another idea, I link to it.
I also sometimes cite an idea from another note and incorporate it into the context of the current permanent note.
I know there is a way with "see:" and then there are similar notes. But does it make sense? If so, why?
And thank you for the answer!
That is, literature notes are notes in the context of the source, and permanent notes are a personal context already associated with your thoughts?
Literature notes are like the information that is still unfiltered, and in permanent notes
you begin to cut out important thoughts and write them into your knowledge base, forming a connection with each other.
Do I understand correctly?
And thank you for such a huge answer!
For the first point yes
Maybe "information" in the second quote is not what I would use for describe what I have in my literature notes.
Sometimes I collect simple informations, other times are something like the marginalia I could consider do write in a physical book. A mix of piece of texts and my comments.
Other times are cut and paste blocks of text from the quotes, with my reflection close.
The most common thing I have, anyway, are contents one step further in processing, the content is already in form of sentences written in my own words.
The common thing about all of this stuff is not their actual shape, but that I can say "all of these texts came from reading that book". Taken from the book or thinking on myself when I read that book.
It is surely something still raw. Like grains or coarsely ground grains. Some texts are very raw, others are almost floor.
I have the final refinement, white floor, when I need to take permanent notes. Here I start
the last grinding and sieving (removing peels, selecting concepts, further rewriting if needed and so on). When I reprocess this stuff with the purpose of making one or more permanent notes, the origin from the book is lost (I will maintain only a reference to the literature note).
And I start to knead, too. I can group different sentences in the same note, making the text of the note. I can read different variants of the same concept from different literature notes and I create, in the permanent note, a personal reformulation/composition of the "mix" of all the variants. Or I mix the new floor obtained into the dough of an already existent permanent note.
Dough of the permanent can also rise, too, when I make the permanent note my brain thinks and creates new thoughts that I can integrate into the note or in other notes.
This is the theorical model. In the practice, anyway, the process sometimes is not this.
I don't always develop things into a conventional literature note. other times I write from different sources into a daily note, or directly into permanent notes from the source when I don't feel the need of an intermediate process.
Thanks for the explanation!