Zettelkasten on oriented material + writing on paper
Hello everyone,
Am new to the method, so naturally am still exploring its intents and purposes. I've decided to start using it for my research on courses about machine learning applied to geology, machine learning itself or geology itself. I'm used to writing stuff down linearly in my paper notebook - not only am accostumed to it, but I also feel pretty good doing so. It makes more sense to me, I guess, to jolt down in a notebook something thorough and linear as a course, more sense than writing atomic notes at least. I'm not sure if I'm "stuck to the hold habits" or that's actually somewhat the way to go. I wanted to try Zettelkasten to be more dynamic in my note-writing, as well as faster - for as much as I like and absorb better on paper, I roughly take one hour per page. Insanity.
My "notes" in my notebook are more of a summary of the thing I am consuming than simplified notes per se; I like to make them so that when I need to check the subject in the future once it is forgotten, I will be able to quickly comprehend it again. Which is why I am feeling using the notebook, rather than Zettelkasten, makes more sense.
Or perhaps I can make atomic notes on the subject and link them on an "index" of some sort in my Zettelkasten? An index such as "Course X/Y/Z" with the individual atomic notes?
Thanks for any input.
Howdy, Stranger!
Comments
Hi,
I don't have a big experience on using Zettelkasten for time-bounded works, like following a course, so I can't say much about.
Take this as the description of my experience that could make you think in some points, not an advice for you.
The only experience I have is preparing a certification exam the first month of this year.
According to my experience, I think that time in this kind of work is a real issue of Zettelkasten. You have to balance time availability with deep of work.
It is not rare that when I process a single web page I spend even hours on it. The final result is remarkable, but the effort is relevant.
During my exam preparation (only 20 days available, not a full day availability, having to study a book of 260 pages) I wanted to try using the zettelkasten in a full way, but too little time available, and still too little experience about method too.
So, what I used was a "faster version" of the method.
I didn't have time to make atomic notes, ruminate hours to the concepts of the books and spend hours developing my thoughts on those concepts. Things that I usually do in a full zettelkasten work.
In that method I didn't take atomic notes, I've written very big "learning notes" that I think are similar to the notes you already take.
Those learning notes was something in the middle between literature notes and my usual zettels.
They was like literature notes that I would write today, but mature, very curated and very detailed like main notes. My learning notes, in the essence, was main notes without atomicity, without my first person point of view and only with a little personal thought development, without making my usual network of connected tiles. Into these notes I collected terms definitions, too, and I developed the pain points of the subjects, focusing on these many time. I used different colors for represent definitions, key points, pain points. They was structured as big outlines of content, using a bullet style of writing.
Today I could consider taking those learning notes "the first half process" of my actual zettelkasten. There was no production of atomic zettels and the resulting dense linked network into the zettelkasten.
That "half zettelkasten" process was much faster, but with a relevant cost. It was much faster, but the long term results remained much lower than a full zettelkasten.
That use was a success, anyway, I passed the exam
I needed a support for learning, comprehension and short term retention of concepts, it worked.
I didn't have a network of thoughts, I had a linear development of the content of the book, but in that case it was enough.
The important point is that the learning that was necessary for me had in any case been developed by the cognitive processes that were used to produce the learning notes, it is not actually contained in the learning note. Even if that learning notes is not deep like a network of zettels, the cognitive processes required for making form a very relevant study process.
For my experience learning occurs during the process of making and using notes, is not stored into the notes.
After the exam, anyway, I returned on the learning notes I've taken, and for some concepts I considered important for my life I used them as literature notes and I completed the full application of zettelkasten, spending time after the exam. So, I partially return with the full process to those notes. I reused part of the "pass the exam" project stuff as the input of "build knowledge for the life" project, the first experience didn't stay siloed and lost.
Being able to talk about this experience and extracting it into a personal lesson learned are some good results of this second process.
As said, this was the only case in which I had to study something in a limited time. I consider this my personal proof of concept in this kind of work, I can't say if it is a good advice in general.
For another exam today, I don't know if I would use the same method. Maybe I could try something closer to a full zettelkasten, having today more experience than in the past.
My personal takeaway from that experience is that the process can be adapted to specific use cases, and can be adjusted according to the available time. If I have enough time I can spend it in depth and I know what benefits I will get, if I have limited time I have to learn to manage when to stop the process and what benefits to give up. I consider some things that I use today (like atomicity and personal reframing) very important, but I'm aware that I can renounce to it sometimes, accepting the lack of related benefits.
@godofcyanide You can have your cake and eat it to, if you so desire. Recently I have been using Logseq to take notes from books, videos, podcasts, etc. Amongst other things, it is a powerful outliner, so it would work well with course notes.
The serendipity part is that you can link from any bullet point in a note to any other bullet point anywhere in your database. So, some of your notes could consist of well-structured outlines of a course or book and other notes could be simpler and focus on one idea (i.e., the traditional zettel). They can both be in your database and you could link between both in very specific ways.
I'm a retired geological engineer, by the way, as you might gather from my handle.