Do you review your zettelkasten to see if you're writing a duplicate?

Stevedave

More than once now I've been faced with the situation of writing a new note that contains essentially the same point of a note I made some time ago. Not that note cards are expensive, of course, but it is irritating. What should one do then? Leave the duplicate note? Annotate the first note with the fact that you had this idea again? Or just ignore it and make a mental note that the particular topic has been on your mind lately.

andang76

I don't know if you have a physical or digital zettelkasten, for a physical system maybe there are other considerations.

When this happens, I generally merge duplicate notes in a single note.
Sometimes I leave the notes as they are, having duplicates is not so dramatic.

When it happens, I think that I can obtain a "lesson learned" from this event.

Do I have a duplicate note because I forget to revisit the section before taking the second note? It' s time to resurface the section.
Are the notes in different sections of my zettelkasten? Very interesting, probabily there is an unexplored connection between sections that I haven't considered.
Does the duplicate happen because of my process? I need to improve my process.
Does it happen because I've not found the first note? This note has to be linked better to other notes or to the entry points of the section. The section need a better structure, maybe. Or the note need a better title.
Does the two notes say the same thing, but in a slightly different way? Very interesting, I can reflect on this. What are these differences? is it the second better than the first? Does they contrast or reinforce each others? Does these differences happened because the sources say a different thing, or beause my point of view about the same thing now has changed from the point of view of last year? An event like this make my mind develop many interesting thoughts.

And so on. A duplicate note event can say something interesting about my zettelkasten and my knowledge. I don't consider it a bad event :-)

Will

A duplicate note is an event to be celebrated. It is a chance to dive into both the idea behind the note and the workflow that led to its reimagining. Remember, a note is a proxy for an idea. What you have is two ideas, not duplicate files or cards.

I'll do this intentionally. I'll reread a book or article and take new notes. I'll mark them as v1 and v2, connecting the key notes. Later, I'll find a rich trove of interconnected notes.

This is harder but not impossible to do in a physical system.

This is a current example. Reading 4-years apart.

JasperMcFly

Merge with first note, but it is an opportunity to think about the new context that made you think about the idea again. What new links can you make?