Zettelkasten Forum


Text files vs Outlines, and how to reduce some friction?

Greetings,
along my journey on the knowledge management I came across the outline concept with Workflowy.
I've being testing it for some days, and I enjoyed how I was able to put my thoughts without worrying about file names, and enjoyed how easy was moving the notes from one point of my "brain" to another one with just a drag and drop.

So I realized how much friction choosing and writing a file name for each atomic note emerged inside of me, along with some mind fatigue.
Other than that, I felt how moving a note from one contest to another one was so overwhelming with text notes.

Have you ever felt the same?
How do you manage such friction when working with text files?

Comments

  • I have found it nice to bypass the friction sometimes and to embrace it at other times.

    When I'm capturing new things, the contents are unformed and will require processing if they are to be categorized. This is the niche serve by a "bullet journal" or "rapid log" or, in linked-note-taking apps like Roam or Obsidian, a "daily log". Entry into this kind of thing is free and loose; I imagine this is the same kind of freedom you feel in Workflowy.

    In a proper PKM system, I find naming requirements actively helpful. They force me to ask "why am I keeping this? How will I look for it next time, and what will I be doing with it?".

    So I hope that addresses the feeling you're having -- the freedom is a tool, but so is the friction. They're just tools for different purposes -- for "getting new stuff" and "helping storage enable retrieval".

  • I mainly use outlines when I make notes during a talk/presentation/webinar when I want to understand its structure. It's then important to be able to reorder things around quickly. Those notes are mostly "fleeting notes" that are not going into my zettelkasten directly, but are being processed. For the notes inside my zettelkasten, I don't really need an outliner – whenever a subsection in a list gets too big I can just create another zettel and link to it.

    And by the way: There are editors for plain text files that have outliner functionality, e.g. You can have both with tools like TaskPaper or Emacs org-mode. They are not as smooth and frictionless as e.g. OmniOutliner (and possibly Workflowy), but you get plain text files...

  • @IvanFerrero I can totally relate to the problem you describe: naming things is hard. Some titles just present themselves, others require a lot of changes to the note to make sense. It's not trivial, but you'll likely get better at it over time, because when it's hard, that can be a sign that the note isn't partitioned in the best way possible.

    Author at Zettelkasten.de • https://christiantietze.de/

  • When I'm capturing new things, the contents are unformed and will require processing if they are to be categorized. This is the niche serve by a "bullet journal" or "rapid log" or, in linked-note-taking apps like Roam or Obsidian, a "daily log". Entry into this kind of thing is free and loose; I imagine this is the same kind of freedom you feel in Workflowy.

    @Jim indeed you got the point!
    What I like about Workflowy here is I can write my note and go on without interrupting the flow due to the name choice.

    whenever a subsection in a list gets too big I can just create another zettel and link to it.

    @Vinho I was thinking about the same strategy.
    After reading a research, I store all the highlights under the same note.
    When I need something stored in that note, I can retrieve it by searching, then I can put that piece of text outside as a new atomic note.
    Sort of progressive processing, a concept I learnt from Tiago Fortes.

    when it's hard, that can be a sign that the note isn't partitioned in the best way possible.

    @ctietze I see what you say: naming a new note is part of the learning process, is it?

  • When working with The Archive I don't worry about file names. If there is no obvious descriptive name (or if I am in a hurry) I just use the UID and add a descriptive name later when I need to. I have about sixty notes in my archive that I haven't bothered to name yet. I'll get round to it eventually.

  • Andy Matuschak has several, well, noteworthy ideas about note titles:
    https://notes.andymatuschak.org/Evergreen_note_titles_are_like_APIs

    He writes:
    "Some effective note “API design” techniques: separation of concerns (Evergreen notes should be atomic), sharp titles (Prefer note titles with complete phrases to sharpen claims), and positive framings (Prefer positive note titles to promote systematic theory)."

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