Zettelkasten Forum


I spent six months using a ZK to write my thesis. Here's what I learned

I've been absent from the forum for a while as I wrote my MS thesis in cartography. With the thesis done, I started writing about how the ZK helped my studies and thesis writing -- and where it didn't. Today I decided to share it here. May it be of benefit for your own projects. ~Caleb


We users of a Zettelkasten strive for a set of ideals: that we don't only collect knowledge but integrate it and use it in the service of our own knowledge work; that use of a Zettelkasten generates new connections and insights for us in that work (as Luhmann said, as a conversation partner); that our organization of notes allows for clear thinking and organized ideas.

At least those are the ideals I had in mind when I commenced my thesis research. Truthfully, I adopted the ZK method precisely because I wanted to take good notes as I returned to academia. I was entering a new field (cartography) and believed that the ZK could be an important part of my success. As a preliminary point, my grades were excellent -- and I'm convinced that my zettels were the reason why, especially since so many of our exams and projects were open-note. Ideas did seem to stick better in my mind when I had carefully-crafted notes. To zettel, or as I thought of it to feed my Zettelkasten and to play in my ZK were the majority of my study process. Any reading I did was done with The Archive open and any writing of reports had my ZK at hand for material.

I felt prepared to write my thesis. I was -- and remain -- confident in the method and in (most of) my notes. Writing and adding to my ZK is still part of my daily life of the mind.

Writing my thesis was not the same.

The thesis-writing process revealed three dictums that I'm carrying forward:

  1. A good piece of writing probably won't be verbatim Zettels
    At first I tried having verbatim Zettel integrated into my thesis.1 I discovered that when I did this, my resulting drafts did not have the sense of coherence required for my arguments. Atomic notes make for a useful Zettelkasten, but not good chapter sections. (Perhaps this is why some people criticize Luhmann's own writing as tangled or obtuse.) To be clear, my Zettels made for good outlines or working first drafts, but not something I'd submit to my advisor. I absolutely relied on my ZK to get me started, but it only carried me so far. The task of writing was still mine to do, not the ZK's. The exception was with descriptions of specific methodological details or some other technical aspect. A good formulation of an idea in a Zettel (if it was my own words) might still be used. The other notable exception would be direct quotations from other scholars that I had in my ZK. However, any interpretation of the quote in the original note was eventually discarded in favor of explication that was more directly related to the arguments in my thesis.

  2. A good Zettel requires good metadata
    Sometimes, I knew I had a Zettel for something and it took a while to find it, or I found it only when looking for something else. Part of my research and writing process was to edit the metadata of my Zettels. My tags became more specific. Titles of notes were rewritten in order to show up with searches. For example, I started using the names of certain scholars as tags. A Zettel that may not include a quote from the scholar but resonated strongly with their ideas got the tag. In this way, I could track how some of my arguments were taking shape (again with the caveat that making Zettel was not the same as drafting a chapter)

  3. Material from a thesis draft should feed back into the ZK
    As my thesis writing dominated my schedule, I began to work primarily in that document2. One thing I found myself doing, however, was to put Zettel UIDs as comments3 in the draft. This led to the discovery that some material in my thesis writing was not in my ZK and should be, especially quotes or figures from scholars I was in dialogue with. I've not completed this step yet, but I intend to. Even as the thesis is a finished product, it is still a product that can feed my ZK. In doing so, it will make my future scholarship more robust. Relatedly, some expressions of key ideas that I finally seemed to get right in the final draft of my thesis are probably deserving of inclusion as separate (atomic) notes for use in other projects -- with the caveat that I will still end up rewriting in order to meet the goals of the project at hand.

All of this served as a reminder that my Zettelkasten is not static. A finished thesis, however, has to be in some sense. Continuing to add to and edit my ZK is essential. Again, I trust the ZK Method; it really worked for me. For the part of the scholarly process it's designed for (collecting, organizing, and analyzing ideas), it's spectacularly good. For other part of the process (some synthesis, writing), it's best in a supporting role.


  1. So much so I found a LaTeX package to import markdown files. It's a useful package for some writing goals (a short essay, perhaps), but not for a complex academic text. ↩︎

  2. Technically, a folder of documents. ↩︎

  3. I wrote the thesis in LaTeX, so commenting was easy. ↩︎

Comments

  • @Sociopoetic, thanks for sharing the prize-winning package of "three dictums" you discovered on your thesis writing journey. I'm writing much smaller essays, and you have put into words my experience exactly.

    1. As much as I'd love to string together a bunch of zettel and have a finished paper, it doesn't happen that way. I might get a rough outline with work but not anything close to a first draft.
    2. Metadata metadata metadata. Like pixy-dust, sprinkle it everywhere.
    3. Writing exposes what should be feedback into the ZK! As a final step, take what we've written and use it to update, edit, incrementally improve our ZK, capturing the efforts made while writing. We'll discover gaps in our ZK during finalizing writing projects, and it is vital to feed our ZK so we can be ready to accomplish the next task.

    Will Simpson
    I must keep doing my best even though I'm a failure. 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

  • @Will said:
    Writing exposes what should be feedback into the ZK!

    Exactly. This is the step I found most helpful -- and the one I am still navigating. This is also, it seems, where the real magic of a ZK can get going again: ideas I discovered during my thesis project can now be a part of my knowledge base moving forward, tangible signs of knowledge gained and put to use.

    Thanks for your reflection!

  • edited January 2022

    @Sociopoetic

    Thanks for sharing what you learned from writing your thesis. It agrees well with my experience in writing reports and articles based on what is in my ZK, and also in studying material.

    I think if people clearly understand what they can expect to get from their ZK and what work they have to do themselves, they will not be disappointed. We've seen a few posts on the forum along the lines of: "I pasted a bunch of zettels together but the result is disjointed or doesn't make sense". I don't think it was ever the intent to use a ZK in that manner.

    I hope this will be highlighted somehow in the forum, so that other people undertaking writing assignments for theses, books, or long articles can access it easily.

    Good to see you back on the forum, by the way!

  • Thank you for sharing! :)

    @Sociopoetic said:
    1. A good piece of writing probably won't be verbatim Zettels
    At first I tried having verbatim Zettel integrated into my thesis. I discovered that when I did this, my resulting drafts did not have the sense of coherence required for my arguments.

    It was one of my biggest misconceptions as I got into Zettelkastening the first time. And imho some of the books and articles at least suggesting exactly that: "If you have a good filled Note-Archive, your next project will write itself."

  • @runit said:
    Thank you for sharing! :)

    @Sociopoetic said:
    1. A good piece of writing probably won't be verbatim Zettels
    At first I tried having verbatim Zettel integrated into my thesis. I discovered that when I did this, my resulting drafts did not have the sense of coherence required for my arguments.

    It was one of my biggest misconceptions as I got into Zettelkastening the first time. And imho some of the books and articles at least suggesting exactly that: "If you have a good filled Note-Archive, your next project will write itself."

    I think this misconception might stem from a different meaning of "writing". Writing the first draft is something different from writing the final one.

    I am a Zettler

  • @Sociopoetic agreed that we publish his article on the blog. Check out the post to see Sascha's comment at the bottom: https://zettelkasten.de/posts/field-report-4-what-i-learned-writing-thesis-with-zettelkasten/

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

  • @Sascha said:
    I think this misconception might stem from a different meaning of "writing". Writing the first draft is something different from writing the final one.

    Well said. My Zettels got first-draft ideas outlined, but the final writing was what I was trying to emphasize in point #1 above.

  • @Sociopoetic

    A separate but contemporaneous thread started exploring the ideas of thinking and writing. See comments by @ZettelDistraction regarding some comments in Ahrens' book...

    https://forum.zettelkasten.de/discussion/comment/14097#Comment_14097

  • edited January 2022

    Apologies for autocorrect helpfully misspelling "Ahrens" as "Athens," especially given the emphasis on retention and the identification of writing with thinking in this forum.

    GitHub. Erdős #2. CC BY-SA 4.0. Problems worthy of attack / prove their worth by hitting back. -- Piet Hein. Armchair theorists unite, you have nothing to lose but your meetings! --Phil Edwards

  • Labels or tags that are zettelkasten-wide are not really a good thing to have in the long run. So, I annotate important zettels with metadata, such as schema.org microdata. Example:

    <article id="zkzettel" itemscope itemtype="https://schema.org/CreativeWork">
    <section id="zktop" class="zsection ztop">
    <details>
    <summary>Identifier: <span itemprop="identifier">C2022-01-28-145809-d871</span></summary>
    <p><br />
    Name: <span itemprop="name"></span><br />
    Description: <span itemprop="description"></span><br />
    Abstract: <span itemprop="abstract"></span><br />
    Keywords: <span itemprop="keywords"></span><br />
    Learning outcome: <span itemprop="teaches"></span><br />
    Date Created: <span itemprop="dateCreated">2022-01-28 14:58:09</span><br />
    Date Modified: <span itemprop="dateModified"></span><br />
    Credit: <span itemprop="creditText"></span><br />
    Version: <span itemprop="version"></span><br />
    URL: <span itemprop="url"></span><br />
    </p>
    </details>
    </section>

  • @leventer, can you share what this would look like in practice in your ZK? I tend to use YAML blocks myself.

    Also, why do you consider tags that are ZK-wide a poor idea? (Genuine question)

  • @GeoEng51 said:
    @Sociopoetic

    A separate but contemporaneous thread started exploring the ideas of thinking and writing. See comments by @ZettelDistraction regarding some comments in Ahrens' book...

    https://forum.zettelkasten.de/discussion/comment/14097#Comment_14097

    Thanks for linking this, @GeoEng51! This resonates with what I said about my ZK being part of my daily life of the mind -- writing isn't the only way I think, but it is certainly a mode of thinking. I'll be sure to think over what people are saying in that thread and will add my thoughts ... once I've written them out! ;-)

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