New to Zettelkasten

flin

Hi, my name’s Flin, I am 16.

I got back into reading this July, and would love to take notes while reading philosophy books, i came across zettelkasten while searching for a good note-taking style/method. I would love to get started, but I don’t know how. are there any tips, videos and/or books that i can read or watch as an introduction through zettelkasten?

if you don’t mind me asking, how did you start?

Will

Hi @flin,
Welcome to the forums. I got started from the same place as you. I wanted to take notes on the philosophical reading I was doing. I found the popular book, which I recommend, How to take Smart Notes by Sonke Ahrens, and started with the software. he recommended Zkn3 but found it too fussy. I switched quickly (within minutes) to Zettlr, but while simpler, at the time, the software was glitchy, and there was no activity in the community. A little looking, I found The Archive software app that matched my persona and had a vibrant, active community. Things have now reversed. My zettelkasten is modeled after what I learned from Ahrens and has been significantly supplemented with discussions on this forum. Most video's I've found to be mechanical and process-oriented, and this may be of some help when starting. Quickly you'll want to look for help to understand the principles or the philosophy of zettelkasten, at which point the mechanics become helpful tools and not the product of your ideas.

Here are a few links.

• Interview and Q&A with Sönke Ahrens on How to Take Smart Notes - YouTube
  by Tiago Forte

• Niklas Luhmann Archive - Bielefeld University

• These are mainly in German, but there are a few gems that are in English - Schmidt Luhmann zettelkasten - Google Scholar

flin

Thank you very much.

GeoEng51

@flin said:
Hi, my name’s Flin, I am 16.
if you don’t mind me asking, how did you start?

Hi Flin. Welcome to the forum! @Will has given you some great advice (he always does that )

The only thing I wanted to add is that there is a great "Getting Started" section on this web site that you should also peruse.