Types of permanent notes
What are your permanent notes about? From what I've read so far about the ZK system, it seems that most people note down "points" or "thesis" i.e. elaborate ideas about a topic.
I'd like my ZK to receive "notions" (= definitions of concepts) and "facts" (= proven pieces of information) as well, but it seems this approach is not exactly what the ZK is about for most users. Am I wrong?
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You could find a trade-off between collecting facts and putting them to good use.
Usually you don't know what to do with this new information and just write it down. Some facts don't need to be written down, others can be looked up in the web.
The Zettelkasten helps you making associations between facts. Over time, you'll find examples, anecdotes, analogies and other forms of use.
I recommend this article to read more on this.
my first Zettel uid: 202008120915
There has been a lot of discussion about "permanent notes" here on the forums.
@zk_1000 has pointed us to a golden article about making notes personal and active. How to be bold and interact with the note-making process.
In my practice, there is a spectrum between notes with more "proven pieces of information" and those where I change my frame of mind and interrogate text for its meaning. This latter end of the spectrum is my goal which I stretch myself toward not getting hung up on notes that don't quite make it. Notes are proxies for ideas. Some ideas are more developed than others. We have many, many ideas, and they all can't be #1, perfect and permanent.
If what you mean by "notions" is personal definitions of concepts, you are at the starting gate. Your zettelkasten is about what you think, not about what others think. Your thinking has to be referenced to reality, to "proven pieces of information." Your ZK doesn't have to have the "proven pieces of information" in it, just a reference to it.
Will Simpson
My zettelkasten is for my ideas, not the ideas of others. I don’t want to waste my time tinkering with my ZK; I’d rather dive into the work itself. 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
I, still, follow my six-item-inventory: https://zettelkasten.de/posts/reading-is-searching/
However, for fiction I use different entry types.
Sometimes, I have recommendations (last entry of this type: "Always check for sustainability if you think about nutrition")
But to be honest, those kinds of typologies are useful for teaching but not really for the actual work.
I am a Zettler
Thank you for these helpful insights. For me it was an opportunity to inspect my tagging for types of notes. A long list. Personally I often used #type/sketchnote and #type/question. But I will spend a little time and effort to build up an improved architecture for tagging.
Edmund Gröpl
100% organic thinking. Less than 5% AI-generated ideas.
@Edmund since I don't do such a thing myself, I'm curious what sort of affordance your #type/NoteName tagging provides you with (especially if you're using more than just those two)? Do you use them regularly for search or filtering, and if so for what reason? How does it help?
To me it look likes extra metadata/work, but without a lot of direct long term value in exchange. Does doing this for long periods of time provide you with outsized emergent value of some sort that's not easy to see from the start?
website | digital slipbox 🗃️🖋️
Yes I use my tags for searching. In Obsidian I have tools like Dataview and Graph View, where tags make it easy to filter special note clusters. One example: #type/term helps me to generate a glossary with terms and definitions from my Zettelkasten. A Dataview query needs 5 simple lines of code to do this job automatically. A filter like #theme/zettelkasten then shows a glossary only for Zettelkasten. If there is a special type of searching I repeatedly want to use, I build up a special type of tagging. To do this systematically I had to build up a tagging architecture.
Automated search for creating various lists and also graphical views of my connected notes massively reduces time for searching. So for me tagging is time well spent.
More about my way of tagging:
Edmund Gröpl
100% organic thinking. Less than 5% AI-generated ideas.
I don't think it's "wrong".
I don't think that the zettelkasten essence is in a rigid and universal ontology of permanent note types.
For my own mindset it's hard to have a working system made of only one type of notes.
In my model I have "concepts" (something similar to your notions and facts, I think) and what I call "principles" (notes whose titles are something like "do...", "don't...", "It's useful", "it's better", .. or in a claim/evocative form).
I don't pay much attention on the note taxonomy, anyway. I don't even care if terms like "concept" or "principle" are the best terms that I could find for them :-).
It's the style of the title note that drives the mean and purpose of the note. So, I've note that represents "idea" and the title has the form of an idea formulation, or a note that starts with "what I think about...." that describes an explicit personal focus about a specific thing.
I have some questions notes too.
Principles and Concepts works very well together.
For example, I have the concept note "Atomic note", and many related principles notes like:
And so on. These are linked into the main concept note, that describes instead "what is" Atomic note (always according to my point of view).
I use the ✱ symbol as suffix for principle notes as an instant visual aid for recognize them
It is not a very sophisticated model (two subtypes of main notes, in the end, and I use the same template for them, they don't have different default structures), but works very well for me.
With concept notes I can build a "wiki-like" backbone, in which I can easily insert the principle notes as needed. They complement well.
A more rich ontology could model even better, but more types you have, more friction in writing notes you have. I prefer agility over complexity (despite less precision). Choosing between two ( if it is not A is B ) is a good fit.
@andang76
I totally agree with you , especialy this point.
I lost myself in complex classification. I had such a complex system that I could'nt work with it when I was really tired by work.
The more classification you introduce into your system, the more you overload your working memory. The more friction you create as well, asking yourself : "this is a Concept Note or a Definition Note?" or "Which is better classficiation? History/XIXe/France or France/History/XIXe? And about this art period? Art/France/XIX or France/Art/XIX?"
I take back my notes again and decided this does matter anymore. Index are here for that purpose. If you check my index : "France" and "XIX", you'll find a line about the note "France - XIX" with anything about this period and that's it.
Furthemore, "permanent note" is not even a thing in my Zettelkasten, and never was. If it didn't mean to be permanent of some sort, I didn't introduce it into my Zettelkasten. As I took distance from my Zettelkasten, I use my journal to note everything that capture my focus - reading note, project ideas, anything. Futur zettels hide in there. As there are a part of a whole context and thinking, when extracted, they become "permanent".
As a mantra, I say to myself that if something can easily be found with secure source on Internet, I don't create a note about it(for example : the date of birth and dead of a painter would not be a note by itself, but rather a data on the Index Card about this painter). But, if I found a very intersting fact about technical thing, history or whatever, it can become a note (the same painter created a new medium of painting). It's a dry fact, but it is quite so precise that I have to notice it.
Probably is a natural process that each of us meets during his journey :-)
The history of my notes witness this evolution :-)
This, this, a thousand times this
. I'm in agreement about perfection being the enemy of the good when it comes to note classification types, and the perils of cognitive overload (which only increase as I age), but for what it's worth, here's a peek at my note scheme:
Started ZK 4.2018. "The path is at your feet, see? Now carry on."
It's obligatory to link to @Will's post on malleability of notes here
https://zettelkasten.de/posts/literature-notes-vs-permanent-notes/
and that we all seem to go through the phase of strict categorization and unwind it
https://zettelkasten.de/posts/no-categories/
The only person I remember who pulled off "nested folders" is Dan Sheffler, who used file-system aliases to make
[[Plato - Tripartition]]and[[Tripartition - Plato]]point to the same thing.https://www.dtsheffler.com/notebook/2015-08-11-going-from-reading-to-notes/
https://www.dtsheffler.com/notebook/2015-08-05-one-thought-per-note/
That's from the olden days before the forum, when we used Disqus comments, in threads linked here:
https://zettelkasten.de/posts/dan-sheffler-workflow/
and summarized here
https://zettelkasten.de/posts/kinds-of-ties/
Author at Zettelkasten.de • https://christiantietze.de/
This forum and blog are gold mine, thank you a lot for this articles. I am digging it right now. About Folgezettel, one big problem I have is : "What is the point 1.0 of a Folgezettel?" For example, I am writing something about a french artist in the XIX century. Is the presentation of the artist the 1.Zettel? Or should it be the 1.French art in XIXe ? or "1.Art" ? Must the ideas tree have a main trunk?
That was really confusing when I tried it.
I totally agree here. Permanently useful. Will I still need my today shopping list three years later? I don't think so, so I don't include it into my Zettelkasten. Furthemore, notes need re-reading and permanent reworking to be usefull. My today futurself is not the same than the one it would be three years later. Thank you @Will :-)
I'll have to explore Dan Sheffler's workflow because it's an intersting one. Aliases are a precious tool too.
From my point of view, UID should give a physical adress to the note. Whenever the title is, the adress does'nt change, just like a city mapping with buildings. I may buy new furnitures, change the color of the wall or even move from my appartment, but the appartment itself still has the same address. We can use tags and index notes for categories, structure notes and MOC for stories.
I guess you are right :-)
I can compare it to learn a new art. Begginners think they know, they explore a lot of things, overestimate capacities and time, try to make something complex and inspiring like very expert makers do. But, yeah, not an expert yet : it is the frustration state. It hits hard, the Krugger's effect deflates and leave begginers on the shore. This is the best state : beginners are not begginers anymore and start to effectively learn.
I hope I have learnt something x)
I don't use Folgezettel, but about this point, I've found very useful an essay of Bob Doto:
https://writing.bobdoto.computer/how-to-use-folgezettel-in-your-zettelkasten-everything-you-need-to-know-to-get-started/
That enlightened me a lot, above all his non hierarchycal nature
I've many principles derived from this article, one of them is "A Zettelkasten can start from an idea about an apple "
.
The underlyining concept is that you can start from what you want, it's not required to start from the most higher level concept you have.
I'm but a beginner working with my creative gap.
Will Simpson
My zettelkasten is for my ideas, not the ideas of others. I don’t want to waste my time tinkering with my ZK; I’d rather dive into the work itself. 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
I see that you use symbols, too.
I would like to develop further this kind of convention in my workflow.
At the moment I use only ✱ for my principle notes, I've thinked to use others like a💡for "eureka notes" and ⚠️ for "bewares", but at the moment this practice doesn't come naturally to me
@andang76
I'm wary of this -- if you flag something as "this is a eureka note", can you change it in 10 years time when its content settled, like sediment in a lake, and has become common knowledge for you? Can you expand it, rewrite it, merge it with other ideas?
More extreme: imagine using a "new" flag of sorts. That won't last long, either.
My point is that some qualities aren't permanent by their very nature. "Eureka" being one of them.
Some things can be expressed in the body/content very well, where you do the writing. Like a list of warnings, shortcoming, things to think of when using the note. And if you solve the shortcomings, you can rewrite the warning into a recommendation, maybe.
Author at Zettelkasten.de • https://christiantietze.de/
It's a very good point. They aren't stable and general properties of a note.
Zettelkastening talking, you seem like an advanced user from my beginner's point of view.
@andang76
Thank you for the link. I have read it, and also read the blog. It helped me to set up my fresh new start of Zettelakasten on written index cards. I have top labels for my branch to keep things in track, but not the same rigid classification I used before. I just have to import five years of work now 🥳
Left box : A6 notes cards and empty cards with colored papers because I like colored papers.
Right box : A6 Index cards, People cards, and Topic cards.
For example : I've read a book in 23.11.01 - The Black Company, Glen Cook
My Reading notes about novels are all under this thread : Le.1/
The Black Compagny card : Le.1/1 - G.C, The Black Company, summary
On the author card : Glen Cook -> you'll find a link to the card from the reading thread. You'll find a link into the Fantasy index card. Topic will cover every main branch of an entry point : Le.1/1, Le.1/1a, Le.1/1b etc. ... if needed only.
I choose very few types of notes because what's matter for me is linking threads and index cards. If I need to make a note card stand out from other, I would have physical meant to achieve that like colors or piece of paper.
Things still might evolve next days.
Seeing this image, a physical zettelkasten has its own magic that a digital system can't replicate
It's an object that motivates and brings to meditation.
The colors, the calligraphy. Beautiful.