So I take down notes, and then what?
Hi,
A few years ago, I started to take daily note and take a lot, but at the end of a day, I have difficulty on how to deal with those notes.
The major problem is, I can't decide the size of a note derived from my daily note.
Say, I take a note like "5 students have sent me the language test invoice regarding applying for an academic reward. In my understanding, this could be directly put into "Academic Reward" or "Things related to Academic Reward for Language Test". But if I do so, I feel guilty because it looks not even a bit like a Zettel systems.
I heard a lot of so-called atomic notes, but I never really see a real-world, down-to-earth workflow of authentic zettel.
Howdy, Stranger!
Comments
I recently managed to write and publish a manuscript in this fashion.
At least in the introduction and methodology part, it's arranging in
such a way. That is used the slip-box method.
First things first, I would say it requires a systematic way. The ship
container metaphor that was originally mentioned in the book actually
is just a tip of an iceberg. In order to make the whole thing work,
you have to rethink every aspect of your writing process, how you
manage your notes, how you access your notes, how you decide which
part to put together, how to decide which part to delete or archive or
put somewhere. And if your manuscript highly depends on the code you
write, you probably have to think about how you can easily find those
scripts as well. And if your data is huge, you have to also think
about how to process, how to store the data, and how to back it up
properly.
Upon reviewing this process, I'm definitely saying I'm going to do it
this way in the future. But I have to confess that because of the
nature of the manuscript I'm working with, it's more like a technical
thing. It's not that easy to directly branch from an autonomic note
into another meaningful discussion. Actually, right now I'm doing a
more cross-field kind of work that the linking is not that much more
obvious than the previous work I've done.
For this specific dilemma you encounter, which is you don't know where
to put a specific note. The best way I would suggest is to just think
really hard and pick one, just asking one simple question, in which
context this notes I gonna use it again, and if you have no idea where
to put, then just leave it as it is.
This is not saying that we are not care about the manuscript, because
that's the end product that we're going to produce. We always keep,
let's say, 12 questions in our mind that we hope or we really want our
manuscript script now looks like. When you do those little things,
when you do those atomic notes, you're just focusing on the present
and not be aware that you have so much burden to carry. And that's, I
think, I believe the said effect, but I would say it's a very
important effect that by adopting this method, that helps me to write.
@Jackhansonc There are a number of threads in this forum that give examples of zettels written by different people. For example, you could check here:
https://forum.zettelkasten.de/discussion/468/example-zettels
or here:
https://forum.zettelkasten.de/categories/critique-my-zettel
I'm not sure I understand the full context of your note and it's purpose. If I had to guess, it's closer to what I might consider a productivity note to be followed up on as part of a potential project. Personally, I keep things like this in a separate drawer (or what I would call a "department") of my zettelkasten which acts more like a Memindex (more details on my specific practice). These project and to-do related items are valuable, but I don't treat them with the same level of rigor and indexing that I do for cards with buildable ideas.
Notes from my reading, for my writing, knowledge building, etc. are the ones I keep in my primary zettelkasten department. These are the ones which are better indexed and more highly interlinked.
I know that some here do keep everything more closely integrated and to some extent mine really are are as well. I find that keeping some sort of mental separation about what specific tranches of notes are for can be helpful, and even placing them in separate drawers (or digital areas/folders) may be useful to some. As long as you can search for and find it when you need it, you can't go far wrong. In my case having a specific section for to do items and projects means I'm regularly culling through them, something which I might not be as prone to do in other portions of my collection.
website | digital slipbox 🗃️🖋️
Good point, Chrisaldrich, I learned a lot from your approach