The TROLL system of Zettelkasten self-organization

ZettelDistraction

My Zettelkasten now follows the TROLL system. The backronym stands for

Tortuous Repository of Labyrinthine Lucubration

This isn't advocacy--it's an attempt to describe what my Zettelkasten has become so far, or rather, what it can and cannot do. It seems impervious to market forces and cannot interact with them. It wants to negate virtually every front-page headline in the paper of record and other carefully edited organs of filtered pablum. Other than that, there is no interaction. Attempts to optimize it only make it worse and more convoluted than otherwise. I wouldn't call it a wellspring of ideas--more like a trapped aquifer.

This seems to have happened after switching ID formats at least twice and adding an alphabetic backlink index. Any effort to describe it is at least as long as the Zettelkasten itself.

KillerWhale

I love it!
I guess that makes me a follower of the HELPME system, Heuristic Exchange and Learning of my Personal Management Elucubrations.

ctietze

@ZettelDistraction Thank you for waiting until after the forum upgrade went through so we can discuss this without interruptions

Andy

I was hoping the "T" stood for "Transhierarchical", indicating some rare and enviable new UI/UX.

ZettelDistraction

@Andy:

https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3406853.3434771 is a good reference, thank you. I started adding it, but it's too late: there isn't anything I can do to reverse whatever is unfolding in my Zettelkasten. If anything about it is "rare and enviable," it wouldn't be the user experience.

@KillerWhale:

The HELPME development is so positive that my estimation of your Zettelkasten has to be even higher than I thought it was possible to estimate a Zettelkasten.

tjex

...wow 🤦‍♂️

ZettelDistraction

@tjex said:
...wow 🤦‍♂️

If you have the time and inclination to elaborate, you are welcome to do so.

KillerWhale

Wonder-Oriented Workflow.

ZettelDistraction

@KillerWhale, I appreciate your constructive, respectful, and considerate reading of an exclamation of surprise or disbelief, marked by a facepalm emoji, left without explanation.

Loni

@ZettelDistraction said:
My Zettelkasten now follows the TROLL system. The backronym stands for

Tortuous Repository of Labyrinthine Lucubration

This isn't advocacy--it's an attempt to describe what my Zettelkasten has become so far, or rather, what it can and cannot do. It seems impervious to market forces and cannot interact with them. It wants to negate virtually every front-page headline in the paper of record and other carefully edited organs of filtered pablum. Other than that, there is no interaction. Attempts to optimize it only make it worse and more convoluted than otherwise. I wouldn't call it a wellspring of ideas--more like a trapped aquifer.

This seems to have happened after switching ID formats at least twice and adding an alphabetic backlink index. Any effort to describe it is at least as long as the Zettelkasten itself.

As it is a Labyrinth of some sort, you still have chance to find Ariadne in there with her magical thread. Or maybe you met a lot of different threads but no Ariadne and one furious Theseus asking for the Minotaur.

Mine could be "the PUZZLE SYSTEM" : the Potientaly Usefull Zappy but Zilched Logorrheic Explosion. I know there was a logic for my organisational system but I can't remember now. Notes are still good though.

tjex

@ZettelDistraction said:

@tjex said:
...wow 🤦‍♂️

If you have the time and inclination to elaborate, you are welcome to do so.

I just never expected that an honest post from a new member would be blatantly trolled on a respectable and tight-knit forum such as this one. And from an 'established' member none-the-less. Bit shocked and disappointed with the maturity level.

Perhaps I stepped outside of some (hidden) code of conduct for this forum. But I would then expect an explanation or a link to the code of conduct, and not a trolling, particularly considering the seemingly 'high' level of intellect that the trolling has been executed with.

ZettelDistraction

My original self-deprecatory post was aspirational, but the gap between theory and practice was vast, and none of the properties of my Zettelkasten I described at the time were ever realized. Progress was stalled until I blocked social media on my main computer. Since then, the backronym TROLL became STREWN, which stands for Special Transitional Rolodex of Electronic Wissenschaft Notes. At the suggestion of one of the forum members, I developed the Zettel Assistant GPT, which led to a revised Zettel format, a GitHub repository for the GPT, and an update of the Zettel GitHub repository. And, with any luck, a leap in maturity from the infant developmental stage to that of a spoiled toddler. I remain committed to the forum's respectful dialogue, intellectual exploration, and collective growth ethos.

KillerWhale

@tjex I played along as I never saw any kind of link between this post and yours (but, with hindsight, I fully understand how you may have felt attacked). My apologies if I offended in the play along. I actually thought that, beyond the tongue-in-cheek post, there was some insight and value in self-deprecation. Beyond my post, I genuinely feel like I'm trying to heuristically manage my elucubrations. And I genuinely feel like I've gone the deep end. So it's fascinating and both completely vain. And I am aware of that. And yet deeper I shall go.