Share with us what is happening in your ZK this week. April 23, 2024

Will

Swimming with Ideas

This is yet another opportunity to share with your friends what you are working on. Add to this discussion by telling us about your zettelkasten journey. Share with us what you're learning. Sharing helps me and, hopefully, you, too. It helps us clarify our goals and visualize our thinking. And sometimes, a conversation sparks a magical moment where we can dive into an idea worth exploring. I'd love to hear more from you. 🫵🏼

Would you like to explore the world of zettelkasten? I am offering short Zoom chats for anyone in the forums who wants to learn more about the art of zettelkasten from me, a non-expert. During the chat, we can explore my zettelkasten as an example. I use The Archive with a tool-agnostic approach, which means that the skills I'll show will transfer across platforms. Do you have any questions or need guidance? This is the perfect opportunity to get the answers you need. Please drop me a message, and let's schedule a session on the calendar.

Ideas I'm exploring with my ZK and why I'm here:

• I'm using my zettelkasten to explore kindness and recognize its pivotal role in life. A kindness mindset opens up opportunities for celebrating successes and helps us navigate our missteps. By regularly reflecting on and reviewing my actions, I'm actively cultivating a life led by kindness.
• How can I use my reading, note-taking, writing, and the whole constellation that is my zettelkasten to foster discipline and curiosity mentally and motivate myself to flourish mentally? Engaging with diverse and challenging material keeps my brain buff and busy. Writing and reviewing regularly isn’t just busy work; it’s how I cement neural pathways. Knowledge is only power if you use it. My zettelkasten has turned into a secret weapon for holistic growth!
• My lower note productivity can't all be blamed on class pressures. Some of it concerns my growing disinterest in the mechanics of zettelkasting and just making notes. I'm missing the interaction of peers and mentors. To transform my note-taking into a dynamic intellectual exchange, I want to engage in discussions and invite critique.

Books I'm reading:

• DeWoskin, R. (2014). Blind [[202404122027]]. Penguin Group US.
• Phillips, Adam and Taylor, Barbara. On kindness. 2009. Everand Ebook [[202404130524]]
• Sloan, H. G., & Wolitzer, M. (2019). To Night Owl from Dogfish. [[202404141646]]
• Johnson, Rebecca May. Small Fires: An Epic in the Kitchen. An imprint of Pushkin Press, 2022. Audiobook Everand
• Ha, Robin. Almost American girl: an illustrated memoir. 2020. Libby Ebook from Latah Library [[202404191904]]

Ear Candy - Music I'm listening to:

• Sergio Díaz De Rojas
• Luca Longobardi
• Esther Abrami
• Alanna Crouch

A look at this week's ZK work themes:

2 zettel - meta zettelkasting
1 zettel - meta writing
4 zettel - Ed-Curriculum & Instruction (EDCI445)
8 zettel - captured new and novel ideas

★★★★★

The "My rolling ten-day zettel production" is produced by a script for attachment to my daily journaling template. I do my journaling in Bear to keep personal journaling separate from my knowledge work.

Let me know if you would like to see, discuss, or critique any of these notes.

My ten day zettel production

andang76

This week I've developed my thoughts about the question of Assessment and Improvement of my KMS, started from this discussion: https://forum.zettelkasten.de/discussion/2870/how-to-improve-thinking-skills/p1

It has been a very interesting excercise

KillerWhale

After my Bear experiment, I'm going back to Obsidian, wishing to implement a more nimble "Roam-esque" daily notes workflow, where I aim to replicate the writer's journals of old, capturing musings in no particular order. I adore Bear, but I'm looking for more power; although that stint taught me a lot about what I value in a tool, which is aesthetics and UX. I have spent an inordinate amount of time tweaking Obsidian to my liking but it's been worth it. I've settled on a minimalist, elegant design I can feel myself using to a long time now.

ctietze

@KillerWhale you can't tease productivity porn like that and then not show the picture

Loni

@KillerWhale said:
After my Bear experiment, I'm going back to Obsidian, wishing to implement a more nimble "Roam-esque" daily notes workflow, where I aim to replicate the writer's journals of old, capturing musings in no particular order. I adore Bear, but I'm looking for more power; although that stint taught me a lot about what I value in a tool, which is aesthetics and UX. I have spent an inordinate amount of time tweaking Obsidian to my liking but it's been worth it. I've settled on a minimalist, elegant design I can feel myself using to a long time now.

I agree with @ctietze ! I've tweaked Obsidian myself and I'm very curious about how yours

This week, I stayed with my paper Zettelkasten and I had a lot of fun and pleasure to work with it.

My paper workflow is stable and I'm happy with that. I have my 'Index Cards', which work with tags and generic Index, I have People Card for artists, writers, scientists... with links to their art, citations, notes, critics I did. I have References Cards for book, film, arts, music with links, and I have the core of everything, Notes Cards.

I scribble something into my everyday journal (like a Bullet Journal), I read it, process it and then transform it into a new Note Card for example 2310.21.21.53.01. The difference between the worker, the artisan and the artist @Citation St François d'Assise.
-> I add a link to this card into the Index Card : Art - Artists, Définition
-> I add a link to this citation into the People Card : Saint François d'Assise
-> I add a link to this citation into the Reference Card : Œuvres - St François d'Assise(which is an antology)

I don't use a citation manager, as my ZK is handling this well through People and Reference Cards, but I have a specific notebook to handle my "Reading List" - In fact, I use different notebooks for differents purposes, like my exercise book, my migraines, health topic... It is more convenient for me this way than to create card notes for those topics.

I finaly found a good workflow for my Exercice Notes! I isolate my Exercice Notes from the rest of my Zettels into my Archive Box because I use them at least 5 days a week. I can't search them through the whole archive everyday. The front describes the exercice and I note on the back of the card the day I did it, the number of series, repetitions, if I hold weight, and the time of rest between series. So the day of exercise : I take my journal, my cards, I select the exercices, I put the card on my table, I note the exercice on the notebook, and here I go.

I'll make the same work for my Recipes I think, with a whole dedicated section of the box

I use colored dividers into my box for different purpose. Index, People and soon Reference have alphabetical dividers, while my archive have time-related dividers : the first numbers of my IDs are years and monthes, so I have - 2403 2404. It convenient to keep track of the numbers of notes I have taken.

I have change the way I create my ID's as well to make them more readable. 2404.24.09.15.01 : I added point between section of the number to compare them quickly. The "01" at the end is the page numbering. If I have a 2404.24.09.15.02, then I'll know that they are the same notes with the first page and the second page.

I accept that it will be slower to make notes, but I can feel the difference for me as I am more focus and my mind is clearer. And... It is a lot of fun. I'll think about a back up method those weeks.

KillerWhale

Aha @ctietze your wish is my command! There is still work to do – Bear remains my daily driver as I'm building this out on my old vault – but most of the hard work is done. I swore to myself I would not change apps until this is completely ready, but I'm getting there. (Meaning: pay no attention to plugin tests and file tree as it's not a production environment yet)

Using the Minimal theme with half a dozen additional CSS snippets.

What remains to do:

• Build the daily note capture shortcuts using Actions for Obsidian. I intend to have a Dock button that takes me to the daily note with a timestamp (allowing for multimedia capture and longform note taking), as well as a quick capture button tied to the Action button (allowing for quick jot downs while in other apps)
• Automate the geolocation and weather capture (I have drafts for both of those).

I am doing a daily review instead of weekly, so I intend to process those notes quickly when there's actionable material inside. My hope is to be able to process any knowledge material quicker than with my current capture system (Bear's untagged notes, before that I was using Drafts and/or a dedicated Inbox in Obsidian): fire off Zettels as they happen or just leave random musings and tag them for later retrieval.

Finally, I intend to go Folgezettel as an experiment. I completely see the value of date stamp UIDs and the fact that Folgezettel is not necessary, but I am too overwhelmed by the stuff I have to go look for relevant links. My hope is that Folgezettel will provide a hierarchical view of notes and force me to add at least one soft link between notes. I may also forego tags to minimize maintenance and make Zetteling fast and nimble.

KillerWhale

That's beautiful, @Loni . If I was not so much on the road and paranoid about data loss, I would love to work with paper. There's an undeniable quality to it – and I often get back to it when needing to think clearly.

Loni

@KillerWhale said:
That's beautiful, @Loni . If I was not so much on the road and paranoid about data loss, I would love to work with paper. There's an undeniable quality to it – and I often get back to it when needing to think clearly.

OMG you are french!!
I like a lot the monthes bar with pastel colors under the title of your note! The set up is simple and clear.

Thank you! I totaly get your point : I am paranoid as well and this would be the only reason to push me back to digital again specificaly for Zettelkasten. However, I'll keep paper notes for journaling, exercices and recipes.

When I worked with Obsidian, I use to add tags into the note titles : when I looked for relevant notes to links, I just write the right "@tag" into the search bar. Maybe it can help you?

KillerWhale

@Loni I am! (I'm in France in May touring the literary events, if you ever come to one, do come say hello! 😊 ) Definitely, what a nice handwriting you have, I'm jealous of your ability to play with nice pens in your notes.

That trick with tags in the note titles is very ingenious, thanks for sharing! That would definitely help, but as I'm kind of over-tagging when I do, I'm afraid it would make long titles. I can see however how that can solve my "needle in the haystack" issue with UIDs. I might definitely steal this for worlbuilding (I realize I'm already kind of doing a similar thing as I "tag" the degrees of certainty of my notes with emojis! ❓❗️➡️ 💡 – talked about this here: https://lioneldavoust.com/2020/des-degres-de-certitude-dans-lecriture-avec-des-emojis )

Edmund

@KillerWhale said:
Zettelkasten: transitioning from Bear to Obsidian + DEVONthink, GTD: OmniFocus, production: Scrivener / Ableton Live.

Yes indeed. Using the Zettelkasten is a long journey.

Here's my own journey map:

KillerWhale

@Edmund Nice. I see Obs taking over! How are you finding it for task management? (With the Tasks plugin I suppose)

Loni

@KillerWhale said:
@Loni I am! (I'm in France in May touring the literary events, if you ever come to one, do come say hello! 😊 ) Definitely, what a nice handwriting you have, I'm jealous of your ability to play with nice pens in your notes.

Thank you very much =^^= Drawing really healped!

That trick with tags in the note titles is very ingenious, thanks for sharing! That would definitely help, but as I'm kind of over-tagging when I do, I'm afraid it would make long titles. I can see however how that can solve my "needle in the haystack" issue with UIDs. I might definitely steal this for worlbuilding

It may lead indeed to very long titles, you'll have to select some main tags to use with this technic, but I'm glad if it helps you for worldbuilding!

Specificaly for my novels, I used a structure for naming my files that as well and I did'nt use UID at all for most of my digital time :
-> "Character name - A very tall figure @Physical"
-> "Character name - Hiding emotion to protect himself @Psychology"
-> "Peuple name - A family social setting @Mœurs "
-> "City name - Built around bridges @Setting"

It realy eased my searching sessions.

(I realize I'm already kind of doing a similar thing as I "tag" the degrees of certainty of my notes with emojis! ❓❗️➡️ 💡 – talked about this here: https://lioneldavoust.com/2020/des-degres-de-certitude-dans-lecriture-avec-des-emojis )

I really like the idea! I'll see how to implement it into my notes. I can already use it for my tasks statues into my bullet journal, thank you.

(I'm in France in May touring the literary events, if you ever come to one, do come say hello! 😊 )

With pleasure! \o/

Edmund

@KillerWhale said:
How are you finding it for task management? (With the Tasks plugin I suppose)

I'm working with the integrated task management options in Obsidian and additionaly with the Reminder plugin:

andang76

I've discovered Information Mapping Metodology, proposed by Robert Horn.

I haven't found much stuff around, I already use some of the proposed principles (rather foregone, indeed), but I think that the idea of a systematic model usable for writing technical content is very valuable and I think that I will try to develop and use a "my" model, much simpler, inspired by that in any of my goals.

Edmund

@andang76 said:
I've discovered Information Mapping Metodology, proposed by Robert Horn.

Your hint about "Information Mapping" leads me to discover "Mess Maps":

A Mess Map represents a common mental model of the problem at hand that shows the important “chunks” of information and their relationships with other “chunks”.
-- Horn, R.E & Weber, R.P (2007)

It's worth to learn more about. Thank You.