How to incorporate new zettels and ideas within a long-term writing project?

ajr

Hi everyone! Struggled as to what category to put this under - I guess it pertains to workflow, writing and the zettelkasten method more broadly...

I'm a PhD candidate and (inconsistently) use techniques shared here to organise my notes and ideas. It's been a slow burn for me, but more and more I'm seeing the potential benefits of the zettelkasten approach. But I had a question about dealing with the messiness of writing over the long term alongside note-taking in the zettelkasten.

I'll try and give a specific example. I'm currently working on one chapter of my thesis. I'm going through a literature note for something that I read for this chapter, and I'm seeing ideas that could be worthy to turn into their own seperate notes/zettels, and I could see potential use for them in a specific chapter, different from the one I'm currently working on. I don't want to deviate from the main writing goal I have right now - the current chapter - but I want to make sure these ideas are singled out and can find their way back into the thesis at some point, rather than just lost/buried in a literature note like so so many ideas I've had during the PhD (honestly this has been my biggest curse, the sheer amount of ideas that could have made their way into proper writing sooner but are just buried in literature notes, but I digress...).

Working on processing this piece of literature/working my way through this literature note is an isolated activity, so of course I can just write up any zettels as I go, irrespective of the bigger writing project. That's fine. But how do I make sure that these zettels don't just get abandoned, and do in fact make their way back into my writing? There's so many things I come across that could be relevant for later or earlier chapters that I don't want to get lost. Would love some advice as to how I might ensure that my notetaking practice can be set up in such a way that my ideas will always make it back to the bigger writing project eventually?

Happily to clarify anything, and thank you in advance! Any help in navigating the messiness of notetaking and writing would be greatly appreciated, because it takes a huge toll on me!

JoshA

I'd create a structure note governing your project directly in your Zettelkasten. Use it as a thinking canvas for your project. Collect references to ideas you come across that you think are relevant to your project. If you notice you have multiple Zettels expressing the same/similar idea, create a more general Zettel that governs the general idea, and link to those Zettels. Then you can just use the general idea in your project note. This is how you deal with complexity.

Drowning in literature notes means you are not properly compressing those notes into more general ideas. You're probably dealing with the same idea, where those literature notes represent evidence for the idea.

"but I want to make sure these ideas are singled out and can find their way back into the thesis at some point"

It sounds like you also need an outline of some sorts, mapping each chapter. Here I'd keep an outline of chapters with ideas to discuss in each chapter.

Reference the project note / ZK when you're writing the thesis.

andang76

Three quick advices to avoid the loss of your thoughts when you are processing, and your notes during time:

• use espressive titles as much as possible for your notes
• don't leave single notes in their isolation. Linking is your friend. Connect notes together, identify relationships for the ideas, concepts, contents contained into them. It's easy to find relationships. A single thought can be part of a more complex concept, a part of a theory, a special case of a more general idea or can be an abstraction for another idea, can have an analogy with another idea or can be the opposite of another idea, can be an argument, a counterargument, an example for a thing, a cause or an effect for a thing, and so on. When they are linked together, it's harder to loss them.
• learn how to build a structure note, a map of content, a sequence of notes or similar things. Constructs that implement an organized collection of notes that have a meaning as a whole, or have a purpose. They are useful in many phases of your work, when you have to extract concepts from a book or capture your ideas (brainstorm phase), consolidate what you have captured writing a lot of notes, and writing your chapters retrieving and ordering your notes. Don't leave your notes in a totally flat bunch, when the bunch grows it become hard to retrieve them when you have to reuse. My note system is full of bullet lists of links to other notes, every bullet list is a focused view of a selected, organized set of notes that I can use in a specific moment. If I don't remember, for a purpose, the exact note I've written a year ago, I remember that exists a structure note, suitable for that purpose, that contains a link to that note, so I can easily meet it again today.

About these advices, there is much to say, and it was already said.
I'll try to find the most suitable resources in this forum later.

For example, I remember these topics about managing for idea storms:

https://forum.zettelkasten.de/discussion/2908/turning-brain-dumps-into-zettels-using-outlines

https://forum.zettelkasten.de/discussion/comment/19153/#Comment_19153

Sascha

1. Create a note in your ZK and process the idea diligently.
2. Hopefully, you have some project management for your PhD. There you create a task "Consider [ID note title] for XY". Give yourself thorough instructions on how to connect the idea to your PhD. The task should be clear, though how to accomplish it is most likely a riddle.

Will

@ajr, the advice in @Josh, @andang76, and @Sascha's posts is unquestionably great. The thinking canvas or structure note undoubtedly helps and is a tool for long-term projects. As part of your thinking canvas, you must have some project management.

Forgetting about a note is a worry that needs to be put to rest. I'd suggest a low cognitive overhead approach of tagging all notes associated with your ph.D #ph.D and an associated chapter, i.e., #Chapter1, #Chapter2, etc. When writing chapter 67, you'd search on the tag #Chapter67, and all the forgotten notes related to the chapter's theme would emerge. Other tags could be used, but you'd want them organized in an outline for your thesis, which is the framework of your thinking canvas and project management.

You want to strike a balance between the essential aspects of project management and actually doing the writing.

JasperMcFly

Had same issue.

I assign an ID to my sources and source (lit) notes. Ahrens' Smart Notes is 0049 for example, and its source notes are 0049-1, 0049-2 etc.

On your manuscript, go ahead and write a placeholder in the chapter you expect that other idea to be relevant.

Example: I am working on Chapter 1, see an idea from Ahrens I want to expound upon in Chp. 3, so in the outline for Chp.3, I'll put in a place holder sentence referring to my source note, "see idea about decontextualization - tie this to idea that concept transferability is a basis of knowledge 0049-1"

This relieves you from the burden of including every single point in a source note into a main Zettel. Not everything from a source note has to make it into a main note before you start writing.

ajr

Thank you @JoshA, @andang76, @Sascha, @Will, @JasperMcFly! I didn't want to leave you hanging for a thank you, already your suggestions have clarified things for me quite a lot. There might be a couple of things I'll reply to individually once I think through your comments a bit more but your suggestions make a lot of sense. Structure notes and overviews, be they independent or corresponding to an ongoing chapter outline, plus good notemaking habits and making sure tasks pertaining to my writing/notetaking go into my task manager are some really great takeaways.