I've ordered and has just arrived yesterday. Start reading :-)
A thing I don't like, the message "you have to do it like this". My experience about zettelkasten, since I discovered it two years ago from today, is that there is a lot of space for taking what is useful from different models and combine according to personal attitude and needs.
I agree with him that there is a lot of junk in many explanations of the method that can be found around, but I find problematic the approach of following the luhman model as a religion. Luhman zk is a model that many guys can't follow, but this doesn't mean that they can't try to do "a zettelkasten". The message "there can be only one" close the gates for many people.
I still don't know if the book will confirm this tendency in all the pages, anyway. This is the impressions having read the first pages.
My purpose is reading it for taking and evaluating his ideas as something that I could integrate in my already defined method, not to embrace the method entirely.
I've seen the video of Scott with Sascha, and already in that video I had good takeaways. I've ordered the book after that video.
Perhaps Sascha can give you an accurate assessment, since he has also interviewed the author of the book. I read it, too, and I can say that it is not for everyone, but everyone can get something out of it if you read it with an open mind. Scheper came to the Zettelkasten world from a marketing perspective, heavily inspired by copywriters such as Gary Halbert, so his writings have a hint of that world. I find it to be a good resource for an analog Zettelkasten, minus the part where he suggests established categories ahead of time.
Thriving with fibromyalgia by becoming a pain expert. panaousis.com
Scheper's book is quite tedious to read; lots of repetition, tangents, and lots of "we'll talk about that later" promises that you forget about and are never sure materialize as promised.
Unfortunately there is little value in forcing yourself through the bloviating style, as many of the "concepts" are not presented accurately. As an example, he states repeatedly that writing a note by hand "imprints" the idea in your memory; here, he co-opts the term "imprinting" from biology (like a baby duck on its mom), but he uses this term incorrectly as that is not what imprinting is.
Not to mention silly statements like "I contend that an Antinet.... is closer to enabling human evolution than digital tools...." Mmmkay.
As you read, you may wonder, well, if I can push aside the marketing mumbo jumbo and inaccurate concept presentation, maybe there is at least some helpful information about how to create a Luhmannian slip box? But, this is not done very well either. Unclear instructions on numbering on top of the recommendation to use predefined categories makes the numbering advice useless.
I do feel there are moments of passable prose and insight where he brushes on some of the emergent properties of a slip box: randomness, association, comparison, etc. but again this is not done in a consistently correct manner.
So, Antinet should be read through the lens that it is inaccurate marketing copy riddled with "almost well-presented" ideas that you will need to independently validate, but too inconsistent to use as a foundational text.
Thanks everyone! All your comments resonate with what I’ve read on Amazon reviews of the book. I’ll stick to focusing on “How To Take Smart Notes” by Ahrens.
I've just read the first 40 pages.
It's enough to say that it's not a good book, I'm sorry.
I've already met two concepts, that are false and poisonous.
Zettelkasten (every zettelkasten, not only antinet) is less useful for artist,, software engineer, etc.
Digital systems produce lesser quality than an analog.
They are both objectively contestabile.
They are not argumented.
The proof of their falsity is the experiences of the users of this forum an even outside them. I'm myself a counterexample for both. A very satisfied software engineer that use a digital system.
I'm just at the start of this book, but reading these concepts allows me to say that the book doesn't present the Zettelkasten model in the right way.
Even if the author had a bad experience with digital tools, this doesn't mean that digital doesn't work.
There are bad digital approaches, but good approaches too.
He can't have enough study cases about experiences of others, so the certain for exclude targets from the use of zettelkasten.
It's not the right way to propose a model.
I can't advice this book to a beginner, it misleads. It has to be read by a person with already enough experience for a critical reading and able to identify and dodge the issues like the two cited above.
@andang76 said:
It's enough to say that it's not a good book, I'm sorry.
I can't advice this book to a beginner, it misleads. It has to be read by a person with already enough experience for a critical reading and able to identify and dodge the issues.
Have you already gained some useful insights (key terms and statements) from this book that you would like to share?
Edmund Gröpl
100% organic thinking. Less than 5% AI-generated ideas.
@andang76 said:
It's enough to say that it's not a good book, I'm sorry.
I can't advice this book to a beginner, it misleads. It has to be read by a person with already enough experience for a critical reading and able to identify and dodge the issues.
Have you already gained some useful insights (key terms and statements) from this book that you would like to share?
Still too few read pages.
It's valuable the "history" of his journey, from the start from zero to the analog zettelkasten, passing through the digital experience.
It is true that there is the risk to have a bad experience with digital tools, but can't be made absolute.
It could be used for developing a lesson learned, but here we don't have a good lesson learned.
"Digital doesn't work" is only a personal bad experience, is not a truth to spread.
I will continue to read.
Having watched the interview with Sascha I think I've already captured what I think it is the main essence of analog Zettelkasten.
Hard limits of analog, due to its physical nature, impose an implicit but solid discipline that in case of using digital you need to impose you on yourself.
On digital you can cut-and-paste, you can go very fast, you can collect, you can write without physical limits, and it's an environment full of opportunities for distractions.
In analog you can't, you don't have this freedom, you are forced to rewrite for example, but the frictioning and slowness derived from this is not the obstacle, is the main enabling factor for the thought development characteristic of the zettelkasten.
With an analog zettelkasten the system itself forces you to move on straight tracks, in digital you have to keep the direction straight with your awareness
There are some good things, but a very big, enormous issue that I had already anticipated, that I hoped was only present in the first pages.
The whole book develops a very, very, very strong position against digital way of having a zettelkasten. According to the author, a system like his or luhman is the only way.
This position is both extreme and completely wrong. Almost all the presented arguments against a digital zettelkasten can be easily refuted by an average experienced digital zettelkaster. Almost all the benefits of an analog zettelkasten can be translated to a digital one, and all the presented limits and issues of a digital zettelkasten can be mitigated or resolved.
Because of this pain point, I can't advice this book to who wants to learn zettelkasten starting from zero. He would learn something wrong (digital doesn't work, analog is the only way), not capable of recognizing wrong positions.
Not considering this issue, the book is pretty big but I've not retained many new ideas. This happened not because the book doesn't contains many and valuable ideas, but I've already met a lot of the content inside it in other read sources, so I didn't gain much in terms of new ideas. Much of the principles overlaps with already read principles. Another guy could obtain much more If he has not read those ideas from other parts.
I don't consider it a bad purchase, I grew up a little reading it, but It need to be contextualized. It has much content, but also ideas that I advice to others to not believe.
I ordered the Kindle version of the book on Amazon. I could join the chorus, but instead of doing this, I'll mention that as much as I like paper and pencil or pen and paper, I make too many mistakes with pen and paper to progress. I compulsively tear out pages of my notebooks and redo pages one through nine to correct an error on page ten. I might have to abandon the notebook if a mistake occurs after the central page. I cannot stand to look at crossed-out text and formulas. Sometimes, the arguments become smaller and smaller, winding around the page where they might fit until the writing becomes unintelligible. I cannot stop rewriting text and formulas on fresh paper, tearing out pages of notebooks as necessary until they are correct without striking through the errors. I have ruined and thinned out more notebooks than I can count with this tic. An analog Zettelkasten does not work for me for this reason—too many discards. I am stuck with digital. With analog, I am hopelessly inefficient. Having a neologism like Antinet, the correct and only way to achieve Zettel Nirvana, frees me to live through the samsara of the incorrect and misguided digital Zettelkasten I can use.
GitHub. Erdős #2. Problems worthy of attack / prove their worth by hitting back. -- Piet Hein. Alter ego: Erel Dogg (not the first). CC BY-SA 4.0.
I read the book, completely, inside and out and then again.
Sure, it’s a bit long, especially the first ten chapters can be a bit tedious. Then again, who said you need to read a book whole? Hochselektiv lesen, anyone? Chapter 11 gives a very brief guide to starting a Zettelkasten. Sure, the style and language betray the writer’s origins. That’s a matter of taste, of course. Mind that it’s not a novel you read for pleasure, but a reference you read for information. Never mind the style. It’s certainly accessible and certainly not opaque. Sure, the writer is very opinionated on his approach. But nobody says you have to agree with him.
That out of the way, I liked it quite a bit. First, I think that if you want to start a Zettelkasten in the Luhmann way there is no better, more detailed introduction than this one. It goes into all the details, both philosophical and operational, and it provides many examples, both of Luhmann and of Scheper himself. Second, the detailed exposure of the paper-based with alpha-numeric ID approach provides a good counterpoint to the digital approach with date-IDs. Both have their strengths and weaknesses.
On paper you can write “untethered”, paper forces you more to avoid copy-pasting, paper notes can be taken out and put on a big table to provide overview, and alpha-numeric ID are just a smoother and more natural way to continue trains of thought (yes, I have read all the discussions on those). Digital is more flexible, sometimes you do want to copy-paste a quote, sometimes a note does become longer than one A6 notecard, sometimes you do want to branche out in more than two ways, some people do have bad handwriting (guilty m’lud), cannot stand mistakes or crosscuts (see @ZettelDistraction above), and some people (me again) are paranoid about backups and losing data.
Summing up: in my opinion the book is worth reading in full, agreeing or disagreeing with it, and then choosing the approach that fits your personal situation and habit best, while being aware of its advantages and disadvantages.
The message "there can be only one" close the gates for many people.
It is what he wanted. In his newsletter, he described the importance of creating a "crew" of yours as you want to make a living from writing. You are not reading a book, you are reading a marketting hook to join his herd.
@erikh said:
I read the book, completely, inside and out and then again.
If only there were a checkmark feature for forums where all commenters are required to verify if they have, in fact, read the book they are commenting on...
That out of the way, I liked it quite a bit. First, I think that if you want to start a Zettelkasten in the Luhmann way there is no better, more detailed introduction than this one. It goes into all the details, both philosophical and operational, and it provides many examples, both of Luhmann and of Scheper himself. Second, the detailed exposure of the paper-based with alpha-numeric ID approach provides a good counterpoint to the digital approach with date-IDs. Both have their strengths and weaknesses.
Thank you. This summary is very helpful.
On paper you can write “untethered”, paper forces you more to avoid copy-pasting, paper notes can be taken out and put on a big table to provide overview, and alpha-numeric ID are just a smoother and more natural way to continue trains of thought (yes, I have read all the discussions on those). Digital is more flexible, sometimes you do want to copy-paste a quote, sometimes a note does become longer than one A6 notecard, sometimes you do want to branche out in more than two ways, some people do have bad handwriting (guilty m’lud), cannot stand mistakes or crosscuts (see @ZettelDistraction above), and some people (me again) are paranoid about backups and losing data.
I tend to try to do both - write analog when possible for those mental benefits, but take quick photos (notebook pages, cards, whatever) for digital backup. OCR can even make these backups searchable! Can probably be put into a digital ZK as well.
Summing up: in my opinion the book is worth reading in full, agreeing or disagreeing with it, and then choosing the approach that fits your personal situation and habit best, while being aware of its advantages and disadvantages.
I read both an early draft of Scheper's book as well as the published one and typically do not recommend it for a litany of reasons, many of which have been mentioned in the thread above.
The better recommendation currently is Bob Doto's new book from July which I've also read both early drafts and published copies.
No piece of information is superior to any other. Power lies in having them all on file and then finding the connections. There are always connections; you have only to want to find them. —Umberto Eco
Comments
Disqualified immediately in my eyes when he submits (as I recall) that you should start your note with categories.
"A writer should write what he has to say and not speak it." - Ernest Hemingway
PKM: Bear + DEVONthink, tasks: OmniFocus, production: Scrivener / Ableton Live.
I've ordered and has just arrived yesterday. Start reading :-)
A thing I don't like, the message "you have to do it like this". My experience about zettelkasten, since I discovered it two years ago from today, is that there is a lot of space for taking what is useful from different models and combine according to personal attitude and needs.
I agree with him that there is a lot of junk in many explanations of the method that can be found around, but I find problematic the approach of following the luhman model as a religion. Luhman zk is a model that many guys can't follow, but this doesn't mean that they can't try to do "a zettelkasten". The message "there can be only one" close the gates for many people.
I still don't know if the book will confirm this tendency in all the pages, anyway. This is the impressions having read the first pages.
My purpose is reading it for taking and evaluating his ideas as something that I could integrate in my already defined method, not to embrace the method entirely.
I've seen the video of Scott with Sascha, and already in that video I had good takeaways. I've ordered the book after that video.
Perhaps Sascha can give you an accurate assessment, since he has also interviewed the author of the book. I read it, too, and I can say that it is not for everyone, but everyone can get something out of it if you read it with an open mind. Scheper came to the Zettelkasten world from a marketing perspective, heavily inspired by copywriters such as Gary Halbert, so his writings have a hint of that world. I find it to be a good resource for an analog Zettelkasten, minus the part where he suggests established categories ahead of time.
Thriving with fibromyalgia by becoming a pain expert.
panaousis.com
Scheper's book is quite tedious to read; lots of repetition, tangents, and lots of "we'll talk about that later" promises that you forget about and are never sure materialize as promised.
Unfortunately there is little value in forcing yourself through the bloviating style, as many of the "concepts" are not presented accurately. As an example, he states repeatedly that writing a note by hand "imprints" the idea in your memory; here, he co-opts the term "imprinting" from biology (like a baby duck on its mom), but he uses this term incorrectly as that is not what imprinting is.
Not to mention silly statements like "I contend that an Antinet.... is closer to enabling human evolution than digital tools...." Mmmkay.
As you read, you may wonder, well, if I can push aside the marketing mumbo jumbo and inaccurate concept presentation, maybe there is at least some helpful information about how to create a Luhmannian slip box? But, this is not done very well either. Unclear instructions on numbering on top of the recommendation to use predefined categories makes the numbering advice useless.
I do feel there are moments of passable prose and insight where he brushes on some of the emergent properties of a slip box: randomness, association, comparison, etc. but again this is not done in a consistently correct manner.
So, Antinet should be read through the lens that it is inaccurate marketing copy riddled with "almost well-presented" ideas that you will need to independently validate, but too inconsistent to use as a foundational text.
Thanks everyone! All your comments resonate with what I’ve read on Amazon reviews of the book. I’ll stick to focusing on “How To Take Smart Notes” by Ahrens.
And there is a second book worth reading: “A system for writing” by Bob Doto.
Edmund Gröpl
100% organic thinking. Less than 5% AI-generated ideas.
I also recommend Doto's book.
I've just read the first 40 pages.
It's enough to say that it's not a good book, I'm sorry.
I've already met two concepts, that are false and poisonous.
Zettelkasten (every zettelkasten, not only antinet) is less useful for artist,, software engineer, etc.
Digital systems produce lesser quality than an analog.
They are both objectively contestabile.
They are not argumented.
The proof of their falsity is the experiences of the users of this forum an even outside them. I'm myself a counterexample for both. A very satisfied software engineer that use a digital system.
I'm just at the start of this book, but reading these concepts allows me to say that the book doesn't present the Zettelkasten model in the right way.
Even if the author had a bad experience with digital tools, this doesn't mean that digital doesn't work.
There are bad digital approaches, but good approaches too.
He can't have enough study cases about experiences of others, so the certain for exclude targets from the use of zettelkasten.
It's not the right way to propose a model.
I can't advice this book to a beginner, it misleads. It has to be read by a person with already enough experience for a critical reading and able to identify and dodge the issues like the two cited above.
Have you already gained some useful insights (key terms and statements) from this book that you would like to share?
Edmund Gröpl
100% organic thinking. Less than 5% AI-generated ideas.
Still too few read pages.
It's valuable the "history" of his journey, from the start from zero to the analog zettelkasten, passing through the digital experience.
It is true that there is the risk to have a bad experience with digital tools, but can't be made absolute.
It could be used for developing a lesson learned, but here we don't have a good lesson learned.
"Digital doesn't work" is only a personal bad experience, is not a truth to spread.
I will continue to read.
Having watched the interview with Sascha I think I've already captured what I think it is the main essence of analog Zettelkasten.
Hard limits of analog, due to its physical nature, impose an implicit but solid discipline that in case of using digital you need to impose you on yourself.
On digital you can cut-and-paste, you can go very fast, you can collect, you can write without physical limits, and it's an environment full of opportunities for distractions.
In analog you can't, you don't have this freedom, you are forced to rewrite for example, but the frictioning and slowness derived from this is not the obstacle, is the main enabling factor for the thought development characteristic of the zettelkasten.
With an analog zettelkasten the system itself forces you to move on straight tracks, in digital you have to keep the direction straight with your awareness
I've finished the book.
There are some good things, but a very big, enormous issue that I had already anticipated, that I hoped was only present in the first pages.
The whole book develops a very, very, very strong position against digital way of having a zettelkasten. According to the author, a system like his or luhman is the only way.
This position is both extreme and completely wrong. Almost all the presented arguments against a digital zettelkasten can be easily refuted by an average experienced digital zettelkaster. Almost all the benefits of an analog zettelkasten can be translated to a digital one, and all the presented limits and issues of a digital zettelkasten can be mitigated or resolved.
Because of this pain point, I can't advice this book to who wants to learn zettelkasten starting from zero. He would learn something wrong (digital doesn't work, analog is the only way), not capable of recognizing wrong positions.
Not considering this issue, the book is pretty big but I've not retained many new ideas. This happened not because the book doesn't contains many and valuable ideas, but I've already met a lot of the content inside it in other read sources, so I didn't gain much in terms of new ideas. Much of the principles overlaps with already read principles. Another guy could obtain much more If he has not read those ideas from other parts.
I don't consider it a bad purchase, I grew up a little reading it, but It need to be contextualized. It has much content, but also ideas that I advice to others to not believe.
I ordered the Kindle version of the book on Amazon. I could join the chorus, but instead of doing this, I'll mention that as much as I like paper and pencil or pen and paper, I make too many mistakes with pen and paper to progress. I compulsively tear out pages of my notebooks and redo pages one through nine to correct an error on page ten. I might have to abandon the notebook if a mistake occurs after the central page. I cannot stand to look at crossed-out text and formulas. Sometimes, the arguments become smaller and smaller, winding around the page where they might fit until the writing becomes unintelligible. I cannot stop rewriting text and formulas on fresh paper, tearing out pages of notebooks as necessary until they are correct without striking through the errors. I have ruined and thinned out more notebooks than I can count with this tic. An analog Zettelkasten does not work for me for this reason—too many discards. I am stuck with digital. With analog, I am hopelessly inefficient. Having a neologism like Antinet, the correct and only way to achieve Zettel Nirvana, frees me to live through the samsara of the incorrect and misguided digital Zettelkasten I can use.
GitHub. Erdős #2. Problems worthy of attack / prove their worth by hitting back. -- Piet Hein. Alter ego: Erel Dogg (not the first). CC BY-SA 4.0.
I read the book, completely, inside and out and then again.
Sure, it’s a bit long, especially the first ten chapters can be a bit tedious. Then again, who said you need to read a book whole? Hochselektiv lesen, anyone? Chapter 11 gives a very brief guide to starting a Zettelkasten. Sure, the style and language betray the writer’s origins. That’s a matter of taste, of course. Mind that it’s not a novel you read for pleasure, but a reference you read for information. Never mind the style. It’s certainly accessible and certainly not opaque. Sure, the writer is very opinionated on his approach. But nobody says you have to agree with him.
That out of the way, I liked it quite a bit. First, I think that if you want to start a Zettelkasten in the Luhmann way there is no better, more detailed introduction than this one. It goes into all the details, both philosophical and operational, and it provides many examples, both of Luhmann and of Scheper himself. Second, the detailed exposure of the paper-based with alpha-numeric ID approach provides a good counterpoint to the digital approach with date-IDs. Both have their strengths and weaknesses.
On paper you can write “untethered”, paper forces you more to avoid copy-pasting, paper notes can be taken out and put on a big table to provide overview, and alpha-numeric ID are just a smoother and more natural way to continue trains of thought (yes, I have read all the discussions on those). Digital is more flexible, sometimes you do want to copy-paste a quote, sometimes a note does become longer than one A6 notecard, sometimes you do want to branche out in more than two ways, some people do have bad handwriting (guilty m’lud), cannot stand mistakes or crosscuts (see @ZettelDistraction above), and some people (me again) are paranoid about backups and losing data.
Summing up: in my opinion the book is worth reading in full, agreeing or disagreeing with it, and then choosing the approach that fits your personal situation and habit best, while being aware of its advantages and disadvantages.
@andang76 wrote
It is what he wanted. In his newsletter, he described the importance of creating a "crew" of yours as you want to make a living from writing. You are not reading a book, you are reading a marketting hook to join his herd.
If only there were a checkmark feature for forums where all commenters are required to verify if they have, in fact, read the book they are commenting on...
Thank you. This summary is very helpful.
I tend to try to do both - write analog when possible for those mental benefits, but take quick photos (notebook pages, cards, whatever) for digital backup. OCR can even make these backups searchable! Can probably be put into a digital ZK as well.
Thanks again.
I read both an early draft of Scheper's book as well as the published one and typically do not recommend it for a litany of reasons, many of which have been mentioned in the thread above.
The better recommendation currently is Bob Doto's new book from July which I've also read both early drafts and published copies.
I also have a list of others which may be helpful if you need alternate perspectives or want something geared toward a particular use-case or sub-niche (history, sociology, etc.): https://boffosocko.com/2024/01/18/note-taking-and-knowledge-management-resources-for-students/#Recommended reading
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Analog is the way. 🗃️
Scott P. Scheper
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Analog is only one way