Integrating Zettelkasten with University
Hi, I am currently pursuing an undergraduate in computer engineering. I have mixed experiences applying the Zettelkasten method to my study, and I wanted to get some suggestions.
I noticed that I punctually gain a deeper understanding of any topic when I process it in my Zettelkasten, but I tend to get drifted away by details. This would not be a problem if I didn’t have a time constraint.
My current method for studying technical subjects (physics in this case) is to solve countless exercises until solving them becomes automatic.
Given that, I am wondering if it makes sense, and whether or not is time effective, to add some hard exercises with an explanation in my Zettelkasten.
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Hi Mauro (are you italian?),
I don't have experience of using Zettelkasten at university (discovered too late, unfortunately), so please consider my opinions with great caution.
This is an important premise. I don't want to lead you down the wrong path with advices that I can think of today but I have never actually applied on my own.
1) yes, time can be an issue than need to be managed for me. If you use Zettelkasten, you need to find the way to contain the work into your available hours, in the end.
2) I prepared physics exams thirty years ago. Almost certainly I had my own reference of selected solved exercises, it was one of the tools of my study (together theory book, lecture notes and daily exercise practice). My catalog wasn't curated like a zettelkasten, probably, but in the end it was a very similar method to yours.
Two things to say, about:
a) the very important thing is that you make this catalog on your own. If you take this catalog of exercises done by someone else, it's not as effective as one you build yourself. It's the same general lesson taken from my Zettelkasten experience: if I build my Zettelkasten I have much more benefits than simply reading the Zettelkasten of another guy about the same things. My zettelkasten/catalog is the result of my hard thinking, reading zettelkasten/catalog of another is a very different process with very different results.
b) if making this catalog into a real Zettelkasten form takes too time, consider a lighter and faster representation, having to remain in the previous point of time issue. A simple notebook on its own.
I don't personally see a catalog of physics exercises a lifelong resource for a software engineer, so making a full fledged zettelkasten on it could be a little overkill. Invest your time on it, in the form of a zettelkasten, only if you feel it is useful, otherwise you can still use the idea but consider simplify the representation.
3) maybe you could consider to develop into your Zettelkasten a more abstract/conceptual form of your exercise practice. Developing something like "patterns" or "models" or "templates" for problem solving (I don't know if you are already confident with these concepts).
I studied physics thirty years ago, so I can't give you practical examples (I've forgotten all...). What I would write into my Zettelkasten could be, probably, the conceptual elements of how to solve physics exercises that I've discovered over time during my practices, rather than countless instances of solved exercises.
Taken a solved exercise, extract the concepts that bring me to solve it and I can reuse for solving others, more or less similar. Trasforming exercises into patterns and exercise principles and techniques.
This is how I would work today inspired by the zettelkasten principles (and I apply something similar in my work, now), but I repeat, again, I haven't adopted for preparing my physics exam, so I can't guarantee it will work for me either, let alone recommend it to you.
4) You can try your original idea, my idea, both ideas, something in the middle, other suggestions, but once you use one or more of this stuff, check if the chosen method works.
After few sessions of the method, assess if you have learned physics a little more than before, and if you have improved your exercise solving skill. Your final goal is this.
Do I already wrote "please consider my opinions with great caution"? :-)
Thank you very much! This was actually very insightful, especially the part about extracting patterns. I'm going try this method and report back.
P.S Yes, I'm Italian, although in the US my name gets always mistaken for a Brazilian one ahah
Hey, I wanted to thank you again! Your third point was very valuable, for the first time I was able to properly integrate the Zettelkasten with my university studies, and it also resulted in a great grade.
Oh, very happy to hear it worked :-)
@Mauro Congrats! If you have the time, feel invited to share a "post-mortem" of your process, the changes you implemented, and what you believe contributed to your success as long as the memory is still fresh
Author at Zettelkasten.de • https://christiantietze.de/
Sure!
I’ve been working on my zettelkasten for roughly a year and a half. When I started university, I tried implementing it with mediocre results since I would easily get lost in details. I attend a hybrid university: I follow classes online, have no homework, and go in every few months to take exams. This lack of structure led me to waste a lot of time at the beginning of each study session and forced me to rush at the end.
When preparing for an exam I go through the textbooks applying the Barbell method. At first I tried to understand every section, then this comment on Math Exchange made me realize that this might not be the best approach. Now, I highlight interesting sections without worrying too much about what I don’t understand. If something is important, it will come up again.
This time, following @andang76 ’s suggestion, I started creating models from my exercises. Every time I couldn’t solve an exercise I would build a model on my zettelkasten or improve a pre-existing one.
Theoretical questions (like proving a statement about entropy, discussing and defining Maxwell’s laws, etc.) easily sucked me into a rabbit hole. This time I decided to be more intentional with my time. Whenever I started processing theory, I would write down my goal for the session.
I’m very interested in what I study and genuinely enjoy working on my zettelkasten, so I decided to allocate part of my study time to “open work”. I find it useful because it’s a less intensive and more random process, allowing me to dive deeper into specific topics that interest me.
Between finishing my bachelor’s and later my master’s I have roughly (hopefully) three more years left, so I’m sure this workflow will improve.
My student days were long gone, but I wished that I had used the note-taking system of the kind I'm building for myself. I envy that you are in a position to be able to start the endeavor so early.
I see that certain topics don't neatly fit into the (typical) Zettelkasten methodology. I've also been wondering how best to incorporate it into learning STEM-oriented subjects.
One thing I definitely would and have incorporated into my routine is the Anki-style learning. I use Org Roam/Emacs with Anki integration, so when things come up that I want to turn into Anki cards, I write them in a way so that I can upload to my Anki system via the Internet. Zettelkasten is great for deep thinking, but there are things that you want to put into muscle memory (sort of), and for those, spaced repetition is still very much preferred, in my opinion. So if I have nuggets of knowledge that I want to make part of my reflex (e.g., math formula, tricks to solve certain equations, terminologies/concepts that I keep forgetting), they are in my notes to be synchronized with my Anki system. (Anki parses LaTeX via MathJax, so it's great for math-oriented contents, too.)
I don't study physics any more, but in preparation for software engineering (or data science) interviews, I've converted quite a few of algorithms and data structure exercises into Anki cards in this way. I think that this is a good way to incorporate spaced repetition into note-taking systems.
Hi! Funny you mention that because a few months ago, I gave Anki a serious shot, but unfortunately it didn’t meet my expectations. One possible explanation is that I only used Anki intensively for a month, whereas I’ve been using my Zettelkasten for a year and half.
I agree with you that when faced with lots notions, Anki may be more efficient. However the connections between the zettels make the Zettelkasten much more valuable to me. I’m currently studying circuit theory, and the connections to my electrodynamics zettels resulted to be very useful in understanding this new topic. Another problem I have with Anki is that I like to go all-in on specific topics for a certain period of time, and I don’t think I would keep up with the repetitions for every other topic. I doubt I would review my flashcards for a whole year, but I know that if, a year from now, I want to expand my physics knowledge, my Zettelkasten will provide an easy entry point.
My zettelkasten is still far from its final form—I have roughly 1600 notes. But if we were to assume a (probably inaccurate) one-to-one correspondence between flashcards and zettels ,I would much rather have ten thousand interconnected zettels than ten thousand flashcards.
It’s true that some formulas or algorithms aren’t readily available in my mind, but I think this can be explained by the fact that I haven’t truly applied them. This could be a bug or a feature. On one hand, it’s true that I couldn’t type out the square root algorithm for divisors counting, but on the other hand, I’ve never really had a reason to use it. Anki would have me memorise it even without a practical application.
That said, I’m still a novice when it comes to learning, and a year from now, my opinion could easily change
You do make a good point about the importance of making connections as the centerpiece of Zettelkasten workflow. Spaced repetition is simply a supplementary approach that could be used for augmenting long-term memory:
If you don't have any difficulty remembering things, then that's a good thing (and thank your parents for bestowing a good brain...). Anki shines on the material that are occasionally important (e.g., job interview exercises) but not frequently encountered in the normal course of learning and knowledge management. For that, you might need to create opportunities to remind yourself. If your Zettelkasten naturally provides quasi-optimal spaced repetitions, then the effort may be redundant.
It sounds like you're finding value in the Zettelkasten method but struggling with time efficiency. Since your main goal is mastering problem-solving in physics, you might consider using Zettelkasten selectively—perhaps for key concepts, problem-solving strategies, or mistakes you.