Hello from Poland

Kamil

My name is Kamil

This is my first post, but I've been reading zettelkasten.de and following the forum for several years. I must say, the content here has significantly influenced how I think about intellectual work and writing.

I'm deeply grateful for all the opinions and advice shared here. However, I can’t say I’ve always made the best use of them.

I’ve had a few attempts at building a Zettelkasten system. I started with Zettlr, then switched to Obsidian, only to abandon it for a paper-based approach. Now, I’ve returned to Zettlr again.

Despite these shifts, I’ve managed to write and publish a few articles—some on Substack, some on opinion portals, and even one in a print magazine. However, these efforts felt more like bursts of temporary enthusiasm rather than the consistent, systematic work I see so many forum members exhibiting (and which inspires me to keep coming back here! 😊).

I aim to develop my Zettelkasten as a foundation for my interests in economics, with the hope that it will help me become a well-rounded economist and eventually earn a PhD (I still have an unfinished master’s thesis). At the same time, I’d like to include other interests from my work—such as data analytics and visualization—as well as topics like politics, philosophy, and personal development.

As I mentioned, my biggest challenge with the Zettelkasten method has been consistency. I’ve recently started addressing this by committing to daily writing blocks, and I’m curious to see the outcomes after three months.

Another challenge I face is feeling that my reflective notes—especially those based on my own thoughts rather than material I’ve read or listened to—are shallow or obvious. This makes me question their value in my Zettelkasten. I also often wonder about the “atomicity” of these notes. However, I recently read on this forum about the iterative nature of Zettelkasten, and how notes improve as the writer becomes more engaged in thinking and reflecting on concepts. So, I’m hopeful this process will pay off.

One other thing I’ve been thinking about is how to manage the development of my Zettelkasten. Should I create a structured plan focused on specific problems I want to solve, or should I allow for more flexibility and explore general directions over time? I have to admit, I have a tendency to spontaneously buy books or click on articles whenever something inspires me. While it’s exciting (and probably gives my dopamine circuits a boost), I’m not sure if it’s the most efficient approach for achieving my goals.

That’s enough from me for now. Hello again, everyone, and I hope to participate more actively in discussions here!

GeoEng51

@Kamil

Welcome to writing on the forum (having already been a long-time reader)!

I too have dabbled with different programs to build a ZK, including Zettlr and Obsidian. My favourite programs are The Archive and Logseq, both of which I use extensively now.

How frequently you build up your ZK depends on how much "free" time you have. Despite being retired, I am still fairly busy. I write 1 or 2 zettels a day; sometimes more. I have not had a problem with consistency since starting to use Logseq, for two reasons: 1) Logseq integrates a daily journal and planning tool with your ZK, which lets you enter items into your daily journal page with very little friction, and 2) anything in a daily journal can be tagged, linked to any other zettel or transformed into a separate zettel.

I believe it is best to have a few well-defined purposes for your ZK, which gives you focus. For me, they are: 1) writing a personal history, and 2) compiling interesting philosophical and spiritual ideas. However, only about 70% of the zettels in my ZK fit with those two purposes; the rest are "random" items that interested me from reading or conversations, for which I also created zettels. So, you can have the best of both worlds here.

Initially, don't worry about how well crafted or original the ideas in your ZK are. The quality of your writing and thoughts will vary from zettel to zettel, and as many have shared in this forum, will improve over time. It's more important to capture the thought, no matter how rudimentary, and then have a system in place that encourages you to review zettels regularly to improve them. This may include strengthening the language, logic and clarity; it may also include creating tags and links to other zettels. I enter two tags on every zettel ("unfinished" and "unlinked") and only remove them when I think the zettel is maturing (for "unfinished") and has 3 or more links to other zettels (for "unlinked"). This allows me to search regularly for all zettels with one of those terms and spend some time trying to improve them.

You will find there are not very many brand new ideas in your or anyone else's brain. They may exist but are rare. We spend most of our time intaking, assimilating, understanding and working with the ideas of others. Our contributions to originality or progressing human ideas are often incremental and small (although their results may be profound). However, this should not discourage us from building a ZK, which in my opinion, vastly increases the quantity and quality of our knowledge, and our ability to share that knowledge with others.

P.S. I am 1/4 Polish (paternal grandfather) and 1/4 Ukrainian (paternal grandmother), although I speak neither language. Still, I feel very close to people from that area of the world.

ctietze

Welcome aboard, @Kamil !

However, these efforts felt more like bursts of temporary enthusiasm rather than the consistent, systematic work I see so many forum members exhibiting (and which inspires me to keep coming back here! 😊).

I personally have the occasional writing spark hit me, then I write an article in one go, and then put stuff into the Zettelkasten, too. (Time permitting! With a baby in the family, I am really happy to get Zettel-sized writing done. Sustaining writing bursts for 2 hours just because I had an idea is not possible at any time of day anymore.)

As I mentioned, my biggest challenge with the Zettelkasten method has been consistency. I’ve recently started addressing this by committing to daily writing blocks, and I’m curious to see the outcomes after three months.

Do feel free and heartedly invited to share this journey in the forums! The current projects category is made for this. We have very little "daily logs" like that, but if that's your jam, or maybe helps with accountability even, start a topic there 💪

I have to admit, I have a tendency to spontaneously buy books or click on articles whenever something inspires me. While it’s exciting (and probably gives my dopamine circuits a boost), I’m not sure if it’s the most efficient approach for achieving my goals.

I'm not sure, either! If you do have specific goals, then "buy whatever is below your cursor" doesn't sound like a strategy that would produce a planned-for result.
https://zettelkasten.de/posts/collectors-fallacy-and-reward-dependency/

If you struggle with this, some impulse control can be achieved with lifehacks like making it easy to append items to a "I want this" list and review it so that you look at items e.g. 30 days later and then re-evaluate 'in cold blood' whether you still want the thing.

With potential research projects and interesting topics and hobbies, put things on a thematic list and then see later whether you want to follow up on this.