Field Report #8: How I Process a Chapter of a Book • Zettelkasten Method
Field Report #8: How I Process a Chapter of a Book • Zettelkasten Method
Don't demote yourself to a passive processing machine. Start with an intent when you process a chapter. Ask yourself: What do I want to build?
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Dear Zettlers,
I try to write each article with a very specific message. This article seems to be about a use case on how to process a chapter of a book. The true message is:
It is a misconception that you just put stuff in your Zettelkasten and then by miracle something amazing happens.
I try to track down the cause-effect-relationships of the various components of each method. Take the common place book for example: It brings you into the habit of writing ideas down. If you stick to the habit, you'll get a positive effect.
This is what the Zettelkasten Method can bring you also. Any method, even unstructured journaling will bring you this positive effect.
The problem is that people aren't nuanced and say: "See, everything works."
Yes, a lot of things improve. But imagine you want to improve you training as a martial artist. You ask your dad to spare a big tree stomp. You lift it, carry it, even throw it. Awesome. You did some strength training and your fighting benefits from it. That doesn't mean that this tree stomp training is on par with sophisticated strength training. And surely, it is not a complete conditioning routine for martial arts.
We are still living in a time, in which very few people have a knowledge work practice similar to a training practice. Having a common place book and writing in it as a habit, is way better than what the average guy does. But just a fraction of the stimulus that a more complete practice can give you.
Please read the following article with this in mind:
https://zettelkasten.de/posts/field-report-8-how-i-process-book-chapter/
I am a Zettler
@Sascha, I truly admire your goal and the remarkably high level of your understanding! However, isn’t Zettelkasten work much more than just project-oriented work (aka asking one specific question whilst reading)?
For me, the key lies in integrating both aspects: using the Zettelkasten to gain long-term insights while simultaneously applying it to specific projects. I see it as a dynamic interplay where the system feeds both curiosity-driven exploration and focused outcomes.
I'd love to hear more about how you would balance these dimensions in the Zettelkasten practice. How do you approach keeping the system adaptable for broad knowledge while staying effective for immediate projects?
I second that question
I postponed the answer, because this warrants a more in-depth and curated answer. But I'll give you the short version already:
There is a similar pattern at play as it is in the quest to merge strength and endurance. There are three types of building blocks of training:
There are all kinds of approaches to merge strength and endurance, from classical sports like the decathlon, from sports like rugby, martial arts etc. and contemporary from the new training wave (CrossFit, Hybrid Training, Hyrox). All contribute to the collective knowledge. There seems to be one common pattern: Each component should be present, the open question is about the ratio.
Each athletic discipline needs its own adaptation of, hopefully, universal principles.
There are practices that are good candidates to truly mix strength and endurance and elicit more value per time invested in my opinion (keep in mind, that this is a fringe position!): Sled Pulling, rowing, high volume medicine ball throws, high volume excentricless jumping (e.g. jumping up the stairs, walk back down).
In knowledge work, I think you quoted the actual fulcrum point
, the question is how to design a practice that both delivers (similar to competition or testing in athletic training) and is sustainable and can be integrated in one's life. If you cycle, for example, competition should be seen as part of the training stimulus. So, you subtract the work performed in competition from the overall training volume and inventory. The same is true in amateur football, with weekly games on the weekend.
So, in knowledge work the projects should be obligatory for the very same reason why you plan your football training around your games at the weekend. But projects also deliver a stimulus. Currently, I am working on my knowledge on endurance training. First and foremost, it is project driven. My projects currently align like this:
They are aligned similarly like you would have some friendly competition in the off season, then become more serious and then completely peak your performance for your main competition.
My (almost) daily knowledge work practice entails most of the skills and tools that I have at my disposal: Reading, analysing arguments, analysing empirical evidence, creating and working with models etc. I get a pretty diverse stimulus because I work more as an integrator, pulling a lot from various disciplines.
During my project-driven work, sometimes even just because of random impulses, there are creative challenges and events that trigger my curiosity. My projects are my rail guards. I am a very curious person, and even could lose myself in analysing the strange economy of make-up tutorials and their cultural significance. I am bad at closing projects anyway. So, have to take a lot of measures for damage control.
If something is absolutely promising, I allow myself to deviate from my set plan and try to scale the scope of the deviance to the value it produces. These are then explosions of divergent thinking phases.
So, the pendulum swings from convergent to divergent thinking. My mind is the impulse giver to the pendulum, my projects are my rail guards, so I don't swing too far and create too much mess. If I ignore everything outside my projects, I'd stifle my creativity and don't make use of the energy created by inspiration. If I just follow my impulses, I also stifle my creativity because I become like an information hub to random external stimuli.
In practice, the former would only allow me to summarise what is already known, making my Zettelkasten a dead repository, the later would also create a dead repository because I never reach the necessary depth and focus.
One aspect of the implementation of these considerations is very simple: You block time for project-orientated work and limit the deviation of your attention to the at most promising ideas that don't align with the project. But you also make time for intellectual endeavours that interest you or will deepen your understanding as well as your skill set.
Sample Schedule:
Sample Content:
But even the Open Work needs a thread. I, personally, like books the best to create a thread.
Sadly, there is one aspect I am not able to present in a structured manner: Skill acquisition and practice in knowledge work.
Right now, I am fine in my ability to work with arguments. However, I am rather slow compared to my peak ability, since I don't have any stimulus that creates pressure like a debate. Assume that because of a crazy turn of my life, I'd be invited to those dreadful talk shows. I'd have to sharpen my argumentation skills again and integrate a practice very similar to how a cyclist needs to rebuild his base after the main competitions are over. He would do a lot of long rides to build total training volume. I would use a mix of AI-training and debating practices. So, perhaps, I'd schedule 4x90min per week to basic training with AI, prepare debates 2x/week for 90 minutes and visit a club on the weekend.
I am slowly building an inventory of knowledge work skills. For sure, argumentation is one of them. Working with empirical evidence is another. A third is soft modelling, which is a term I coined to mark the line between what I think the skill entails and what engineers do (they do hard modelling in my nomenclature).
Sneak peek into modelling:
I ranted a bit, but I hope you can draw some order out of my mess.
I am a Zettler