Share with us what is happening in your ZK journey this week. January 7, 2025
Swimming with Ideas
This is yet another opportunity to share what you are working on with your friends here on the forum. Add to this discussion by telling us about your zettelkasten journey. Share with us what you’re learning. Sharing helps us clarify our goals and visualize our thinking. And sometimes, a conversation sparks a magical moment where we can dive into an idea worth exploring. I’d love to hear more from you. 🫵🏼
Do you want to do a live one-on-one video chat with me about our adventures in Zettelkasting? Ping me at @Will, and we can schedule a time.
Here is my report on why I’m here and my current ZK work themes and ideas:
- I’m learning sketch-noting using an iPad and SimpleMind as my software agent.
- I am getting a new perspective on my note-making. A substantial number of my notes are directly or indirectly about note-making and the zettelkasten method. I see that my ZK is overloaded with notes on notes. I want to rectify this by exploring ideas outside notetaking. NotebookLM is helping me develop skills to explore my ZK deeply and has already helped me identify surprising connections between unrelated notes and themes with gaps or underdeveloped areas. I’m encouraged and excited. Time will tell.
- I should look at an overflowing inbox as a wealth. The more I have, the wealthier my life. Why strive for a zero inbox? I’m not talking about email; I’m talking about immature ideas that gradually unfold, releasing their secrets.
- With a lot of fiddling, I've got a workflow that puts selected notes on my new static blog. It will want more fiddling as time goes on, but I'm of the opinion that releasing early and upgrading often is the way to develop. (A metaphor for coding and personal actions.) Here's the link if you're interested. Will Simpson's Notes
Books I’m reading or read this week:
- Calvino, Italo. The Complete Cosmicomics. Recorded Books, Inc., 2017. Everand
- Doto, Bob. A System for Writing: How an Unconventional Approach to Note-Making Can Help You Capture Ideas, Think Wildly, and Write Constantly. First edition, New Old Traditions, 2024. Kindle [[202411190452]]
- Eliot, George, and Rosemary Ashton. Middlemarch. Repr, Penguin Books, 1871 (Original).
- Yagisawa, Satoshi. Days at the Morisaki Bookshop. Translated by Eric Ozawa, Unabridged, HarperAudio, 2023.
Zettelkasting Soundtrack:
Klangdelikt
Vetle Nærø
Lara Somogyi
★★★★★
The "My rolling fourteen-day zettel production" is produced by a script for attachment to my daily journaling template. I do my journaling in Bear to keep personal journaling separate from my knowledge work.
Let me know if you would like to see, discuss, or critique any of these notes.
My fourteen-day zettel production
I hope my contribution is helpful, and I’m sure you have even better ideas.
–––––
Will Simpson
My zettelkasten is for my ideas, not the ideas of others. I don’t want to waste my time tinkering with my ZK; I’d rather dive into the work itself. My peak cognition is behind me. One day soon, I will read my last book, write my last note, eat my last meal, and kiss my sweetie for the last time.
kestrelcreek.com
Howdy, Stranger!
Comments
One of my goals for 2025 is that I will dedicate myself to the foundations of my life. The plan is to focus on a different foundation each month.
I got the idea from Scott Young, who started this last summer. link
I don't have a yearly plan yet, but I have decided to dedicate January to my Zettelkasten. Other foundations over the next few months are finances, fitness, nutrition, productivity, spirituality and so on. I'll decide at the end of the month what to focus on in the coming month.
What is my plan for the foundation Zettelkasten?
Define goals for the card box
What do I want to achieve with my Zettelkasten? What is the underlying goal? How do I implement the goals? The first task is to visualize this in writing.
Review my process and my notes in the Zettelkasten
It is helpful to look at the notes and the structure of my Zettelkasten and see what is useful to me and where priorities may have shifted.
Read (new) specialist literature
I've put together a reading list that I'm going to use for inspiration for my future note box.
First, I read A System for Writing by Bob Doto. I already created those notes:
Implement initial changes in the card box process
This point is self-evident to me. Without implementation, the whole thing makes no sense
Interact with the community
I've read a lot in the communities over the past few years, but haven't posted much - I'm changing that in January
Write about the implementation and new findings and results
I will write about on my Blog from time to time and here in the forum.
In ths period my Zettelkasten is particularly focused on better nutrition, plant-based nutrition, running.
Yesterday, inspired by a recent topic on idea/note titles, I completely revised my section on noteworthy titles
My number of structure notes is growing. I use some of these notes for navigation. My goal is to create a simple and intuitive structure. As a blueprint for a step-by-step creation, I started this week with a sitemap:
The central structure is my ARCO model with four books:
Edmund Gröpl
100% organic thinking. Less than 5% AI-generated ideas.
@Edmund Very organized! This high level of structure could be just the right cup of tea for many people. As I age, I engage less with structure. I think that is simply due to less energy and less remaining time
Most notes in the past week have been about deceptive graphs/charts, because of a discussion in a private chat that I had no properly processed material for.
Screenshot from https://arxiv.org/pdf/1907.02035 -- PDF freely available
The rest have been about auto-completion, intercepting key presses and still allowing to type. -- I was waiting for some feedback on a build of The Archive that should fix an immediately app crashing bug for a user, so we can whip up a release, and worked on auto-completion for tags.
Example of suggestions after typing
#hash:It's almost ready. There are many caveats that make it unusable or break the app, still, but in a couple of weeks this should be ready, too!
Author at Zettelkasten.de • https://christiantietze.de/