Some questions I have are keeping me from committing to my Zettelkasten
Hi, this is my first post, and I want to thank everyone who can help me reduce my resistance and avoid failure. Starting a Zettelkasten digitally and future-proof is not something easy to do.
In my case, I want to create some guides and rules to guarantee some success (or headaches in the future).
And there is some of the question that are keeping me from committing to my Zettelkasten:
- I start using file name as
yyyyMMddhhmm Title of the note.md
- Should I avoid spaces in the files names?
- Should I use Folgezettel? Or using
yyyyMMddhhmmis enough to guarantee the evolution and future prof of my notes?
- Using Obsidian and The Archive as my main tools for Zettelkasten, I started using wikilinks
[[yyyyMMddhhmm Title of the note]]to connect notes
- Should I use Markdown links
[yyyyMMddhhmm Title of the note](/path/to/the/file)or Wikilinks is something standard for markdown?
- Since Obsidian supports properties using YAML and The Archive is just a markdown editor, I using YAML with this format (
202501091122 four values of the agile manifesto)
I don't have tags for now on YAML because The Archive don't search on click when using tags: [tags1]
- Should I use tags at all?
- If yes, should I put tags on YAML or in the body of the note using
#tags1?
Ok, I have more questions, but those are the most important ones for me now.
Can I have some feedback on that from you?
Howdy, Stranger!
Comments
Hi,
Using folgezettel or not is a personal thing.
I don't use it, but having made this choice I believe it is very important to use another method that takes its place in some way.
I need (and in the future you will probably need, too) a model that allows me to express sequences of ideas, collections of ideas, trains of thought, things like these. I use higher order notes (notes that contain links to other notes) for that purposes, instead of folgezettel.
The possibility of browsing with eyes sequences or path of notes already taken in the past is one of the most important features of the Zettelkasten.
Regarding tags, very broad topic. Very personal thing.
I don't use them for subject classification, i use links to "subject notes" for this purpose.
I have tags for status modeling, progress modeling, annotating some notes for some operations, but I rarely use them in practice once I've put them. I tend to make my cluster of notes collecting links in specific notes. For some purpose I prefer to use metadata with Dataview, but this is an Obsidian use case outside the my Zettelkasten space.
I can't say much about the other things, I don't know how you plan to use the combination of both Obsidian and The Archive together.
Hello and welcome! You're asking good questions. You're right that starting a Zettelkasten (ZK) that's future-proof isn't easy at first—it was not intuitive to me. Once you get the hang of it though, the Zettelkasten Method (ZKM) is wonderfully simple.
If you're hesitant to start your ZK, I recommend beginning right away. I delayed starting my ZK because I wanted to learn as much as possible beforehand to avoid common pitfalls/mistakes. However, I found I learned the most from practicing the ZKM itself and making those mistakes anyways. If I could do it over, I would start practicing the ZKM right away and learn from my mistakes much earlier. I also would have created more notes.
I will do my best to answer your questions, but then I encourage you to commit to starting your ZK.
Not unless you're a CS expert with a good technical reason not to. And luckily bulk file renaming is technically very simple. So if you ever needed to, for example, replace all the spaces in the future, you could easily do so.
Like @andang76 said, Folgezettel or not is a personal choice. Personally, I use date-based UID, as I feel it is simpler than Folgezettel, especially for digital ZKs. To directly answer your question,
yyyyMMddhhmmis plenty sufficient to future-proof your notes.I'll address the remaining questions together, as they all pertain to your reliance on using Obsidian and The Archive to interact with your ZK.
>
Like @andang76 said, "I don't know how you plan to use the combination of both Obsidian and The Archive together." I suggest you don't rely on either. I think that the software-agnostic approach that Sascha and Christian emphasize is essential to keeping a digital ZK. Here are two forum threads related to software-agnosticism worth checking out:
Software-agnosticism has a significant impact on using a ZK, which makes it very relevant to your remaining questions.
The Archive was designed to be software-agnostic, and switching from Obsidian to The Archive showed me just how important that is. In Obsidian, many parts of my workflow were tied exclusively to its features. When I eventually decided to adopt a software agnostic approach, I realized how unnecessarily dependent I had become on Obsidian's features.
If I haven't convinced you to use The Archive, hopefully I've convinced you to work towards software-agnosticism in your workflow. However, I think you'll find it difficult to have a software-agnostic workflow while continuing to use proprietary software features like those in Obsidian.
If you were just using The Archive, this is how I would answer your remaining questions:
The Archive uses Wikilinks to function as search criteria. Use Wikilinks to link to another note, but only for the UID (e.g., [[yyyyMMddhhmm]]). And be sure to provide a good link context.
The Archive doesn't use YAML but it does use tags to search. I honestly don't really use tags. Like @andang76 said, tags are a broad topic and much of it comes down to personal preferences. There is good advice on these forums about preferring ontological tags. Others prefer links over tags all together. You might get started without tags and see how far that gets you.
@ivomota I'll jump in with a brief comment on the use of tags. I really like them and use them a lot. I use tags to associate a zettel with one or several topics, to show the status of a zettel (e.g., completed or not, linked or not), and to connect zettels to the names of individuals (either the zettel is about an individual, such as a personal history note, or an individual is the author of a quote). If one uses multi-level tags (e.g., "dams-failures-overtopping being an example of a 3-level tag), one can also develop a very nice index just by creating a list of tags, (@Will has a Keyboard Maestro macro for that).
There are no guarantees in life. Just start and make adjustments as you learn more.
This is not necessary with modern file systems and apps.
Using a time stamp will help future proof your notes.
Use markdown links when referencing an external file or website.
Yes, you should use tags. The way tags are searched for is different between the two apps.
Yes, this is a mess right now. I'm still trying to figure out a good strategy for tags in the various apps. I use The Archive as my zettelkasting tool, but I’ve started using a static site generator that uses the tag field of the YAML but refuses tags prepended with a #. This is likely a feature or reserved character in YAML. I use, and recommend using YAML for every note. It is part of my note templates. This is a sample of the YAML I typically use. Followed by the YAML, which I use for notes destined for 11ty, my static site generator.
--- title: # Confident of Uncertainty UUID: ›[[202412231629]] date: 2024-12-23 archive_tags: #blog-post #thinking-tool #zettelkasting tags: - note - zettelkasting - journaling - uncertainty description: Clear seeing builds confidence in uncertainty. ---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
@Will YAML indeed treats
#in a special way: as a comment!https://github.com/yaml/yaml-grammar/blob/75083c2aaabd0d7453d72de895666b21021826c1/yaml-spec-1.2.txt#L458-L460
You should get a string with
Which at least is not nothing
Author at Zettelkasten.de • https://christiantietze.de/
This community is awesome.
Thank you everyone for every comment regarding my questions.
My post will be long
> @andang76 said:
As a clarification, I have an Obsidian Vault, and inside I have a folder with my Zettelkasten. In my Obsidian Vault, I have Daily Notes and other notes not related to my Zettelkasten. I like Obsidian and the customization I can apply to it, even using it in a very simple and raw way. But I like being able to open my Zettelkasten and interact with it inside The Archive, which is a simpler and more direct app for Zettelkasten. Also, I really like the search function and the list of notes in The Archive.
Obsidian is also a good tool to visualize data with the graph views and Dataview plugin.
This seems to be a very good and wisdom advise. Thank you!
Right! On macOS I can easily bulk file rename. That is very truth I hadn't even thought about it.
I preffer this approach too!
I don’t get the software agnostic argument against Obsidian, for example, with the argument of doing a search on The Archive and not on Obsidian. Since this is just text, on the backend, when you click on a Wikilink, it is doing a search and redirecting to the note (this is why in Obsidian you need to have unique titles). Also, you can search for the content inside
[[]]and get the note in the search. It’s just text.I don’t understand why Obsidian is not considered software agnostic when you use it as it is (without plugins) since it is just a markdown editor.
This is why I choose to use
[[yyyyMMddhhmm Title of the note]]and an alias with[[yyyyMMddhhmm]]to be able to use it in Obsidian and The Archive. Also, using my note in two tools with different approaches challenges me to make my note more feature-proof, I think.Instead of tags to connect zettels to the names of individuals I preffer to use links, since for me a parson/author also can have a note where I can put things about that peson inside. Also it helps to use as a search for backlinks. If I open in The Archive or Obsidian a note from an Author, I can find all the notes where the author was mentioned using as link. But I also like to use tags for status!
I Will
Yes, normally I do that, it is the makdown way. My question was more about internal links.
Some comments on this:
This is not an UUID (universal unique identifier) this is just an unique identifiers.
An example of uuid is more like:
8D8AC610-566D-4EF0-9C22-186B2A5ED793You can read more about UUID here on wikipedia
But why do you use the › before the link to the note? I’m very curious about that
I have the same questions regasrding tags. I also use 11ty but I did’t start post notes online. But I still having hard times to figure out if I should use tags on the body (that i dont like) or in the YAML that I prefer but thei are not tags with the
#.But this commetn from @ctietze is something very interesting and probably the best solution for me since it also works on Obsidan.
I can have the best of 2:
Thank you @ctietze
Sorry for my misunderstanding. I use links formatted like
[[yyyyMMddhhmm]] for my internal links. I adopted this standard early on and have sometimes wondered if it was the right decision. Starting over, I'd have the link be the file name and I'd put the UID in the YAML and not the file name. I'd spend more time developing a Keyboard Maestro macro that monitored note title changes and then changed the filename and all the links.
Yes, this is not an IETF UUID. 202412230736 is a notes ID unique to that note. When it is encapsulated in [[]], it becomes a link to any note with that ID anywhere in the note. It is no longer specific. Prepending the › character allows me to create Keyboard Maestro macros restricting a search to that particular note. I use this in a number of macros to make sure I'm acting on the target note.
I feel your pain. I've resolved to put tags in the YAML. With Keyboard Maestro's help, I currently use both formats where appropriate.
Here is a sample
--- title: Curiosity as the Key to Communication UUID: ›[[202412200523]] cdate: 12-20-2024 05:23 AM date: 2024-12-20 archive_tags: #blog-post #mindset #conversation-skills #fundamental-attribution-error #correspondence-bias tags: - blog-post - conversation-skills - mindset - fundamental attribution error - correspondence bias description: Genuinely engage in conversation with others by showing curiosity. ---This does not work when 11ty processes a note using this formatted tag scenario. I get one long concatenated tag. (#science #article #medical)
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