The place between the zettle and the book/podcast/blog

Jvet

Greetings.

I recently finished reading a book which I filled with highlights and margin notes on several pages. Now I have to start the process of turning them into individual zettels and making connections. The thing is, I'm a little confused. Should I write everything I found valuable in a "working note" in the Archive, and then start creating individual zettels, or should I start writing zettels as I reread my annotations?

Would it be easier to use extra software, such as an outliner, to compile all my annotations and highlights by topic or chapter, and then transform them into zettels, or should I just try to create zettels with the book open?

What is your advice here?

Thanks.

daneb

You can do anything from that. There are not correct and incorrect ways. You might add only some of the most important info as individual note (one, two, five, ten notes) now and add some more later. You might copy everything as one long note and split it ad-hoc (or just some part of it) as time and your interest will tell you, thus creating again one or more new notes when appropriate.

You do not have to do everything at once. You can do something today and something tomorrow (or in a year). The original note/original highlight will wait for you. If you will try to do the process too technical/robotic, you will burnout soon. Find some joy in it. Do something. Tomorrow do a little bit more. Find your way - we are so different. Also, every type of content needs different level of your attention and processing. With some books (fundamental, very important) - deep processing of many points and ideas. With some other books - highlights might be enough + some general info about the book or one two three ideas from the book which you write in your system....

Do not overdo it in the beginning. Try to rather be extensive than intensive. (In the sense of do not overexcerpt. Try to read a lot and prefer reading to just re-writing everything what you read → rather re-read later what you forgot than to try to excerpt everything with the fear that you might need everything. This is big fallacy of some of today PKM notions. Luhmann often summarized just one sentence or paragraph from an article or a whole book. Your note does not have to get everything important from the source, but rather to suit you as a thought index or remembering point - you can always consult the original source when in need of more info or context) In short - try to find balance. You can change/adapt everything later.

ctietze

Take a look at the video processing series I did 5y ago:

I start within my Zettelkasten app, but I work on a 'scratchpad' and extract Zettel from there. That often works.

Jvet

@daneb said:
You can do anything from that. There are not correct and incorrect ways. You might add only some of the most important info as individual note (one, two, five, ten notes) now and add some more later. You might copy everything as one long note and split it ad-hoc (or just some part of it) as time and your interest will tell you, thus creating again one or more new notes when appropriate.

You do not have to do everything at once. You can do something today and something tomorrow (or in a year). The original note/original highlight will wait for you. If you will try to do the process too technical/robotic, you will burnout soon. Find some joy in it. Do something. Tomorrow do a little bit more. Find your way - we are so different. Also, every type of content needs different level of your attention and processing. With some books (fundamental, very important) - deep processing of many points and ideas. With some other books - highlights might be enough + some general info about the book or one two three ideas from the book which you write in your system....

Do not overdo it in the beginning. Try to rather be extensive than intensive. (In the sense of do not overexcerpt. Try to read a lot and prefer reading to just re-writing everything what you read → rather re-read later what you forgot than to try to excerpt everything with the fear that you might need everything. This is big fallacy of some of today PKM notions. Luhmann often summarized just one sentence or paragraph from an article or a whole book. Your note does not have to get everything important from the source, but rather to suit you as a thought index or remembering point - you can always consult the original source when in need of more info or context) In short - try to find balance. You can change/adapt everything later.

You bring some good points, thanks Daneb. Reminded me of the slow productivity concept.

Jvet

@ctietze said:
Take a look at the video processing series I did 5y ago:

I start within my Zettelkasten app, but I work on a 'scratchpad' and extract Zettel from there. That often works.

Thanks Ctietze, it seems that as you mention, you start with a scratchpad note, and then ypu create several zettels from there that link to that scratchpad right?

ctietze

@Jvet yes, I extract things from that note as I go. The scratchpad is named after whatever I'm processing so that I can find it (i.e. I don't call it 'scratchpad.txt', for example), so that when I don't get to finish this in time, it's still in an orderly place, even though not processed completely.

For "Meditations for Mortals", I experimented with reading an epub and marking passages in the ebook reader so that I would have an easier time to extract quotations, then go from there.

I've extracted a couple of these into appropriate notes, but other quotations still just 'hang around' there. This goes on for a while, with the occasional un-quoted comment by me that will be the start of a new note.

Will

@ctietze describes an impeccable move. This is where digital books have a slight edge over physical ones. You can export all your highlights and notes, import them into The Archive as a single note, and then grind and crush the entire collection gradually.

Sascha

Should I write everything I found valuable in a "working note" in the Archive, and then start creating individual zettels, or should I start writing zettels as I reread my annotations?

I would stick to Christians recommendation for one book and then try the other way for the next book.

Both are workflows are effective. I, personally, use both, but mainly the second one.

Just keep the end goal in mind: Individual notes, ideas that are connected meaningful. Both workflows are ways to get there.

zettelsan

These days, I import the vast majority of what I read (books) and listen (podcasts) digitally into my zettelkasten. I've written scripts to import highlights and notes from Kindle and Zotero, AI summary and transcriptions from Snipd, etc. into my system.

Great thing about a system like this is that it's so much easier to import textual data into zettelkasten. The downside is that since it's so easy to take in a lot of materials, there is this accumulation of "unprocessed" literature notes. I have tons of notes waiting to be properly processed and be part of properly connected Zettelkasten.

So, I think that the suggestion by @daneb is a good one. I take it slowly. It's actually pretty fun to see serendipitous discovery. Even when unprocessed, those literature notes often come up in keyword search. And that actually helps me remind of and rediscover stuff that I've read/listened to a few years ago. By nature, that's a new connection, so it's a good opportunity to create a note in my zettelkasten.

Jvet

Thanks @ctietze that is a good example. By the way, I saw you have a boox right? I have a colored one which I’m also using to read and then just export the annotations or manually go to them.

Jvet

Thanks @Sascha will try both workflows. I do have a book in the backlog that I need to process.

Jvet

Thanks @zettelsan. I remember from the 101 Zettelkasten workshop that we have to be a little bit cautious to not have a Zettelkasten that becomes like a todo list of literature notes. And as you say, take it slow.