Best book to start with ?

OuiOuiZNotDead

Hi,

I am new here. I read about ZK via r/antinet but I am not sure I understand it well. Which book would you recommend a beginner to start with ?

zettelsan

My current favorite pair for beginners is

• Sönke Ahrens's How to Take Smart Notes: One Simple Technique to Boost Writing, Learning and Thinking
• Bob Doto's A system for writing: how an unconventional approach to note-making can help you capture ideas, think wildly, and write constantly

Ahrens' book focuses heavily on theory with minimal practical advice. In contrast, Doto's book is highly practical, offering hands-on guidance for building a minimal Zettelkasten system. Together, they complement each other well. Doto's book is short and concise, making it an excellent introduction to the "how" of Zettelkasten until you gain enough experience to develop your own style. As you delve deeper, Ahrens' book provides the "why" behind it.

andang76

Welcome OuiOui.

I read Ahrens, Allosso, Bob Doto, Scheper books, but all of them in the middle of my journey with Zettelkasten, not with the purpose of begin with.

All of them have good ideas, but also significant issues too.

I think I was "lucky" in this, if I had started with one of these books I would have convinced myself that the Zettelkasten is strictly what is written in that book.
Learning Zettelkasten in a bottom up mode taking many ideas from different sources it allowed me to develop my own method.

If I really wanted to recommend a book-based approach for beginning, I'd probably recommend Bob Doto's book and the first part of Dan Allosso's book.

Before either of these, however, I'd consider the writingslowly and Bob Doto sites.
And this forum. What you haven't understood we can try to develop here

Just remember that all of these sources are one way of doing Zettelkasten, not the way that you must to follow