What's Up in Your ZK? Week starting 2026-03-09
We haven't had these in a while --
- share what happened in your ZK recently
- what are you up to this week?
- what do you read, process, think about?
- what blocks you in your progress right now?
Author at Zettelkasten.de • https://christiantietze.de/
Howdy, Stranger!
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New department: building houses
Our family (including my widowed mother) will probably move in together within the next 12--18 months into a house that we're going to buy together-ish.
I have no clue about houses, and I notice that there are old German words used by all trades for everything. Never heard these, can't keep up in conversations. I need to become fluent to project-manage the renovation, though.
Starting at the roof, I went to Wikipedia and processed a bit of vocabulary with public domain imagery. This started bottom-up, i.e. I noticed that I didn't understand a term again and then went to change that and learn a bit about these things. 30min later I figured I might as well create an overview note for the topic of "roofing", which is sparse if you're a domain expert, but shows much more than I knew before about constructing roofs.
Not included, yet: insulation (both of the roof itself, and of outside walls, and what that means for the roof), tiling, and solar/PV.
Getting there. Hectic times
Author at Zettelkasten.de • https://christiantietze.de/
The past few days were quite eventful Zettelkasten-wise... as eventful as they can be when you still only have a whopping 9 notes!
First, I had a rush of "this numbering doesn't work at all!" so I ended up rearranging the first 6 notes (which are loosely connected). But I keep thinking about it since then... because a different arrangement could also work! I'm afraid it's my perfectionism showing through, trying to find the "perfect method", the "perfect indexing", which I know should not be the point. I am looking for a structure to fall back onto, and I believed the numbering I used would be fool-proof enough, but at this point it's more hindering. I'm thinking about just pushing through with the current version... because rearranging at 9 notes total works. But once it gets to dozens, or hundreds, it would destroy all the links.
So, trying to be zen.
Apart from that roadblock, my notes spring several extra thoughts from me, and any time I come accross something relevant, I immediately connect it back. I just need the time to write all them perms. 🫠
As my current main interest is thinking and cognition, my readings and notes center around that.
On the other hand, though, I also leave out a lot of information I come accross. I moreso think about my Zettelkasten as a solid foundation for my worldview, factual support for beliefs in a way? Not dogmatism, not conviction, nor confirmation bias, more like building up a coherent system brick by brick, for myself. So I don't aim for absulote coverage of every related topic, more like focused jabs at certain facets. 🤔
On another note - are perms that are US letter size okay? I swear they are succint, I just like including relevant quotes on them. Which can be a lot.
Right now I'm doing the '100 Days of Code' challenge for the language I'm learning (Rust), so I'm making notes about that.
It's a fairly new experience for me to be concentrating on only a single topic in my Zettelkasten. I am usually processing at least two or three books on different topics at the same time.
My other activity is an experiment on using workflow-based tags instead of the typical topic-based tags. I like it so far. I'll probably write a post about it, but I want to let the experiment run for at least a year first.
I'm going through an important end of chapter of my personal life right now, and my Zettelkasten is my refuge. I have a metric ton of material on personal development to go through and process to navigate the next steps. The method provides me with a new framework I didn't have before: I know I will be able to learn a ton from this. Can't say I'm having the best time, but I feel secure in my ability to learn and grow, which is honestly quite cool.
"A writer should write what he has to say and not speak it." - Ernest Hemingway
PKM: Bear, tasks: OmniFocus, production: Scrivener / Ableton Live.
If the idea is that complex, then it's perfectly fine. You can break up notes later on anyway. So, you don't need to be perfect from the get-go.
The constant re-working of the notes is even integral on how I use my Zettelkasten:
I am a Zettler
After about a year of experimentation, I ditched the idea of managing note IDs with Folgezettels, for the same reasons many in the forum have mentioned before. For my digital zettelkasten with Org Roam (for which note IDs are not first-class, in a sense that they need not be explicitly visible throughout one's workflow to make connections), the friction that Folgezettel introduced was largely unnecessary. I saw little hope for scalability and it hindered my effort for bottom-up zettelkasten building; there were too many occasions in which I said to myself "I wished I filed this note elsewhere."
I was assigning Folgezettel IDs alongside structure notes, and I find structure notes sufficient and more scalable.
What I liked in having Folgezettel-like IDs, though, is that they can signify/imply their placement in some structure. It can be a useful way to "visualize" local connections to proximate notes (e.g., Folgezettel IDs with similar prefix share common themes, the ID length or numbering implying how "developed" the series of notes are, etc.). Typically, many do this via graphical tools, but I don't find them as insightful, though great as eye candies.
With all this learning, I'm writing a tool for using structure notes in Org Roam, hopefully combining the benefits of structure notes and Fogezettel-like IDs that I mentioned above.
In my current conception, structure notes are basically outlines (or table of contents), each headline having a single note such that the entire outline directly structures the connections between notes in it. I think many consider structure notes to be something more developed, but this is my starting point.
Eventually, I want to have a tool to make easier the workflow in which structure notes are central in it. I also want them to act as scaffolding for writing documents, articles, books, etc.
Hence, my interest right now is to learn what it takes to do all this. What are elements of good structure/outline notes? How do people create them for general structuring of zettelkastens and drafts in their writing projects? How to make the whole thing easier with Emacs/Org Roam? I'm digging the archives in this site to see what people have said and done.
I just jumped back in to ZK, with the idea that I'm just going to do it in a way that makes sense to my ADHD brain instead of working against it by doing it 'properly'.
I have about twenty notes now, and already seeing how valuable the connections are.
Right now I'm working through a stack of paper notes from my BSc in Psych, then I'm gonna digitize my first attempts at paper ZKs when I found them (because of course I lost them).
As far as books go, I'm reading two Zen manuals. One of them is very beginner friendly, but the other is koan like in nearly everything written, so it will be a long time meditating on it before it becomes a note haha