Any non-engineers out there?
First of all, I LOVE reading about coding, systems, and engineering so in no way is there any judgement in my question! As someone who spends more time in the humanities (I'm a physician, writer, and theologian) I wonder if there might be others on this forum who have a different "lens" (or suggestions) about how they use their ZK.
Howdy, Stranger!
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I don't have a technical background, but I do find it fascinating and am learning programming as a hobby subject.
My background is actually finance. I think this has influenced my choice of the Zettelkasten as being 'for me', because it means you can refer to things years later, even decades later.
In finance, I've often been in a position where I needed to find an important document from years ago. I've also needed to deal with a large volume of documents, so even finding something from a few weeks or months ago can be difficult but critical.
This has made me spend a lot of time thinking about 'findability'. When I discovered the Zettelkasten method, I immediately saw the value in being able to refer to notes made years earlier. There isn't a single magic method, but the combination of titles, keywords, links, and folder structure means I can always come back to something I had before.
This background also means I'm always thinking about backups. Financial institutions were influential in the 3-2-1 Backup model becoming a standard. So naturally I back up my Zettelkasten with an automated program.
I've been professionally involved in testing corporate backup and emergency plans, and believe me when I say the results are often not pretty. This has made me run a lot of tests on my own backups, and I'm satisfied that my Zettelkasten can survive disasters, even if some corporate IT setups can't!