How do you use Fleeting & Reference notes in the Archive? [Doto's A System for Writing]

John

Hi all,

It's certainly been a long time since I've posted. I have recently started using The Archive again, pulling my ZK out of hibernation. The first new notes have landed there in over three years. Not that there hasn't been any reading, thinking or notetaking but simply not in any coherent or structured fashion.

I recently started reading Bob Doto's book A System for Writing, after having re-read Sonke Ahrens' book again.

In Doto's approach (which I'm not sure is useful yet, having only come to chapter 3 so far) he speaks about two types of notes.

1. One of these is recognisable for me: the Reference note.
   For me those are Bibliography notes, and in my ZK I have been using those.

But I'm curious how you are using them? Do you just list the reference, like this:

[#heft2017a]: Heft, H. (2017). William James’ psychology, radical empiricism, and field theory: recent developments. Philosophical inquiries, 5, 111-130.

Or do you elaborate in the note itself?
And what about the name you give the note?

I see in my Archive that I've used two different ways of naming over time.
In my older notes I see this name: 201611081236 Johnson 2007 The Meaning of the Body
In newer notes I have started using: 202002021125 Biblio - Hook 1950 The Desirable and Emotive in Deweys Ethics

2. Then Doto talks about another type of note, but this is one he keeps apart from the main ZK: the Fleeting note.

I first thought it was akin to my use of Buffer notes. These are, you guessed it, buffers. Not yet a main formed note and most often based on a bibliographic note (and linked to it), where I have written down some more or less coherent thoughts on the reading of that book, paper, whatever.

But if I read Doto correctly on the Fleeting note type, this is more akin to a type of note used for a braindump kind of whatever strikes your fancy at a time you write down and drop into the inbox for later processing. He even references Dave Allen's Getting Things Done method here.

So I'm confused. What does Doto's Fleeting note compare to in the methodology you are using? Do you even use something so flighty or ephemeral (fleeting, yes) like this? And if, like Doto suggests, you don't want to put it in your main Zettelkasten, where do you leave them for later processing (into possibly a main, regular note)?

For me there is value in the idea of the Fleeting note because there's too much crap (read: half-formed notes) in my ZK at the moment, it's the reason I stopped using it for years. But The Archive does not seem to support Folders so there's not a separate inbox or fleeting folder I could start using in it. Hence my questions above.

Thanks all.

harr

Reference notes

Reference notes have been discussed previously in this forum under different names, eg reading notes, literature notes, source notes, bibliographical notes…

Personally I like to keep reading notes in the same tool as my zettels. They are a good place for all the questions, observations, quotations, paraphrases, etc. that come up while reading a book. Some parts of those notes might eventually move to other notes. Or they stay where they are. :-) Reading notes are permanent notes.

Other people in this forum strongly recommend to keep reference-related information in a separate tool.

Fleeting notes

I agree with Bob Doto's initial description (Section 1.2 of his 2024 book):

Fleeting notes form the basis for much of what you’ll create inside your zettelkasten, though they themselves will not make it past the velvet rope.

I disagree with Bob Doto on the next step, where he talks about a "transformation" and that fleeting notes can "become" main notes.

I prefer Sönke Ahrens's concept (Chapter 6 of the 2nd edition of his book):

Fleeting notes are there for capturing ideas quickly while you are busy doing something else. (…) They will very soon become completely useless – unless you do something with them. If you already know that you will not go back to them, don’t take these kind of notes in the first place. Take proper notes instead.

I treat fleeting notes conceptually as something that exists outside the Zettelkasten. I capture most of my fleeting notes in daily notes. I used to keep those daily notes in the same Obsidian vault as my Zettelkasten, but that blurred the conceptual boundary. So I moved them to a separate vault. I also experimented with an inbox, but that also blurred the conceptual boundary. I moved the inbox to the other vault. In my experience, an inbox is a horrible way to manage new notes.

I use my Zettelkasten vault only for non-fleeting content. That doesn't mean that all notes in the Zettelkasten are fully formed or will remain unchanged for ever. It means that they are "permanent" in the sense of being relevant for a long time.

And it means that the "velvet rope" marks an important boundary. I don't "transform" fleeting notes into main notes. I use fleeting notes only as prompts to write proper notes.

The trick is that I know exactly what elements I consider necessary for a "proper note". For me they are a clear note-type, an ID, a creation date, a meaningful name and at least one meaningful link to another note in my ZK. That's it. Others consider other information essential.

My recommendation is to draw a clear boundary between fleeting notes and permanent notes.

tomp

@John said:
Hi all,

It's certainly been a long time since I've posted. I have recently started using The Archive again, pulling my ZK out of hibernation. The first new notes have landed there in over three years. Not that there hasn't been any reading, thinking or notetaking but simply not in any coherent or structured fashion.

I recently started reading Bob Doto's book A System for Writing, after having re-read Sonke Ahrens' book again.

In Doto's approach (which I'm not sure is useful yet, having only come to chapter 3 so far) he speaks about two types of notes.

1. One of these is recognisable for me: the Reference note.
   For me those are Bibliography notes, and in my ZK I have been using those.

But I'm curious how you are using them? Do you just list the reference, like this:

[#heft2017a]: Heft, H. (2017). William James’ psychology, radical empiricism, and field theory: recent developments. Philosophical inquiries, 5, 111-130.

Or do you elaborate in the note itself?
And what about the name you give the note?

I think the key thing about a note (or a candidate note) is what you expect it to do for you, and how you want to use it. Another consideration is what kind of operations your ZK system supports in an easy way. I'm less interested in drawing fine distinctions between kinds of notes, such as "is this 'fleeting' or not?".

In the case of "literature" references, I am guided by what I want when 1) I encounter a reference or citation in reading, and 2) what I need when I want to put a citation into some piece of writing. Suppose I come across a reference in an article or paper like [Jones 2007]. I want to look at it, or at least know how to find it. If this is in an area of interest to me, and I might want to look it up again or link to it from another note, I will want to create a note for it. So I create a note titled Jones 2007 and store it in a section of my ZK called "Citations". My ZK is based on an outliner and the "Citations" node is at the top level.

That note contains a reference to the work being cited, and I may also include a formatted citation ready to plunk into a piece of writing (or I might not create one until I need to have it).

Now I can link to this Citation note from any note that needs it.

At the other end of formality there is the browser bookmark. For the most part these are created quickly on the fly while browsing or searching. Most likely they represent something I can use to avoid doing an ab initio search in the future. IOW, they have been curated and I don't want to lose that value.

I keep my bookmarks in a separate application which I call a "ZK-light" because it has all the search and categorization features of a ZK but I don't do any linking. I had been using one or another implementation of my bookmarks manager for some 15 years before I ever heard of a Zettelkasten and I don't see any value in moving the bookmarks into my ZK.

2. Then Doto talks about another type of note, but this is one he keeps apart from the main ZK: the Fleeting note.

The bookmark could be considered to be the ultimate in a "fleeting" note. The only thought involved is the act of curation.

Once again, I would be guided by the purpose of a "fleeting" note. If it is a note or quote quickly jotted down, or a Post-it note marking a page, then it it's temporarily valuable but not permanent and not the result of much thought or processing. So it's not a candidate z-note. OTOH, if your ZK system makes it easy to keep such notes together and makes them easy to find, then why not - as long as you can get rid of them when they have served their purpose. You can use the ZK system's strengths to use and develop any of them as you like.

If your system can't distinguish these provisional entries from any other kind, if they add to clutter instead of being helpful, then don't put them in. Take a cue from my bookmarks manager and keep them somewhere else, if you want to keep them at all.

I haven't done this so far but if I were to get into the situation of generating a lot of transient notes, I might start a separate system that has the same software as my ZK and put them into it. The aim would be to use them while processing the ideas I eventually want to get into my ZK.

OTOH, I've had really good experiences with creating papers, and the supporting notes for them, inside my ZK. Because my system is based on an outliner, and the way search results are presented, it's been easy for me to keep this kind of work quasi-separate but still able to take advantage of the other material in the ZK. Your system may differ. That's an example of what I meant when I wrote "Another consideration is what kind of operations your ZK system supports in an easy way."

ZettelDistraction

NOTE: this is a revised copy of an article first posted on Zettelkasten.de. The original post and this revised copy are CC BY-SA 4.0 by F. Lengyel.

Terminological troubles beset the account of note categories in the English translation of How to Take Smart Notes by Sönke Ahrens (Ahrens 2017). This review aims to settle the terminology.

Note categories named and unnamed

Ahrens discusses five categories of notes. There are three main descriptive categories: fleeting notes, permanent notes, and project notes. There are two subcategories of permanent note: literature note and main note.

Term	Taxonomic role	Location	Function	Fate
Fleeting note	Main descriptive category	Paper, notebook, or other temporary medium	Captures ideas quickly	Discarded after one or two days
Permanent note	Main descriptive category	Reference manager or slip-box	Preserves information in a permanently understandable form	Kept
Literature note	Subcategory of permanent note	Reference manager	Records a bibliographic reference, optionally with attached notes	Kept in the reference manager
Main note	Subcategory of permanent note	Slip-box	Records a self-contained thought, written as if for print	Kept in the slip-box
Project note	Main descriptive category	Outside the Zettelkasten	Supports a writing project	Kept, changed, or discarded with the project

Literature notes and main notes are permanent notes. Literature notes are stored in the reference manager; main notes are stored in the slip-box.

Zettelkasten components

For purposes of this review, the Zettelkasten proper consists of a reference manager and a slip-box. In a digital implementation, the slip-box is editing and note-linking software such as The Archive, Logseq, Obsidian, Roam Research, Zettel Notes, or Zettlr.

Ahrens also lists something to write with, something to write on, and an editor (Ahrens 2017, 29–31). In software, the editor is usually combined with the slip-box. A pen and notebook, paper, or other temporary capture medium belongs to the workflow.

Fleeting notes are disposable inputs to the Zettelkasten workflow.

Workflow

The Zettelkasten Method describes the standardized note formats used and the workflow of notes and source references among the tools in the Zettelkasten workflow (Ahrens 2017, 23–24, 41, 45). The workflow starts with handwritten notes and ends with permanent notes in the slip-box or reference manager, or with project notes for writing projects based on the contents of the Zettelkasten (Ahrens 2017, 23, 41–45).

Niklas Luhmann’s workflow

In Ahrens’s account of Niklas Luhmann’s Zettelkasten workflow, Luhmann first wrote brief literature notes and used these to write self-contained permanent notes called Zettels, which Luhmann wrote carefully, as if for publication (Ahrens 2017, 17–18, 43).

Ahrens’s workflow

For Ahrens, the Zettelkasten workflow begins with fleeting notes. These may be rewritten as literature notes or as main notes. When one’s thoughts are fully formed as if for print, the preliminary steps can be skipped, and one writes a main note directly (Ahrens 2017, 23).

Ahrens misses an opportunity to revisit Luhmann’s workflow in terms of the descriptive categories he identifies and to relate Luhmann’s workflow to the workflow he presents in section 2.1 (Ahrens 2017, 23). Examples and diagrams of the workflow would have helped.

Note categories in detail

Fleeting notes

Fleeting notes are temporary notes to be discarded after one or two days, once recast for inclusion in the Zettelkasten as permanent notes. Ahrens assigns the fleeting note to its own category to emphasize its function and the habits he wants users of the Zettelkasten Method to adopt. “Fleeting notes are there for capturing ideas quickly while you are busy doing something else” (Ahrens 2017, 43).

Ahrens advises reading with paper and pen in hand and advises against highlighting, marking up books, and leaving slips of paper around (Ahrens 2017, 29, 85, 87). Ahrens also expects fleeting notes to be written judiciously on the spot, rewritten as main notes or literature notes, and discarded within a day or two (Ahrens 2017, 43). This is crucial: for Ahrens, failure to cultivate the habit of reading with pen and paper in hand is failure to follow the Zettelkasten Method (Ahrens 2017, 146).

Ahrens refers to the “fleeting literature note” as the handwritten precursor to the literature note (Ahrens 2017, 44). There is no name in Ahrens for the fleeting note that is rewritten as a main note.

The fleeting notes play a normative role in Ahrens’s account of the Zettelkasten Method. For Ahrens, the Zettelkasten Method is a systematic approach to academic research and nonfiction writing. The first step in the method is to jot down fleeting notes while reading, attending lectures and seminars, or doing something else (Ahrens 2017, 23, 41, 43).

Aside: instrumentalism

Ahrens advises writers to act “as if nothing counts other than writing” (Ahrens 2017, 38). Taken literally, this maxim commits the writer to an instrumental approach to life: experience becomes material for a workflow that begins with the fleeting note.

Permanent notes

Permanent notes are self-contained notes that end up in the slip-box or in a reference manager. Ahrens defines permanent notes as follows:

Permanent notes, which will never be thrown away and contain the necessary information in themselves in a permanently understandable way. They are always stored in the same way in the same place, either in the reference system or, written as if for print, in the slip-box.

(Ahrens 2017, 41)

Ahrens recommends that permanent notes be written in “your own words” (Ahrens 2017, 23, 24, 37).

Literature notes: a subcategory of permanent notes

A literature note is a source reference in a reference manager, optionally with one or more attached notes.

The term “literature note” derives from the note cards on which Niklas Luhmann recorded bibliographic references (Ahrens 2017, 18). Occasionally Luhmann wrote brief remarks on the reverse of these cards (Ahrens 2017, 18, 43; Schmidt 2013, 170). Despite the terminology, a literature note is a reference in a reference manager like Zotero, optionally with attached notes. In Ahrens, the reference manager is where literature notes go (Ahrens 2017, 43).

Main notes: a subcategory of permanent notes

Main notes are the permanent notes in the slip-box. Ahrens refers to “the main notes in the slip-box” in exactly one place (Ahrens 2017, 44). Ahrens’s categories imply the definition: a main note is a permanent note that is not a literature note.

Ahrens does not provide examples of main notes or a standard template for them. I offer a template at Zettel.

Project notes

Ahrens mentions project notes in four places (Ahrens 2017, 42, 45, 46, 71). These notes do not have a standard format and reside outside the Zettelkasten for writing projects that use the Zettelkasten (Ahrens 2017, 23).

Acknowledgement

I wish to thank @taurusnoises for professional editorial assistance and encouragement. He offered his assistance, he said, to have somewhere to refer people puzzled by the terms Ahrens uses. @zk_1000 alerted me to the term “fleeting literature note” and pointed out that permanent notes subsume literature notes. @ctietze suggested additional citations.

References

Ahrens, Sönke. 2017. How to Take Smart Notes: One Simple Technique to Boost Writing, Learning and Thinking: For Students, Academics and Nonfiction Book Writers. North Charleston, SC: CreateSpace.

Schmidt, Johannes F.K. 2013. “Der Nachlass Niklas Luhmanns – eine erste Sichtung: Zettelkasten und Manuskripte.” Soziale Systeme 19 (1): 167–83.

harr

@ZettelDistraction said:
The fleeting notes play a normative role in Ahrens’s account of the Zettelkasten Method. For Ahrens, the Zettelkasten Method is a systematic approach to academic research and nonfiction writing. The first step in the method is to jot down fleeting notes while reading, attending lectures and seminars, or doing something else (Ahrens 2017, 23, 41, 43).

Ahrens's fleeting notes are optional (Ahrens 2022, Section 2.1):

If your thoughts are already sorted and you have the time, you can skip this step and write your idea directly down as a proper, permanent note for your slip-box (…).

And (as previously quoted):

If you already know that you will not go back to them, don’t take these kind of notes in the first place. Take proper notes instead.

@John said:
For me there is value in the idea of the Fleeting note because there's too much crap (read: half-formed notes) in my ZK at the moment, it's the reason I stopped using it for years. But The Archive does not seem to support Folders so there's not a separate inbox or fleeting folder I could start using in it. Hence my questions above.

Maybe some of these notes could be moved to a "sleeping folder"? Bob Doto (2024, Section 1.9) says:

If you capture lots of fleeting notes, there will inevitably be those that repeatedly get passed over when you attempt to process your inbox (…). These ideas may not speak to others already stored in your zettelkasten; they may not be related to any piece of writing you’re actively working on; or maybe the idea just isn’t as interesting as it was when you first captured it. Any notes that seem hard to process, but are still relevant to your thinking, should be moved to a “Sleeping” folder.

In The Archive you could instead add the tag #sleeping to your existing notes. Or #crap if that more accurately reflects your feelings. :-)

But I wouldn't add new fleeting notes to the ZK itself. The idea is not to confuse fleeting notes with unfinished or badly written permanent notes. Fleeting notes are meant to be discarded. Permanent notes are meant to be improved.

In my experience it's ok to have bad permanent notes, as long as they capture an idea in a way that I can understand it later. But I also learned that these notes need to be created with the intention of being permanent. Not only because I tend to forget what a fleeting note was about, but also because it removes the pressure from writing "good" fleeting notes. In Ahrens's words (2022, Section 2.1): fleeting notes are "mere reminders of what is in your head. They should not cause any distraction." I agree with Ahrens's advice that when you write permanent notes "think about how they relate to what is relevant for your own research, thinking or interests."

ZettelDistraction

I ran out of edit time on the forum post. The revised version is in the Zettel Wiki.

ZettelDistraction

For the record, the optionality was already stated in the original forum post under “Ahrens’s workflow”:

@ZettelDistraction said:
When one’s thoughts are fully formed as if for print, the preliminary steps can be skipped, and one writes a main note directly (Ahrens 2017, 23).

The Wiki revision did not add this point in response to the thread; it merely placed the same qualification closer to the “normative role” sentence to prevent misreading. The claim is not that fleeting notes are mandatory in every case, but that Ahrens gives them a default role in the workflow. Optional steps can still be normative when they specify the standard procedure except where their purpose has already been met.

harr

@ZettelDistraction said:
Optional steps can still be normative when they specify the standard procedure except where their purpose has already been met.

Thanks for clarifying what you meant.

@ZettelDistraction said:
The claim is not that fleeting notes are mandatory in every case, but that Ahrens gives them a default role in the workflow.

Agreed. Ahrens (2017) lists "Make fleeting notes" as the first step in section 2.1 "Writing a paper step by step".

For the record, I want to make sure that we're talking about the same thing. Ahrens gives them a default role in his workflow.

I find it interesting to compare Ahrens's technique with Luhmann's technique.

Ahrens recommends "to capture every idea that pops into your mind" with fleeting notes (Ahrens 2017, section 2.1). As far as I know, Luhmann captured only few ideas on paper.

Ahrens recommends "not to collect, but to develop ideas, arguments and discussions" with permanent notes (Ahrens 2017, section 2.1). As far as I know, Luhmann did collect whatever he found interesting and anschlussfähig (connectable).

I think that Ahrens's fleeting notes address real issues: some notes "will very soon become completely useless – unless you do something with them" and having more notes can "make it more difficult to retrieve the right ones and bring related ones together in a playful way". (Ahrens 2017, section 6). However I think there are better ways to address those issues, for example with digital tools for full-text search and malleable text, a maturity model for half-baked ideas and a clear separation of note-making and task-management.

ZettelDistraction

@harr said:
For the record, I want to make sure that we're talking about the same thing. Ahrens gives them a default role in his workflow.

Yes: Ahrens’s workflow. That distinction was already explicit in the article, which has separate sections for “Niklas Luhmann’s workflow” and “Ahrens’s workflow”; the claim about fleeting notes appears in the latter.

tomp

@harr said:

I think that Ahrens's fleeting notes address real issues: some notes "will very soon become completely useless – unless you do something with them" and having more notes can "make it more difficult to retrieve the right ones and bring related ones together in a playful way". (Ahrens 2017, section 6). However I think there are better ways to address those issues, for example with digital tools for full-text search and malleable text, a maturity model for half-baked ideas and a clear separation of note-making and task-management.

I have a part of my system I named "Placeholders". I have a z-card on how placeholder cards are like trying to catch dreams before they fade. This card itself is a placeholder. I'm not sure yet if I'm going to take it anywhere.

I don't know if this would be considered a "fleeting" note since it's been in there for months...

Placeholder Cards Like Dream Notes
-----------------------------------

:id: tom.20260401141253.1
:created: 2026-04-01 14:13

Awake from a dream and try to capture something in a note before it fades away.

Come back soon and start to craft it to recapture more of the dream's essentials.

harr

@tomp said:
I have a part of my system I named "Placeholders". I have a z-card on how placeholder cards are like trying to catch dreams before they fade. This card itself is a placeholder. I'm not sure yet if I'm going to take it anywhere.

I don't know if this would be considered a "fleeting" note since it's been in there for months...

Placeholder Cards Like Dream Notes
-----------------------------------

:id: tom.20260401141253.1
:created: 2026-04-01 14:13

Awake from a dream and try to capture something in a note before it fades away.

Come back soon and start to craft it to recapture more of the dream's essentials.

It's not a fleeting note in Ahrens's system. It might be a fleeting note in Doto's system. I'd treat this as a real note.

You could try a maturity model that uses different stages of the transition from dream to full alertness, eg with tags #luciddream :-) You could add a property for maturity, eg :maturity: 30% or :maturity: sprout or :maturity: draft or :maturity: luciddtream.

Or you could add a comment with all the things that you don't like about the note, questions to be answered, paths to explore, etc.

Or you could do it like Luhmann and simply allow yourself to have very concise notes that might even sound a little cryptic. :-)

Edit: Luhmann always connected his notes to at least one other note. I do the same. Having at least one meaningful connection to another note is one of the few hard rules I have for new zettels in my zettelkasten.

tomp

@harr said:

@tomp said:
I have a part of my system I named "Placeholders". I have a z-card on how placeholder cards are like trying to catch dreams before they fade. This card itself is a placeholder. I'm not sure yet if I'm going to take it anywhere.

I don't know if this would be considered a "fleeting" note since it's been in there for months...

Placeholder Cards Like Dream Notes
-----------------------------------

:id: tom.20260401141253.1
:created: 2026-04-01 14:13

Awake from a dream and try to capture something in a note before it fades away.

Come back soon and start to craft it to recapture more of the dream's essentials.

It's not a fleeting note in Ahrens's system. It might be a fleeting note in Doto's system. I'd treat this as a real note.

I don't really care if Ahren or Doto or anyone else wants to waste time classifying this note. It's there, it captures the gist of a thought, it doesn't lead to anything else yet.

You could try a maturity model that uses different stages of the transition from dream to full alertness, eg with tags #luciddream :-) You could add a property for maturity, eg :maturity: 30% or :maturity: sprout or :maturity: draft or :maturity: luciddtream.

Lord, spare me from more ceremony!

Edit: Luhmann always connected his notes to at least one other note. I do the same. Having at least one meaningful connection to another note is one of the few hard rules I have for new zettels in my zettelkasten.

Luhmann wrote about having unconnected notes, and that they would usually become invisible but that was all right.

This note is connected, by being in the "Placeholders" group. Otherwise, I can tell its status when I glance at it. At some point, either I will work on it and connect it or scrap it.

harr

The status "Placeholder" might also imply a task: "I still have to do X and Y and Z." In this case the question becomes how you manage those implied tasks.

GTD recommends to make open tasks explicit. You could to this in the note itself (see previous post) or in your todo list or a combination of both.

I use a combination. When I might maybe edit the note someday, I'll document the task in the note. I have tags for standard tasks like verifying the source of a quote.

However, when the task is time critical and/or related to stuff beyond the note, I manage it with my task management tools.

tomp

@tomp said:

This note is connected, by being in the "Placeholders" group. Otherwise, I can tell its status when I glance at it. At some point, either I will work on it and connect it or scrap it.

As a nice little example of the ZK doing its job, because of the above card I decided to search for cards that include "dream" in the title. I came up with this one, which I had forgotten about. You can see how it's only tangentially related but interesting in its own right. This card also reminds me of a little project that has languished for a few months to have an LLM turn hand-drawn mind maps into editable, more legible digital mind maps:

ZK Next: The Dreamcatcher and the LLM Cartoonist
-------------------------------------------------

:id: tom.20260315155917.1
:created: 2026-03-15 15:59
:seealso: tom.20260315135610.1 Dreamcatcher

The Dreamcatcher gathers the current context (Working Frame or Scene) and produces artwork such as a cartoon panel or sequence.

The user and LLM work together to correct and refine the artwork.

The result would act as a super-mindmap for bringing a Scene back to life.

The work of iteration is the engagement that makes the creative process happen.

harr

@tomp said:
Lord, spare me from more ceremony!

The general principle here is to store information about a note's status inside the note.

Luhmann wrote about having unconnected notes, and that they would usually become invisible but that was all right.

Luhmann's numbers imply a connection to a previous note. By assigning an ID, he created a permanent connection. The power of Folgezettel. :-)

harr

@tomp said:
As a nice little example of the ZK doing its job, because of the above card I decided to search for cards that include "dream" in the title.

Yeah, search is great! I'm thankful for the invention of personal computers.