Self-directed Learning with Zettelkasten

Edmund

There are six books on the desk in front of me. Books on the subject of the Zettelkasten system.
My idea is rereading all of them. Mortimer Adler called it 'syntopical reading' in his book 'How to read a book'.

But where should I begin? I shifted one book from left to right, one from right to left. I read the titles and the subtitles. Two of the books are about writing, three are about thinking. My favourite book by Sönke Ahrens is about writing, thinking and 'learning'. Yes, about 'learning'! Only one author mentioned 'learning'.

I should mention that 'learning' is one of my favourite topics in my Zettelkasten. My current area of interest is 'self-directed learning'. To cut a long story short, here is a context map:

Edmund

We can see 'Zettelkasten' and 'self-directed learning' as related key terms. We can also view them as related concepts. The former would result in a link from A to B, while the latter could be used to create a set of concept maps.

Now let's take a look at 'self-directed learning' and its inherent elements:

A 'Zettelkasten' within a concept map could be reduced to its five basic note types:

Edmund

Both concepts can be seen as modules from which a larger system can be constructed:

That's the first example of modular thinking being implemented in my Zettelkasten. It is implemented using four structure notes, each containing one concept map.

References

• “Modular denken - brand eins online.” Accessed August 23, 2026. https://www.brandeins.de/magazine/brand-eins-wirtschaftsmagazin/2026/modular-denken.

tomp

@Edmund said:
I should mention that 'learning' is one of my favourite topics in my Zettelkasten. My current area of interest is 'self-directed learning'. To cut a long story short, here is a context map:

Here is my high level starting point for a Zettelkasten.