How do I set up a Zettelkasten that supports my chaotic brain?
I have ADHD so my brain functions as much less linear than the average person's brain. The pourpose of the Zettelkasten (from my understanding) is to be a mediator between the brain's odd organization, and the real world's want of linearness in the work created for it. So for me, this may be even more important to set up right, and it may be under much more pressure to perform to my brain's needs and my hopes to eventually attend med school. I love the idea of using the Zettelkasten as a notetaking system but I have no idea how to implement it or even begin, so that in the long term it will work for me, be efficient, and pose it's pourpose. I enjoy collecting information, and I enjoy writing it on paper in hopes that it will stick better that way. So I have run into multiple issues
The most popular paper based organization method seems slike it could quite easily get overwelming and disorganized. A lot of pressure is put on the entry points to ideas and being able to branch out from them with other ideas. 1 could be biology, 1a could be anatomy, 1a2 could be dermatology or the skeletal system, all to get to my niche random piece of info that could just as easily be under another address. My first Zetell isn't going to be the broad topic of Biology and some other ones so I can talk about what defines life. The catagories and tangents are subjective too and may unpredictably overlap each other.
I have no idea what atomicity even means or how to keep it. I struggle with difrentiating one thought from another and with all the organization issues, having many many more zettels with less info on them is hardly going to do me any favors. Should homeostasis be it's own zettel underneath the qualities of life zettel? If so why?
I am actively learning with many gaps in knowledge, I want a place to easily transfer the learning process and anecdotal information to, that will support me during and after insesent usage, and can still be used later to explore freely, study from, and build essays or research articles with. Information gets inside the brain after looots of retreival, practice, and struggling to understand the topic, I am perfectly ok with that but I want to use my limited energy on learning, instead of constantly fighting a system that is only mildely better than traditional note taking.
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@Void_Bird Remembering that this topic was raised on the forum before, I posed the following question to ChatGPT: "Please look at the posts in https://forum.zettelkasten.de and see if there is any discussion on the use of a Zettelkasten by people with ADHD", and received the following answer. I hope this is helpful:
Yes. There is a meaningful amount of discussion on the Zettelkasten Forum about ADHD, although it is scattered rather than collected in a dedicated ADHD thread or category.
The most directly relevant discussion I found is “Every attempt at PKM has landed me in the same place: a huge mess”, started in October 2024 by a member who explicitly says they have ADHD. They describe a familiar pattern: accumulating thousands of ideas and notes, trying multiple systems such as Obsidian and Notion, becoming overwhelmed by categorizing and linking, and periodically abandoning the whole system and starting again.
Open the discussion
The responses are quite interesting. Christian Tietze's main advice is essentially “connect, not collect.” He recommends keeping the actual Zettelkasten relatively clean: don't pour everything captured into it; only add material after it has been processed. Raw captures can live elsewhere in an inbox or archive. Otherwise search and retrieval become swamped by material that was never turned into useful thought.
Sascha takes a somewhat different angle. He argues that a Zettelkasten cannot simply compensate for whatever knowledge-work habits a person brings to it. The habits and the Zettelkasten form a feedback loop. His particular recommendation to the ADHD poster is to introduce intentionality before processing information: decide what question or goal you are pursuing, and let that determine which ideas deserve attention and which connections are worth making. Without that constraint, virtually everything can potentially connect to everything else, which naturally produces overload.
Another contributor recommends guardrails, including a spaced inbox or incremental-processing system. Instead of confronting hundreds of unsorted items, the system presents one item at a time and asks you to act on it, defer it, connect it, or discard it. That contributor explicitly describes this as a way of preventing the ADHD tendency to jump between many items.
There is also a useful 2025 discussion called “Back to Bear.” The poster says they have “slight ADHD” and describes abandoning an elaborate Obsidian environment because the large number of choices—folders, links, tags, plugins, configuration—created too much friction. They returned to Bear specifically because it constrains the choices: essentially, “tags, period.” Their conclusion is that they need software with powerful but deliberately limited capabilities so that it channels their attention rather than constantly inviting them to redesign the system.
Open “Back to Bear”
That thread makes a point I think is particularly relevant to ADHD and Zettelkasten practice: the theoretically most powerful PKM application may not be the most effective one. The ability to customize endlessly can itself become part of the problem. The poster argues that the purpose is to think and write, not to maintain the note-taking system.
A very recent thread, “advice for studying,” was started by someone who says they have AuADHD. They describe wanting to learn many subjects but becoming stuck on questions such as how to study, how to take notes, and how to know whether the method is working. One response suggests starting with something extremely basic: externalize a thought, write a question about what you are reading, answer it in a note, and later return to that note. The explicit advice is not to learn a complicated note-taking methodology before beginning. Another contributor recommends choosing one method and using it consistently for a few months rather than continually evaluating alternatives.
Open “advice for studying”
There are several other incidental references. One forum member describes The Archive as giving them relief from “Obsidian ADHD overwhelm”, and an older 2020 discussion contains a participant who describes strong ADHD tendencies and says that Zettelkasten gives their studying some of the structure their brain otherwise lacks.
My synthesis of the forum discussion would be:
It's going to be a challenge for people who don't have your own quirks of mind to know (or guess) what is and isn't going to work for you. But there will be many attempts, I am sure!
It is fine that categories, etc are poorly defined and and overlap. The sections (I hesitate to call them categories) should arise from your own needs and understanding rather than be defined beforehand. You may be inconsistent from time to time. That's normal even for people who are more organized than you may be.
For you, I think that search will be very important. This rules out a paper-based system, IMO, since it's hard or impractical to search one to find a particular note.
You will probably do better with a system that puts few barriers in your way. So look for one that is especially easy to use, in the sense that you don't need much to know in the way of technical procedures.
If it's hard to keep focused on one thing, then I think your notes should contain enough context to remind you about what was in your mind when you wrote them. Since searching will be important, try to make your titles say enough for you to recognize what the notes are about - and then plan to search among the titles. This will reduce the number of hits you would get using a full text search.
Don't get caught up in worrying about atomicity. The idea boils down to a note that talks about one subject. For example, if you want to write a note about cars, don't branch out and start writing about garages or bicycles in the same note (the note can link to other notes about those things). If you want to write a note about fuel efficiency of cars, don't branch out into how cars change from one decade to the next. If you start writing about how trainable cats are, don't add material about your neighbor's dog. Start a new one for the dog instead.
Remember that you can always edit a note later, so it's always possible to narrow its focus.
If it's hard for you to stay focused while reading a dense block of text, then respect that fact and don't put them into notes. Use short, punchier lines, bullet points, spacing, and whatever other forms help you to pick up the ideas as easily as you can.
Using a Zettelkasten-like system effectively takes practice too (like any system). Part of that practice can include trying to find a note that you wrote recently. This is how you can learn what works and what doesn't work for you.
Good luck!
This might be too much pressure. And you might be disappointed by the results, even if you do everything right. Ignore the Zettelkasten hype. I recommend to lower your expectations. :-)
I can relate. :-) However, you might want to combine Zettelkasten with other tools.
For example, some of my friends with ADHD are very happy with an Everything Book. It's a notebook where they capture everything that they find interesting, from deep insights to shopping lists. No complex system. Just a place to collect all the random information that doesn't have a better place. This might not be your way, but maybe it inspires you to explore other tools as well.
You don't need a Zettelkasten for this either. Some people write in notebooks or on big index cards or in books or on printouts. Some people love to use paper index cards als flash cards.
Again, the idea is to explore other tools as well. Another idea is to remove the pressure. If the idea of a perfectly organized Zettelkasten stresses you out, give yourself the permission to not use a Zettelkasten at all.
People who use their Zettelkasten for many years don't experience it as source of pressure, but as a calm place where they find relief form stress. My Zettelkasten is a place where I can think in peace.
This is not the most popular paper based organization method. This is just one flavor of doing "Zettelkasten".
Much more popular, but less talked about, are simpler methods like storing index cards in alphabetical order. And have I mentioned flashcards? They don't have any particular order at all, because they get shuffled around during repetition.
Good questions. :-)
It's important to understand the Zettelkasten and flashcards work very differently. A flashcard about homeostasis doesn't need any overhead. And if you organize your cards alphabetically by their title, you don't need any numbering scheme either. You might have different boxes for different subjects, eg one box for biology and one for French vocabulary, but you don't need a complex numbering system.
You don't have to put everything into one system. Personally, I use a mix. I don't use my Zettelkasten as a journal. I rarely use my Zettelkasten, when I'm preparing for an exam. But I love my Zettelkasten for some longterm research interests.
If learning is your priority, I'd use tools that are optimized for learning.
Zettelkasten has other strengths. :-)
I have ADHD too. What works for me is working with a Canvas-like feature, Obsidian Canvas, Scrintal or Tinderbox.
Since we don't have developed executive functioning skills and we forget what's not in front of us, such a setup has been invaluable to me since you can see your work-in-progress and big picture at one glance.
I suggest externalization and using friction to compensate for weak skills.
Edit: Start with one blank canvas, add notes and connections without thinking about organization and when you reach to a mental squeeze point, group notes. Structure will emerge naturally.
Selen
I suggest to train the ability to focus on one epistemic interest at a time.
The problem of making connections is to be able to hold many ideas in your mind for an extended amount of time. So, start with one idea which is already hard enough. The ability to keep you mind on one idea is the foundation to the rest.
I am a Zettler
One thing that helped me was stopping the fight against the chaos for a while.
I kept trying to design the "right" system before I understood what was actually in front of me.
At some point I noticed that many of my scattered notes were not random at all. They were traces of recurring interests, unfinished questions, projects, concerns, and ideas that I kept returning to.
Instead of asking:
"How do I force my brain into a Zettelkasten?"
I started asking:
"What is my existing note collection already trying to tell me?"
That small shift reduced a lot of frustration.
My note system became less of a filing cabinet and more of a conversation with earlier versions of myself.
Structure still matters, but I found that meaning had to come first.
Otherwise I was just creating increasingly organized chaos.
Willy Wurzel 🥕
>
When I run a search, I often feel that I am asking "What do we know about X?".
Poorly structured or not, each person has a lot of latent understanding to bring to any study. One has to allow that knowledge to ripple into the note collection. Its structure is one way to express that knowledge.
I think that's close to what I was trying to point at.
Before my notes became organized, they became repetitive.
The same questions kept showing up in different places, years apart sometimes.
That was the first structure worth paying attention to.
Not the folders. Not the links. Not the numbering.
The recurring questions.
🥕
Could you show us how this shows up in practice?
This is probably the closest practical example I can give.
I took a small extract from an onboarding document that emerged from practical work, recurring frustrations, and humanity's apparently limitless ability to overcomplicate simple things.
Out of curiosity, I pasted it into a fresh LLM chat and asked a single question:
"What recurring questions do you think produced these principles?"
The model came back with questions such as:
None of those questions appear anywhere in the document.
Yet they seem to be recoverable from it.
That is probably the closest practical example I can give of what I meant.
The document contains answers.
The recurring questions behind it had to be inferred.
If you're curious:
Step 1: Copy the document below into a fresh chat with your favorite LLM.
Step 2: Ask:
"What recurring questions do you think produced these principles?"
Step 3: Continue the conversation using your own material:
…and see what recurring questions the model reconstructs.
That is where things started getting interesting for me. 🥕
Working Principles
Respond in natural language: direct, clear, and concise.
Identify the real goal first. Then build the smallest useful, testable step.
A thought, joke, possibility, or hypothesis is not automatically a request, decision, or commitment.
Use evidence before assumptions. If something has not been observed or verified, state what is unknown.
Separate facts, observations, hypotheses, proposals, and decisions.
For technical work, provide complete, directly applicable solutions whenever possible.
Process corrections immediately.
Prefer the simplest solution that achieves the goal.
Stop when the work is done.
Working Method
Short Version
Evidence before assumptions.
Goal before architecture.
One test at a time.
Separate facts from hypotheses.
Prefer the simplest working solution.
Stop when the work is done. 🥕
I tried this myself, except that I didn't use a chatbot. Instead, I made a mind map of the working principles and methods first. Here are some questions that I thought were implied by the stated principles and methods:
Recurrent questions
- what do you mean?
- how will we know if we are done?
- what is the goal?
- is that a fact or assumption?
- what have we agreed to?
- are you just guessing?
- can this be simplified?
- have you actually tested this?
- aren't you making this too complicated?
Very interesting.
Excellent starting point. Work with what you've got. I like to ask a similar question:
What can I learn from my existing notes?
In my inner dialogue, I'm talking about recurring topics, issues or ideas. that leads to the question:
What are recurring topics, issues and ideas in my notes?
I'm trying to recognize patterns and to understand what motivated me to write those notes. It helps to recognize unconscious interests.
I tried it, but I was overwhelmed by the number of questions.
So I asked for common elements instead. This returned summaries like "Do only the work that is justified by the actual goal, current evidence, and next decision-relevant test." It returned a list of inferred anti-patterns. And it returned plenty of potential keywords to follow up. It pointed to the scientific method and agile programming.
When I asked for underlying values, I got among many other things: truthfulness, epistemic humility, conceptual clarity, interpretive restraint, purposefulness, practical usefulness, empiricism, incremental learning, parsimony, responsiveness, completion discipline.
When I asked what the questions from the first prompt have in common, I got for example:
Then I asked what problem the principles are supposed to solve. I got: "unjustified escalation" and "failures of interpretation, epistemic control, scope management, verification, and termination in collaborative reasoning and technical work. Its common target is overreach: treating weak, ambiguous, or incomplete inputs as grounds for stronger claims, broader commitments, or more work than is justified."
I find it interesting that the working principles don't state the problem they're trying to address. But maybe that's symptomatic of that work environment. :-)
I see a parallel to note-making. Don't just jump in, but ask yourself first: Why do I want to write notes? What is the purpose of those notes? What problem do they solve? Clear goals and incremental progress also make sense for Zettelkasten.