Share your ZK plans for 12 June - 18 June
I think that a key to zettelkasting is every zettel is a proxy for an idea, and the only thing that matters, in the end, is a zettel's relatedness to other zettel. Discovery of the scaffolding of zettel relatedness is the skill that grows organically but can be nurtured as a gardener cares for her flowers, fruits, and veggies. Different strategies will tickle discoveries of relatedness.
Please share in this thread what ideas excite you. Use this thread to start a conversation, socialize your understanding, and as a public accountability tool.
DON'T BE SHY!
Week 24 of 2022 Already!
This week, I'll be
- I'll be geeking out in a lovefest of reading, factoring, and refactoring Four Thousand Weeks into my ZK.
- I'll be working up the nerve to make a planned Poetry of Zettelkasting presentation on advanced search techniques for quickly finding high-quality links in a large ZK.
- Reading about reading - I'd Rather Be Reading: The Delights and Dilemmas of the Reading Life by Anne Bogel (I'm not sure where I got the reference for this delightful little book.)
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Trivia.
These are the titles of a few recent notes I'm excited about.
Show us yours! We are interested in seeing what you are up to!
- B-Four Thousand Weeks 202205311624
- Nuancing Evil Media 202206100705
- Wonderment-Eudaemonia 202206100711
- Lindy Books 202206072052
- Schopenhauer On Reading and Books 202206010832
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Will Simpson
My zettelkasten is for my ideas, not the ideas of others. I don’t want to waste my time tinkering with my ZK; I’d rather dive into the work itself. My peak cognition is behind me. One day soon, I will read my last book, write my last note, eat my last meal, and kiss my sweetie for the last time.
kestrelcreek.com
Howdy, Stranger!
Comments
In the year 2525 minus 503, June 12 — June 18.
Interpretation of Goerss and Jardine's Simplicial Homotopy Theory in a concrete model I stumbled upon around Thanksgiving, 2021. Still a Pythagorean secret.
Decluttering the library. I live under an avalanche of books--I prefer physical books to eBooks.
Address the backlog of fleeting notes. A few have a half-life of more than one day.
The Verzettelung of @p_nguyen sounds interesting enough to try. Adding to Zotero requires a heroic effort, when lolling around in Zettlr. A direct quotation or a reference can go into a "Literature Note" with the #literature-note hashtag. Hopefully an ISBN is available to add to Zotero when I can schedule this. If no ISBN is available, perhaps there is a link or some other designator useful for Zotero. ("Hopefully" in this sense is a contemporary standard English usage deplored by fustian prescriptivists and acknowledged by descriptivists, of which I am one.) Stopping to add a reference to Zotero is as bad as stopping to do research when writing.
The point of "literature notes" is lost if these are only named and only some mention is made of their contents, without some convincing discussion of the workflow. Where workflow is concerned, one writes a literature note to avoid interruptions when writing something else that depends on it, e.g., Zettels and writing projects that come later. If I am writing a Zettel in Zettlr find that I need to add a reference to Zotero and export the library in Better CSL JSON again so that Zettlr can find the new reference, which usually requires restarting Zettlr, everything comes to a grinding halt.
I collapse at the end of the day and roll on the ground no matter what. But losing references is a tremendous procedural flaw, due to not consistently writing fleeting notes when reading. I've already lost time trying to track down a calculation I needed...
GitHub. Erdős #2. Problems worthy of attack / prove their worth by hitting back. -- Piet Hein. Alter ego: Erel Dogg (not the first). CC BY-SA 4.0.
Hi @ZettelDistraction,
I feel your pain about interrupting ideation to reexport the Zotero library with every reference addition. I've solved this in my workflow by this Preference Setting. Now the library.bib file is updated "On Change."
I used to struggle to look for ISBNs, but that was then, and this is now. I tend to use a browser extension for Zotero. I use my university library or a research site to find the appropriate citation and the Zotero extension seems capable of managing the importing the citation and any PDFs.
I don't know what idiosyncracies Zettr might bring to the table. Maybe some of this might help? I'm sure you've tried this stuff before.
Will Simpson
My zettelkasten is for my ideas, not the ideas of others. I don’t want to waste my time tinkering with my ZK; I’d rather dive into the work itself. My peak cognition is behind me. One day soon, I will read my last book, write my last note, eat my last meal, and kiss my sweetie for the last time.
kestrelcreek.com
Mine as well. Zettlr polls for the exported file and doesn't pick it up immediately.
The better workflow is to record the references from the beginning, before writing Zettels. Literature Notes come first, as I understand Luhmann's workflow. Then come Zettels. Otherwise the literature references can get lost. Online you have to backtrack.
So far nothing like an unattributed use has crept into any projects--I stop writing until I can make the attribution.
But it's gumming up the works. This seems to be the reason for Ahrens's mention of them, although Ahrens doesn't say what could go wrong if the order isn't adhered to. The reader should be walloped over the head with such points. There's little to be gained by being subtle or coy here.
GitHub. Erdős #2. Problems worthy of attack / prove their worth by hitting back. -- Piet Hein. Alter ego: Erel Dogg (not the first). CC BY-SA 4.0.
This week I’ll be…
…spending more time getting things out of my Zettelkasten than putting things in.
I’ll primarily be surfing my ZK while thinking about a major career decision I need to make this week. I’m in a fortunate situation to have two amazing paths I can go down, but I need to put in some serious thought into what’s right for me, my family, and my interests.
Using my ZK as a thinking tool is my absolute favorite part about having one. The work I put in comes back out many times over in value for situations like these.
Some of the notes that I’ll be pondering
P.S. Concerning
Consider this a vote of confidence for working up the nerve. Would love to see that.
This week I'm reading "Breath - the new science of a lost art" by James Nestor. I'm trying to get through it quickly (I have a paper copy) so that my wife can start reading it (she's itching to go). But I will insist on getting down some notes that can then be factored into my ZK, before I pass it on.
This week I'm going to try a new workflow for me with an older book.
1) First create a structure note with the outline of the book.
2) Read it chapter by chapter and mark the parts that are important for me.
3) create a note for each marking with keywords like #quotation #idea #argument etc.
4) link from the structure note of the book to the individual notes.
Up to now I always did it the other way round; spontaneously I created notes when I found something interesting and sometimes I created a structure note from the book afterwards.
In order not to overstrain the unfamiliar procedure right away, I start with a familiar older book.
(Botton2003: Art of Travel)
immer am Rand der Sammlerfalle
Hey @rl911, this sounds like an interesting little project. Keep us posted on how well it works for you. I'd be interested in seeing your final structure note when you get there.
Will Simpson
My zettelkasten is for my ideas, not the ideas of others. I don’t want to waste my time tinkering with my ZK; I’d rather dive into the work itself. My peak cognition is behind me. One day soon, I will read my last book, write my last note, eat my last meal, and kiss my sweetie for the last time.
kestrelcreek.com
Hi
it took a little longer than planned.
My note box is in German.
I have pulled the German structure note to the book through Deepl, some lines are now possibly somewhat incomprehensible, but the principle becomes clear.
202206062053_Kunst des Reisens_Gliederung
Art of Travel ([[Botton2003]]) by [[Alain de Botton]].
Outline
I. Departure
About expectations
About Travel Stations
II Reasons for travel
About the exotic
Botton in Amsterdam, architectural comparisons
[[202206181039_the red front door]]
[[202206181058_assumption, exoticism as realization of one's own preferences in a foreign land]]
[[202206181055_Exoticism as a symptom of deficiency]]
On inquisitiveness
III Landscapes
About Land and City
About the sublime
IV. Art
On art that opens the eyes
On the attainment of the beautiful
V. Return
On habituation
Meta
immer am Rand der Sammlerfalle
Thanks for sharing. Your outline has convinced me to add The Art of Travel by Alain de Botton to my To Read list. This fall, I'm taking a Travel Writing Class (Geographies of Nonfiction ENGL463), and Botton's book sounds like it dovetails nicely.
For me, this is not too long. It looks like a book-focused structure note. Most of my book-focused structure notes are as big or bigger, and some are much bigger. It all depends on the richness of the ideas and how they connect with established ideas.
This is an intelligent tactic.
I wouldn't worry too much about insisting on a screen worth of text being a standard. A good note length for expressing an idea is different from the ideal length of a note outline book structure. Not sure what software you are using but 'outline folding' and a per file TOC are available in some and are being developed for others.
You've interspersed section heading, which can guide an overview of the book. You've added some annotation around the links.
I think this is awesome.
I've never outlined and then started reading. I imagine this to be difficult with a book you are unfamiliar with. But if you stay flexible, this strategy will reveal some magical insights.
Will Simpson
My zettelkasten is for my ideas, not the ideas of others. I don’t want to waste my time tinkering with my ZK; I’d rather dive into the work itself. My peak cognition is behind me. One day soon, I will read my last book, write my last note, eat my last meal, and kiss my sweetie for the last time.
kestrelcreek.com
Thanks for the comment
When writing, I often use outline functions to easily switch between overview and detail.
But with, more or less, finished notes, this has not proven so successful for me.
I also use my note box as a kind of spaced repetition system.
While surfing through the notebox I refresh the ideas on the notes and check how meaningful the note titles are.
Therefore, the special interest in notes, which fit in individual cases unpacked on a postcard.
I am still experimenting with the possibilities of Obsidian to create a complete follow-up note as easily as possible from a note section. Technically feasible, still optimizing the form of the titles for the continuation slips.
immer am Rand der Sammlerfalle