[Zettelfeedback] Life is a Tickertape

Perry_Clayton · December 2022

I'm a zettelkasten noob. This morning while in bed pondering zettelkasten and just ruminating in general the idea for this zettel popped into my brain. So I grabbed my phone and made a fleeting note "Life is a tickertape". Later I came and composed this zettel.

While I've been trying to begin my zk with notes from sources with the hopes of building it up over time, I also very much want to capture these kinds of musings. I fact it's an eye toward this kind of thing that is my primary motivation to create a zk.

Since I'm still new to this, I'd like to start off on the best foot possible, so any advice about what I'm doing here would be appreciated.

Thanks!

Life is a Tickertape

Date: 2022-12-31
Time: 09:12
Tags: #illustration #musing #question

Life is experienced moment-to-moment, like an old fashioned tickertape. This is how we receive information. Reading, lectures, podcasts, speeches, these are sequences of words. Music is sequences of sounds. Movies are sequences of pictures. All of these represent bits of information that come in one at a [[time]].

Similarly, reasoning seems to be a series of logical steps that take us from idea to idea to idea until we reach a conclusion.

In contrast, our [[brain]]s seem to operate as an interlinking network. At the lowest level it's a web of interconnected synapses. At a higher level our thoughts seem like a web of associations, similar to a [[mind map]].

Question: Since our experiences are sequential, but the organization of our thoughts is more of a network or web of associations, how to we integrate these concepts?

Contrast with [[gestalt]]

Iacillo · December 2022

Hey there @Perry_Clayton!

I loved your philosophy and the way you wrote your zettel.

The way I know how ZK works and the way I implement on mine is to use ideas as notes. I mean, yeah, you can have concept notes such as "mind map" as well as for "brain" and "time", but what I would do would be to fetch for ideas that are written in the text and create notes to develop more these ideas.

For example "Our thoughts seem like a web of associations" would be a great title for a new note, and develop how thoughts are related to each other. You could also link it to the "brain" or "mind map" concept card or even to an idea note of these two concepts.

There are always some great ideas that come up with the writing that you can transform into new notes and flourish your ZK. There is always room for new thoughts!

Will · December 2022

Like @Iacillo said:
"I loved your philosophy and the way you wrote your zettel."

And YES! some zettel are the result of active reading, and some are gifts from the universe.

I love metaphors. Ticker tape is not one I've heard used before. In this context, it works.

Your follow-up to the lead, in paragraph two with "Simularly," and in paragraph three with "In contrast," tie the ideas together.

I'm a believer in interstitial tags. I use a tag #question in order to recall in a future search. This question would quickly be found with the search #question network. Think about how in the future when you might have formulated 163 questions, and you want to get at a relevant question.

This is how I format questions.

#question
Since our brains seem to operate as ...

Which application are you using to host your zettelkasten?

I'm not sure what you are thinking is to place "time," "brain," "mind map," and "gestalt" within links. Particularly the way the mind map link is formatted, and depending on which software app you are hosting your notes, by selecting the link, you'd search for all notes with "mind" and "map" in them but not necessarily together. I have used "bracketed tags", but they are something different.

Perry_Clayton · January 2023

@Will

Which application are you using to host your zettelkasten?

I'm using Obsidian, but I copied the raw markup it generates directly in order to post my comment here. Within Obsidian, [[mind map]] links directly to another zettel called "mind map". It's not a search but a direct zettel to zettel link, same for [[time]], [[brain]], and [[gestalt]].

In this case [[time]] in particular is not a zettel I've created yet, and might be a poor connection. While I was in the throes of writing the zettel, it occured to me that time is a critical part of any sequence ("moment to moment", "one after the other", etc)

The hashtag links (#illustration #musing #question) are just organizational groupings over which I anticipate I'll be doing future searches.

I wanted to give you just this technical info in case it alters your response.

Will · January 2023

I could be way off base here.

I'm familiar with Obsidian. By bracketing, you create the potential for a new note. Selecting it will make a new note if one does not exist. You can bracket a phrase at any time. These bracketed phrases are meant to be the titles of future notes. They are intended to help you not break the flow of thought when zettelkasting. I don't think the intention is to bracket everything that might refer to a note you might create, just in case.

Think about what you have bracketed as potential titles for notes in the future. Will you have a note titled "time," (lowercase)? Probably not what you intended. Maybe tags might work better here. An example of a future note idea title worth bracketing might be (notice the mixed case):

In contrast, our [[Brains Operate as an Interlinking Network]]. At the lowest level, it's a web of interconnected synapses. At a higher level, our thoughts seem like a web...

You might add to this idea thread by noting synoptical studies in neuroimaging. Can you see how this might be clearer on both ends of the link as opposed to a note titled "brain"?
Not that you'd have this note in mind now, I wouldn't even consider this now, and the potential is always available. I wouldn't clutter my note with all these bracketed words.

And why not other words? Like concept, thought, lecture, movie, music, experience?

Another consideration is that Obsidian keeps note links in sync with note titles. If you change the title to the note created with [[brain]], Obsidian will change the source text. This likely will cause unwanted grammatical changes in the source note.

Perry_Clayton · January 2023

@Will @Iacillo

"Our thoughts seem like a web of associations"

and

"Brains Operate as an Interlinking Network"

I see what you guys mean. I was, indeed, kind of thinking about titles for future zettels, but your observations about just slapping brackets around individual key words hits home.

There's a world of difference between thinking about writing a zettel called "mind map" and "Our thoughts seem like a web of associations".

You both picked interesting titles for future zettels that just whooshed right past me.

And from a technical standpoint Will is absolutely correct about unwanted changes to linked text.

This is giving me a new way to look at things.

Thanks!

Perry_Clayton · January 2023

Once again, thanks to @Will and @Iacillo for your excellent comments critiquing my zettel. They've got me reconsidering what I'm doing.

Collector's fallacy is, I suppose, a rite of passage for new zettelers. I'd been warned. Numerous times, in my reading about zk I'd been cautioned: "don't just collect interesting facts". But I seemed to have fallen right into it anyway.

Have a gander at these zettel titles from my vault:

There's value in these notes, I know it, but I don't think that they're as useful as they could be; at least not in their current form.

In pondering your comments, it seems to me that it would be better to think of zettel titles almost like the topic sentence of a paragraph. This would shape the nature of the zettel itself.

Would you agree with that?

andang76 · January 2023

Nice.

I would add, in the title "but brain is a network" or something like that.
In this way, the title is evocative of the content of all note.

Will · January 2023

Titling atomic notes is a developed skill. I'm a beginner.

To create a title that draws you in, use verb phrases to make them dynamic, engaging, and open rather than static, boring, and closed.

Below is a random sample of some of my note titles.

@Perry_Clayton said:
In pondering your comments, it seems to me that it would be better to think of zettel titles almost like the topic sentence of a paragraph. This would shape the nature of the zettel itself.

I put a summary sentence or two in each note, separate from the title. When I place links, I can link with the note title, the UUID alone, or the note title together with the summary sentence. This last choice is my usual. I then sometimes edit the summary describing the reason for the link. Below is pictured the same list as above, only with the summary sentences. There is much more information. I'm sure Obsidian has a plugin somewhere that can do this.

Perry_Clayton · January 2023

@Will

Thanks for that peek into your zettelkasten. It's helpful.

Out of curiosity, why are some of your zettels prefixed with a letter and dash? (A, B, & P in your samples).

Will · January 2023

AH, the note list. When looking at our notes list, we look for clues that will guide us to the note with the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.
The above example is the note list produced by the tag search #congnaive—a quick, broad search to get you a list of example note titles. I only shared a small portion of the list. The whole list contains 43 notes. In advance of looking into the note, the prepended characters clue me to what the note's context is.
A = Processed Article
B = Processed Book
P = Processed Podcast
This becomes more important when you are using a large ZK. Search results can be overwhelming, and anything that helps narrow candidates for investigation helps overall.

Some zettelnauts modify this schema and use Greek or Math symbols for a similar purpose. Some don't use this schema at all.

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[Zettelfeedback] Life is a Tickertape

Life is a Tickertape

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