Share the ideas dancing in your ZK with us. February 17, 2023
You can use this thread to look at and clarify what you are currently working on. Sharing with like-minded friends is safe and often enlightening.
I'll start off.
I notice that for a few weeks now, I haven't had any of what I've come to call meta-zettelkasting notes. This seems a new stage of my zettelkasting. It has taken me a while to get here. Does this mean I'm less interested in zettelkasting as a thing? We'll see. I've been concentrating on Python and am about to start trying to interface Python with web development. My project keeps pushing me towards JSON and JavaScript, but I'd have to start from zero to grasp those technologies. We'll see. I have an assigned essay due on the 27th, and I don't want to lose sight of that deadline.
My seven day zettel production
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!
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@Will the end of the post appears cut-off?
That's an interesting milestone: to keep an eye open for that point in time on one's path of zettelkasting where the ZK itself is not the topic as much anymore.
It sounds only natural to eventually use the tools you have and not think about them as much. (Romanticized metaphor:) A blacksmith eventually knows which size and shape of tongs are needed for the next job, and then goes ahead and forges them into existence. The anvil, the forge and the hammer don't require as much thought. Preparing these custom tools for the job becomes a minor task.
One could claim this is a sign of Zettelkasten maturity, perhaps?
While the syntax is different, and JavaScript is full of pitfalls, you'll notice there's a lot of transferable knowledge from Python. It's not that foreign a land once you start entering it
Previous week:
Next week:
Author at Zettelkasten.de • https://christiantietze.de/
Hello, new here, and hoping I don't trip over customs that I'm unaware of.
As a brief introduction, I am a U.S. based, native English speaker and life-long learner.
This week, I'm addressing workflow. I've been ill with a mild virus and then recovering from some medical things, and haven't touched my ZK since that all started. I'd like to get into a regular habit of processing notes instead of collecting them, but don't have one built yet.
@AWomanThinking, welcome.
I know what you mean by wanting to process notes rather than collect them. This is what drove me to explore the ZK method. Two 'methods' have helped me. First, I've kept collecting but at a slower pace keeping the collection separate, mentally and physically, from my ZK. Second, I follow a morning practice of review. Are you a journaler? I've found it helpful on several levels as part of that activity, chaining a short systematic ZK review session.
You are astute to see that "a regular habit of processing notes" is the way to success. Self-directed habit formation on this level is complex. I use this thread as a public accountability action to keep the 'iron in the fire' of ZK habits.
Best of luck. If I can help, please feel free to reach out to me. By the way, what are your fields of interest?
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
@AWomanThinking
Welcome to the forum - I hope you find much to read and digest here, in addition to anything else you are reading. I've been a Zettelkaster for about 3 years and have found the discussions and suggestions on the forum to be very useful in working on my ZK.
I agree with @Will that an essential element is regular maintenance of our ZK. I tend to capture ideas into my ZK quickly, but then need to process each zettel in several ways before it matures. One task is to make each zettel atomic, as short as makes sense, and pithy. The other is to get it connected to other relevant zettels. For the former, I use the tag "#unfinished" and for the latter, the tag "#unlinked", which are added to all new zettels (that is, when they are created they are both unfinished and unlinked). Then every few days, I search on one or the other of those tags, find a zettel that needs more work, tweak it, and if I'm happy, remove one of those tags. It's a method of guiding my efforts to maintain my ZK that works well for me.
By the way, @Will has created a number of Keyboard Maestro macros that work with The Archive to streamline your workflow. If you are using The Archive, they are very helpful.
I do have a long-standing journaling practice, but only have time available for it every few days, at a time when it can take some effort to defend that time. I do find that taking fleeting notes with pen and paper, then transferring anything I want to save into digital format seems to be a workable workflow. As Kadavy noted in "Digital Zettelkasten", the dopamine appeal of scrolling is a hard one to top.
Loosely, my fields of interest are tending to mind and body, eudaimonia, ethics and technology (including AI and surveillance tech), and leadership. My overall goals are to develop understanding, lay out how to live a good life, and hopefully to be able to write essays and blog posts at some future point.
Congratulations @Will on the milestone! @ctietze's analogy with smithwork is fantastic. I might also liken it to the point in acquiring a new language when one begins dreaming in their new target language. So many talk about the idea of increased productivity associated with having a zk, but most spend an inordinate amount of time on shiny object syndrome or over complicating it and never get to the point of quickly writing things out, filing them, and being able to trust that their system will just work™. When you no longer notice it anymore and it has become second nature is when the real fun (and magic) begins to happen. It also seems easier and more natural to break the "rules" once you've internalized the basics. We should spend more time talking about the value of 'zettelkasten fluency'.
I'm excited this week to be doing some work in areas of the history of misinformation, cultural myths, and 'American exceptionalism' in preparation for Dan Allosso's upcoming book club on Kruse and Zelizer's new edited book. I suspect he'll announce it shortly at https://danallosso.substack.com/ if folks are interested in joining in the discussion/sensemaking.
Kruse, Kevin M., and Julian E. Zelizer. Myth America: Historians Take On the Biggest Legends and Lies About Our Past. Basic Books, 2023.
website | digital slipbox 🗃️🖋️
I've been in an on-again off-again relationship with note taking over the couple years. Constantly changing my mind about what I do and don't want to include in my notes. Do I want to include daily notes? Intermingle personal notes with work notes? Take notes on for-fun reading? Alongside this, I've hopped programs probably a dozen plus times (Archive -> Roam -> Obsidian -> Roam -> org mode -> etc.), leading to all sorts of fragmentation in my notes as I constantly am trying to reformat the old information to fit the new approach.
I took a several month break from worrying about note taking at all, just jotting down stuff in notebooks as necessary and not worrying where to put it. It made me appreciate both how over-complicated I had made my notes system, as well as how useful it is to have a system for processing information beyond just the first read/encounter.
So I'm trying this again from the beginning, trying to approach ZK as if I'm new to the system. Just starting with one note and going from there, leaving out all of the extra plug-ins and complicating systems that I had built up intending to make my notes more all-encompassing while, ironically, getting in the way of what made ZK useful.
Fortuitously, this restart coincides with me starting a new project at work, so I can relearn ZK alongside learning a new subject. The topic I'm starting to learn about is how light scatters off of non-conductive materials that are much smaller than the wavelength of said light and then, importantly, how I can model this sort of scattering for materials that I'm working with. I started looking into this yesterday, so I only have two notes. One note is acting as a proto-structure note, collecting a list of questions that I need to answer to grow my understanding of this area of research. The other note is starting to dive into the topic, building out some of the fundamental equations involved while also marking down places where I might want to explore further. "This equation is important in this way, but I don't understand where this part of the equation comes from."
Hopefully one day I can be like @Will and not have to think so hard about my tools and how to apply them!
ORCID: 0000-0003-2213-2533
@prometheanhindsight, this blew my mind. Duh, we all know the dangers of over-complication. But you point to a theme difficult for a novice to grasp and a journeyman to convey. Use the notes you take and create a "system for processing information beyond just the first read/encounter." The level to which information is processed after the "first read/encounter" reflects its value. Deep linking and review/refactoring are the king and queen of note processing.
In a way, this describes my path. I was a note-taker who tended to collect anything I might reference or be interested in reading. I made a clean switch, starting with a single note. I went with less complicated software. Over time I've been tempted to switch, especially when note-takers I look up to switched to the newest and latest, but somehow I've resisted the shiny chrome.
This sound so interesting. When you say non-conductive materials, what types of materials are you talking about that they are smaller than light wavelengths? Is your project related to optics or maybe photovoltaics? Curious mind what to know. Good luck.
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
I'm glad this resonated with you! I'm hoping that I can keep this at the core of my restarted approach. Don't over-complicate things, just focus on processing my reading, reflecting on it, and making good links so I can naturally stumble across it again.
This is, for sure, what I need to do. I have been the happiest with my notes when I was using less complicated software. For sure, more complicated programs have all sorts of exciting possibilities, but trying to utilize every feature leads to bloated notes that are more trouble to keep up with than they're worth. This time around, I'm sticking with The Archive. It has always felt like the cleanest distillation of ZK principles.
My project is definitely related to optics! My research until this point has been focused on plasmonics, which is a phenomenon when you have a metallic material (typically gold or silver) that is much smaller than the wavelength of light. The material's electrons are free to move about (which is why they are good conductors) and so they slosh around in response to light leading to strong absorption of the light. The alternative is to have a dielectric material, where the electrons don't conduct freely but light still can pass through and interact with the material. These dielectric materials can have what are called Mie resonances, which is where the relationship between the particle size and a particular wavelength of light, as well as the difference in refractive index between the particle and its surroundings, leads to highly efficient light scattering. This can be useful for making nano-scale antennas, for example, which direct light in a specific direction.
The materials I'm working with are metal oxides--specifically, indium oxide and cadmium oxide nanospheres around 15--30 nanometers in diameter. They're really unique materials because they are naturally very wide bandgap semiconductors (meaning it takes a lot of energy to make them conduct), but we can dope them (purposefully introduce defects) so that they start to behave as if they are metals. I'm trying to figure out if it's possible for us to simultaneously have plasmonic behavior and a Mie resonance in the same material.
I did do work that was related to photovoltaics in grad school. I studied a nanomaterial that got colder when we shined light on it, turning its own heat into light. Ultimately, the hope would be that it could be used in tandem with a photovoltaic, scavenging some of the energy lost as heat by the photovoltaic and turning it back into light that can be used for electricity.
ORCID: 0000-0003-2213-2533
@prometheanhindsight In a much less elegant way than @Will , I just wanted to say "good for you" and cheer you on, in your reset!