Is there a Better Way to Organise Structure Notes?
Over time my structure notes tend to grow in size and complexity. Large structure notes do not a make a Zettelkasten ineffective, but I wonder if there is an advantage on having smaller structure notes over big ones.
The inspiration behind this question comes from Nassim Taleb opinion that small systems are more antifragile.
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As my structure notes grow, I tend to break them up when the sections become a regular point of access themselves.
For some topics, I have a section called "Justification". Almost always, there are just a couple of notes under this section and in my mind it belongs to the topic itself. But for habit building, I am quite advanced in my research on that topic. I will write a book on that topic that has a fairly comprehensive approach to it. The justification is a thing itself (note titles, without IDs:
Existential Reasons
Purpose-Rational Reasons
On this note, there is still some clutter that I have to clean up and other commentary. But as you can see, the justification is already comprehensive because I regularly engage with providing a thorough justification for habit building. So, it became a thing in itself.
I am a Zettler
My structure notes tend bo become a network of splitted notes as they grows.
Currently, I'm letting my structure notes grow big rather than splitting them off because I find that I will "lose" entry points as I forget the different, specific structure notes.
This is perfectly in sync with my practice.
We are doing the same thing.
I am a Zettler
In my case I build structure notes about structure notes :-)
And, in a more general way, structure notes are still notes so they can be linked in strategic places and ways, building higher-order constructs.
Many of my notes, when appropriate, contains a link to a structure note.
Sometimes, anyway, when appropriate, I have a redundancy: the splitted representation and a big tree, too. They provide two different purposes.
I specify better the concept into my first post, I split structure notes when they grows not in terms of "size" (number of links), but in terms of number of concepts represented by the structure note itself.
The same approach of atomicity. Not "long or short", but "it means one thing"
I can have a big structure note because I have many notes that explores one single aspect.
I understand your point, splitting large structure notes into multiple smaller ones may be detrimental because it could decrease the number of entry points to the specific structure notes, and thus increasing the chance of keeping the individual notes hidden.
I imagine that if I had a structure note with six nested layers, the seventh layer of structure notes would probably be accessed less times than the first ones.
I find that splitting a structure note too much may also decrease serendipity.
At the same time I like the idea of treating structure notes as little machines created with a specific goal in mind and I feel that if a structure note gets too large, then its purpose gets diluted, making it less effective.
Could there be a heuristic to determine the ideal size of a structure note?
It may sound a bit woo-woo but I believe there's two forces at play that can only be kept in a dynamic equilibrium, one that's ever shifting, and that requires effort.
Viewed in isolation, you coul argue for both:
@Sascha reminded me that this is what Dialectic is about: thesis--antithesis--synthesis. The synthesis is your daily struggle.
Instead of a static ideal size, I believe the real value lies in learning to get better at balancing these opposing forces in specific situations.
Author at Zettelkasten.de • https://christiantietze.de/
I think the mode of the word is right: It is balancing and not finding a balance. It is a constant negotiation. The equilibrium is dynamic and not static.
I am a Zettler
My "heuristic" is rather simple.
Being aware that there are two ways, I try both ways, and I chose after a while the one that works beter :-)
Into my space of notes are present structures of both types. I have a structure note about "idea atomicity" that contains 111 links. I've found useful, in that context, having a full bird-eye overview about idea atomicity. In other cases, I have a federation of small structure notes, which are then in turn linked to a higher-order note. More specific, more focusing on a single aspect.
And many times the same cluster of notes is covered by many structure notes of different zoom level and boundaries.
I consider structure notes as geographic maps (before GPS invented, at least). I can't always use the same kind of topographic map for all the things, for a trip or for an excursion. Different purposes need different zoom levels and details.
The birth of each single structure note, and therefore how it is made, is guided by the answer to the questions "what do I need it for" and "how do I intend to use it"