Comments

• andang76

  July 18 edited July 18

  I've found my (1) one-line definition and (2) second order explicitation, at the top of my Zettelkasten main note:

  (1)
  "Zettelkasten is a personal practice for learning, thinking, and finally accomplish something valuable from thought and knowledge developed during the process"

  (2)

  "I define Zettelkasten as the thinking system, of which the author himself is a part, which is set up thanks to a framework centered on the concept of Slip Box, conceived, built and used with the aim of exercising thinking, developing knowledge and producing value from it."

  I've spent very much time to refine it during the almost three years from the discovery of this world :-)
• Nick

  July 19 edited July 19

  Wrote a definition from scratch, using yours as inspiration @Sascha. I think your definition is a bit too concise and doesn't include what makes a zettelkasten different from other thinking environments? This is what I came up with without looking at my note on zettelkasten, which is funny because it is very different from the definition in my note on zettelkasten.

  Zettelkasten is a collection of notes that have been processed and organized in a way (the zettelkasten method) that facilitates the gradual development of many ideas concurrently. By doing so, ones note collection becomes an integrated thinking environment instead of a repository to be referenced. The driving principle behind the zettelkasten is the practice of creating concise/individualized notes that can easily be referenced in other notes. By making notes concise/individualized (atomic), you are encouraging an idea to be used in multiple contexts (e.g. different chains of thoughts, arguments, models, etc).... (then I'd add a sentence about how this is done through linking notes using UIDs).
• Perikles

  July 20

  @Sascha

  I like your definition very much!! I do think it can be improved in it's formulation. I tried to do so. I tried a) to be more concise and b) more to the point of what you want to say. When reading your definition I can "hear" the to-the-pointness in our mother tongue and I tried to translate that into english.

  (I don't think that the way ~15-35 year old Germans use the word "aufbauen" these days will stand the test of time. That's why I kicked this word out…)

  Her we go, I hope it is helpful in some way:

  The Zettelkasten is an integrated thinking environment consisting of a growing collection of notes. The Zettelkasten Method is a system of principles and best practices that leverage your note-taking habits into a source of constant improvement of both your thinking and your personal integrated thinking environment.