Lower levels of Bloom's Taxonomy
I think you are all somewhat familiar with Bloom's taxonomy. It's a framework that describes elevated levels of engagement with information and perfectly captures what we are trying to do with the Zettelkasten Method.
There are discussions in the forum that indirectly touch on Bloom's Taxonomy, such as the layers-of-evidence discussion and the Barbell Method of reading. My impression is that the general tendency is to start with the "Apply" layer in the Zettelkasten, as it's the first layer that turns absorbed knowledge into something owned and internalized.
I wonder what strategies you have for "Remember" and "Understand". In the layers of evidence discussion Christian gives the example of Kant's work. That's one kind of requirement for a more elaborate engagement with the two lowest levels, but I find it important to dedicate more time to "Remember" and "Understand" to build a skeleton of the book I read.
I wonder about your workflow here. Do you immediately start by creating a structure note, or do you do something while reading? What are your strategies for "Remember" and "Understand"? For example I write a summary for some books I read, and create a visual Book on a Page for others require such engagement.
The question comes from someone with a low level of cognitive load tolerance. I am essentially looking for practices to expand my tolerance.
Selen. Psychology freak.
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No. It's a framework for educational goals. It describes a hierarchy of skills and abilities.
No. Learning and improving skills is not the primary goal of the Zettelkasten Method.
No. Most work happens at the bottom layers.
The connection is more obvious, when you know that they used to be called "Knowledge" and "Comprehension" in an earlier version of the taxonomy.
Collecting and "processing" information are basic steps of the ZKM to capture and understand knowledge.
But "rememembering" is usually not a goal of the ZKM. A zettelkasten is sometimes called a "second memory" or "external memory", because some of us use it to store knowledge that we can't or don't want to remember in our heads.
Reading a book is a not the same as interacting with a zettelkasten.
Many of us integrate what we learn from a book into our zettelkasten. It's a key part of how Sascha and Christian explain ZKM. But its' usually a separate step.
You're already using classic reading techniques that work very well for that purpose.
I'd like to point out that you don't need a zettelkasten if your goal is to learn something. There are much more effective methods to prepare for exams or learn a skill.
Have you considered trying out a Leitner box (aka flash cards, spaced repetition, Anki) instead of a zettelkasten?
In my opinion, you are too rigid here and you push your own perspective.
Bloom's taxonomy essentially creates an ontology of what you can do with information at increasing levels of complexity. The fact that it was coined in an educational setting doesn't mean it cannot be applied to general knowledge work. Education is essentially an information metabolism, nothing different than the ZKM.
Zettelkasten is an integrated thinking environment. Learning is a by-product, but the goal is to improve the thinking skills and come up with something of your own. (You can see the parallelity between engaging with information at lower levels and climbing the hierarchy.)
I don't think you can dismiss the by-products as not being part of the goal of the Zettelkasten Method, and it can be different for everyone. The outcome of thinking can be different for everyone.
Still, you are too rigid. To collect and process information, you have to remember it well enough to come up with your own mental model. Plus there is "Understand" phase. Again, mental model.
Nothing wrong with trying to maximize remembering. I don't believe in a second brain.
Everything I wrote may be my own approach to the ZKM. I may be putting more emphasis on knowledge acquisition and organization. My ZK is not solely my territory. It's a mix.
A flashcard is a one-way conditioning of stimulus and response. I am more into elaborative encoding.
Edit: Oooh, I understood why we approach from opposite sides. My definition of learning and yours are not the same. You can replace "learning" in my text with "internalization" and "modeling". I don't talk about surface-level learning; I abandoned that concept, so I couldn't really notice that it misleads the reader. I am talking about the reconfiguration of the mind in the presence of new internalized information, or neuroplasticity. I hope Bloom's taxonomy makes sense when you think about the internalization ladder.
Selen. Psychology freak.
“You cannot buy the revolution. You cannot make the revolution. You can only be the revolution. It is in your spirit, or it is nowhere.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin
Interesting idea to think of it as an ontology.
I think there's a bit more to education than "information metabolism". :-)
Zettelkasten is useful for some kinds of thinking. There are other tools that are better for other kinds of thinking. Depends on what you need.
Short-term memory and understanding plays a role, agreed. But if your goal is long-term retention and to achieve a certain level of mastery, then zettelkasten might not be the most effective choice.
In that case, I'm curious why you chose zettelkasten. How does it help you remember stuff?
Knowledge acquisition and organization are a typical goal for ZK. The question is where the knowledge is supposed to land—in the box or in your brain?
Rote learning is only one way to use flashcards.
And who says that rote learning is bad? If you care about Bloom's bottom level, rote learning can be quite an effective and efficient tool to remember stuff. You might not understand what you remember, but at least you can recall it quickly. You don't have to think about it, it's just there.
Are you writing flashcards yourself or do you use card sets prepared by other people?
Writing flashcards is an excellent exercise in elaborative encoding. You really have to understand stuff in order to write good cards. And because they have a process of self-testing built in, it's much harder to fool yourself about your level of knowledge.
I always create (or choose) a structural note when processing a book. However, the purpose of that note differs depending on whether I already have a solid grasp of the book's subject matter.
If it's a topic I'm already familiar with, I usually use a structural note with a specific objective in mind so that I can directly apply the knowledge.
But if it's a topic I don't know well, I'm often not in a position to know how to use that knowledge yet. In those cases, the purpose of the structural note is to gather the knowledge I need in order to become familiar with the subject.
For example, for the past few months I've been interested in a topic I don't yet understand well: how to create meaning in my life. I read Man's Search for Meaning and started processing it. However, I'm still far from being able to integrate that new knowledge into my life in a way that would lead to a lifestyle change. Therefore, the structural note I'm using is the following:
I'm not sure whether this answers your question. In short, I create structural notes specifically dedicated to the task of Understanding. And as a byproduct of processing the material deeply, I get Remembering "for free."
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I would put writing the note in the first place on the understand level. If we go by the verbs provided here, we can draw parallels to the first steps of the Zettelkasten workflow:
But I agree with your general sentiment. Typically, just getting the stuff in your mind seems to be skipped and "getting the idea" is assumed.
I think rewriting as thinking is roughly where I would put the "understanding" of Bloom's Taxonomy especially. It is quite often I have to edit a note a couple of times to get it somewhat right.
This is what is often missed from the process. Back then, when I could schedule full work days for Zettelkasten work the number of notes I could write per (long) session was very inconsistent. Easy to digest content allowed me to write several dozen notes per day and rack up a high word count per day (often 7000-8000). Different material would result in just a couple of notes (sometimes less than 5) 1500-2000 words written. Sometimes, the ratio between the notes created and the written words was very different because I had to write a lot to produce few words in the end. (I record the words via the word counter app)
I treat remembering almost exclusively as a byproduct of my processing which is more than enough for me. My strategy involves being active in every step of the process:
I don't like one idea of Bloom's Taxonomy: It assumes that you push from the bottom to the top. Instead, I focus on a pull dynamic. I focus on the higher levels and basically engage with the lower levels as part of it. So, I understand and remember information because I have to in order to create. I quite regularly create thinking tools ("create") because I feel that I can't understand the material without them.
I haven't processed Bloom's Taxonomy, but my instinct says that it shouldn't be such a pyramid. (In education, at least in Germany, it seems to be that modern approaches don't put remembering first but the creation process. For example: You start a project and then learn whatever in order to create, but creation comes first conceptionally)
I am a Zettler